Canberra Times: Monash Drive Compendium

Canberra Times Letters to the Editor Monday 2 November 2009 If Monash Drive is not to be built, what other plan has the ACT Government got for moving the traffic on Northbourne Avenue, which already is having major problems? Has it or the Greens given any thought to the thousands of houses now being erected in Gungahlin? Present and future residents of Gungahlin should be aware of long traffic delays if Monash Drive is deleted from the National Capital Plan. Monash Drive has been on the plan since the early 1960s, so buyers in Hackett, Ainslie and Campbell I assume were well aware of this. Rat-running through areas is already a big headache and it is believed some residents have sold their homes. The National Capital Authority should take no action as hostile drives may vote out the present Government. P. O’Reilly, Amaroo Friday 30 October 2009 After the National Capital Authority’s monumental blunder in approving the new ASIO HQ building, its chief executive, Gary Rake, is about to lead it even further into the theatre of the absurd by recommending that the Monash Drive reservation be removed from the National Capital Plan because the Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope, says his government has no intention of ever constructing it. Monash Drive is an important component of the Y-Plan’s peripheral parkway system, particularly the eastern segment centred on the Majura Parkway, which, over the the next 10-a5 years or so, will involve an $800 million highway construction program. This system will increasingly serve transport demand from the Kowen Forest urban development area with a population capacity of 250,000 residents as well as upwards of 75,000 residents in Queanbeyan and south-east regions of NSW adjacent to the ACT. Monash Drive was intended by the National Capital Development Commission to serve as a bypass route giving direct access to Civic centre. The need for it is becoming more pressing as the ACT Government continues to promote commercial and residential development in Civic while doing nothing to match the demand for increased road and public parking capacity that this development generates. It might be prudent for the NCA to contemplate what the alternative to Monash Drive might be, before deciding to dispense with it altogether. With this week's announcement by the Prime Minister that the Commonwealth will not fund projects like the Majura Parkway and its associated highway network until suitable metropolitan planning frameworks are in place, it might occur to Mr Rake that there

might be more to this whole question than just a few letters from a Chief Minister who might not be here much longer and from Neil Savery, the chief executive of the ACT Planning and Land Authority which has no transport planning responsibilities nor relevant expertise. Tony Powell, Griffith Jack Waterford is right about NIMBYism masquerading as public virtue ("Seeing red over greenie goals", October 28, p.11), but it had little to do with the fate of once-planned Monash Drive. In 1960, when Canberra's population horizon was only 120,000, Monash Drive was gazetted as a north-south artery skirting the eastern edge of Old Canberra. The population horizon soon rose to 250,000 and an alignment was gazetted for a similar artery along the western edge and bisecting Woden. The rapid development of Woden and Belconnen, and by 1967 the prospect of further new towns in Tuggeranong and Gungahlin, showed that the gazetted north-south arteries needed to be moved out of Old Canberra in order to meet the needs of this growing metropolitan region. From 1967, the National Capital Development Commission's wider vision for Canberra (revealed in 1970 as the "Y" Plan) had no need for Monash Drive. Its bypassing function is now performed by Majura Drive. Ian Morrison, former transport planner, NCDC, Barton Jack Waterford sure put the slipper into Ainslie/Hackett's opponents of Monash Drive. But that dumb old road was already messed up. Notice how quiet Campbell residents were? They'd seen half a dozen new house blocks sold up the southern end of Rosenthal Street years ago. That finally put an end to Monash Drive's planned leap across Fairbairn Avenue, stopping it roaring through the middle of expensive, exclusive Campbell (on a wide easement that remains vacant), down to Russell, to help drain the Triangle. When that all went west, so did the road's primary rationale. Oh, and anyone anywhere in Gungahlin wishing to bypass the city to the east will soon be able to race their Prius south via a fabulous new Majura Freeway, seamlessly linked to the Monaro Highway. No hypocrisy, Jack. It's all win-win. Tom Waring, Ainslie

Canberra Times Articles 31 October 2009

NCA agrees to erase Monash Drive from Capital Plan By Victor Violante

The National Capital Authority resolved yesterday to scrap Monash Drive from the National Capital Plan after a request from the ACT Government. A draft amendment will be put out for public consultation after the authority receives from the ACT Government information on the long-term impact of removing Monash Drive from the arterial road system, and the ecological and other heritage issues associated with the proposed road. The National Capital Development Commission (now the NCA) had penciled in the main road in the 1960s. If built it would cut a swath through Canberra Nature Park past the suburbs of Hackett, Ainslie and Campbell, but no ACT government has shown any interest in building it. Chief Minister Jon Stanhope has always opposed it for ecological reasons, and in 2004 the ACT Planning Authority omitted Monash Drive from its Canberra Spatial Plan and the Sustainable Transport Plan. But pressure from the ACT Greens finally prompted Mr Stanhope to lobby the Federal Government to omit it from the authority's blueprint for Canberra. NCA chief executive Gary Rake said on Monday that including the road in the National Capital Plan was redundant. "Given that the proposed alignment of this road is entirely on territory land, whether it exists in the plan or not, it wouldn't go ahead unless the ACT decided to build it."

29 October 2009

Seeing red over greenie goals Rank hypocrisy is responsible for local and national planning malaise which espouses conservation yet maintains conservative lifestyles On Capital Hill over the next few weeks, it will be the Australian Greens, rather than Labor or the independents, who are feeling most smug about the debates on emission trading regimes of the next few weeks. While Labor has staked it ground on the "do something" side of the debate, what Labor is offering to do is very little indeed. And even Liberals who accept the reality of climate change and want to do something, albeit

something more limited than Labor, are deeply split with others in their party who want to do nothing at all. But only the Green are really positioned among the many Australians who see climate change as an urgent, important and (to quote Kevin Rudd) "moral" challenge to our politicians. Anyone who believes that Labor, Rudd or Penny Wong are being tough but fair on climate change would believe that of the Government's position on refugees as well. For the Greens, the moral imperative of the greenhouse challenge is very important, both to its message but also to its political position. It fits with their wider narrative about the environment, and to build a more sustainable economy. For some, so urgent and so moral is the challenge that it authorises a degree of coercion, which they would see as being akin to rationing scarce water on a boat drifting in the ocean. In normal politics, offering the prospect of disaster and the promise of pain, sacrifice and a reduced, more austere and sustainable lifestyle, might seem a recipe for political disaster. Yet the Greens are "growing" their constituencies, including into traditional Christian groups who disapprove of the culture of relentless growth and hedonism, as well a capturing much of the traditional left base of Labor. The moral view of the Greens may well prove useful in two upcoming by-elections for seats previously held by Peter Costello and Brendan Nelson. In both seats Labor is not running, and has hopes that someone, probably a Green, will embarrass the new candidate. Clive Hamilton, from the Australia Institute, is standing for the Greens in Higgins. An alternative view of the Green sees them either as hippy dilettantes, primarily of the inner suburbs of major cities, focused on tokenism and reel-good gestures, but deeply opposed to anything that affects their smugness or creature comforts. (Yet another, used in rural areas to frighten rednecks, is of the bearded fanatic, vegan, animal Libber, deeply opposed to any form of agriculture, industry or mining.) Paul Keating once called them Balmain basket weavers. The warfare waged against Labor soft lefties such as Anthony Albanese by class conscious old lefties such as Martin Ferguson continually attacks them as inner-city trendies without any dirt on their fingers, prepared to demand any sacrifice only from the working class. The cynics see Canberra as a particular haven for middle-class green self indulgence, and we rarely disappoint. Lots of efforts on tokens, badges, stickers on cars, and proud assertions of how we all want wind power, solar power, and drastic action on alternative energy. Ostentatious with solar heating, and even more ostentatious in demanding ever greater and greater public subsidies for green status symbols, such as expensive hybrid vehicles. People with enormous carbon footprints, self-conscious austerity and restraint at a cost which could feed a third-world nation, and NIMBYism and NOTism masquerading as public virtue. But the self-indulgence of some of these constituencies invites serious

questions of whether many of them are actually prepared to make the slightest personal lifestyle sacrifice to face what their leaders have called the great challenges. Molonglo is the old Canberra. A multi-member seat, containing most of the richest, and most of the relaxed citizens. As the oldest and most planned area, it is also the best provided with public goods. Ainslie is, in effect, Canberra’s Carleton or Balmain, and the Green vote shows accordingly. Over Molonglo, last year, Green candidates received 18 per cent of the vote. But at the Ainslie School (near where I live) it was 24 per cent, at Baker Gardens, 29 per cent, and at North Ainslie, more than 31 per cent. Two Greens were elected. One of the items on the Green shopping list, as a condition for supporting Labor, was the scrapping of a road planned on the maps from the early 1960s, but never built. Monash Drive would have swung around the other edges of the Mount Ainslie and Mount Majura nature reserves from the Federal Highway to Campbell and made Hackett a kilometre closer to Civic. It was always planned as a major Canberra traffic corridor, not only for future citizens of east Gungahlin, but for northern-dwellers wanting to bypass Civic for Russell and South Canberra. As with those of Albanese's constituents who bought in Marrickville and now complain of aircraft noise, residents of Ainslie adjoining the proposed road bought after it was on the plans. Initial land prices on Duffy Street were lower to recognise the future road behind. But the road was long delayed, perhaps because too many National Capital Development Commission types liked the convenient Ainslie lifestyle. Ainslie's residents have become accustomed to looking directly on to the mountain range, to the riding and walking trails, and the kangaroos that come down at dawn and dusk for water. Now they think the view their right, and, as so often with sheer greed, rationalised it as environmental, heritage and even Aboriginal concern. Building the road, it is said, would threaten the galah population. There's an endless search for any parrots able to be called rare or threatened. The swift parrot, hardly rare except recently at Ainslie, is the present favourite. Or sacred sites. No shortage of those who will claim that this old farmland is pristine wilderness, and that it contains trees hundreds, possibly thousands of years old. It is an entirely recent and modern environment. The Mountain will be safer, and cleaner, not least from the non-native grasses and rabbit, by a firm separation. Those "saving" Majura are entirely insensitive to the costs they are imposing on the rest of the community, chiefly poorer people. That's kilometres of extra travel, extra time and hydrocarbon use (and pollution) forced on poor non-luvvies further from the centre of town. It’s overloaded streets and inept traffic arrangements on the other side of Ainslie. It's rat-racers from Watson and Hackett, and, soon from Sutton and Throsby. The argument for preserving the plan is not an argument for yet another freeway for yet more cars. It is an argument for preserving corridors, about keeping cars away from living environments, and for community sharing.

In the long run, I expect that foreclosure of the option will cost Canberrans scores of millions of dollars - without advancing the Ainslie-Majura environment one jot. Most likely, however, entrenched inner city residents will try to impose the cost on others through user-pays regimes. It is obvious that the Stanhope Government has every reason for cowardice, but it is not so clear that supposedly independent planners, local or federal, should be so accommodating to such naked self interest at the expense of the rest of Canberra, and, probably the rest of Australia. I would not want the survival of my species to depend on the willingness of the rejoicing Ainslieites to make a single sacrifice of their lifestyles. • Jack Waterford is Editor-at-Large.