Sample Submission - Asio Building

ACT 2612

15 September 2009

Dear Committee Member At the 17 June public meeting of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Capital and External Territories (JtCttee) with representatives of the National Capital Authority(NCA) there was some discussion of the planned ASIO HQ. The transcript reveals that, setting aside Mr Aitkin’s dogmatic but questionable assertions that the ASIO plan is consistent with the National Capital Plan, the answers from Mr Rake to questioning from Anne Ellis and Gary Humphries were somewhat more ambivalent. The transcript suggests that there was a rather regretful sense of a fait accompli having been achieved and that not much could be done about it. The NCA was let off the hook. In the light of the public concern that has now emerged in almost daily letters to the Canberra Times about the adequacy of the consultation process, the lack of transparency throughout the approval process, and the approvals granted by DEWHA and the NCA I urge you, as a parliamentary guardian of the National Capital, to immediately raise the issue with the relevant ministries and explore the possibility of resiting the building or reducing its size. The main arguments for this are: 1. The building is massive and will have a hugely negative impact on the landscape and on heritage views.

Since the blue fencing around the site is so clearly visible from the south side of the lake in the Parliamentary Triangle and must be about the equivalent of a single storey in height, it is difficult to believe that the five or six storeys planned for the ASIO building will not affect the landscape. If you look at the site from either the Kings or Constitution Avenue Bridge or anywhere along the south shoreline you will appreciate how this building will impinge on the land/treescape . It is hard to see how a building twice the size of the National Library could not dominate the view. The measures proposed to mitigate this impact are inadequate and will take decades to have any effect.

2. Many experts disagree with the Department of Finance Heritage Impact Assessment and the NCA view that this plan is consistent with the National Capital Plan

The Heritage Impact Assessment (HIA) commissioned by the DoF was written by Conservation and Heritage Planning of Manuka. This is a firm respected for its experience in heritage architecture (though it was involved in the now-abandoned Albert Hall plan) but NOT for its knowledge of the landscape elements that are so crucial to any understanding of Walter Griffin’s concept of Canberra. Its HIA for the ASIO building has been criticised for failing to review many important and relevant Heritage Management Plans. But, beyond that, it is surely significant that a raft of experts experienced in architecture, planning, landscape and heritage disagree with the DoF HIA and some of them have provided detailed explanations of why they disagree. This raft includes Dr Giurgula, architect of Parliament House, the President of the Walter Burley Griffin Society, the National Trust, previous NCDC planners and Professor Ken Taylor. Why have these experts been ignored?

3. The 10-day public consultation period was woefully inadequate, allowing the project to develop ‘under the radar’ with minimal scope for the expression of the public’s opinion.

ASIO’s Expenditure Report No 5 2007 states that the site was chosen ‘with the assistance of professional advice from a range of consultants within the property industry’. Who were these consultants and did they include any heritage or landscape experts?

On what grounds did the Governor General exempt the project from scrutiny by the Public Works Committee in October 2007?

Has the project been ‘subject to normal budget processes’ as promised by ASIO?

If the Gateway Review process has started, who are the independent reviewers?

ASIO promised to provide ‘a full briefing on the building to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security’. Was this briefing provided and is it in the public domain?

Was Mr Irvine, Director of ASIO, revealing a rather shocking ignorance or an equally shocking disingenuousness when, at a Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security hearing, he responded as follows to questioning by Senator Barnett: “I am not sure that the nature of the building has been formally announced....certainly the broad plans and outline of the site plans of the building have been set out. There is a process now whereby they are going to the various planning and approval authorities within Canberra”. That was on 26 May 2009, two months after the pictures of the building had been published in the Canberra Times, one month after DEWHA had declared that the project was not a controlled action and almost a year after Mr Rohl of the NCA had granted “in principle’ support for the concept.

Why was a substantial site office built and then a tree ceremonially planted by AttorneyGeneral McClelland well before DEWHA had declared that the project was not a ‘controlled action’? That certainly suggests that the proponents believed this to be a fait accompli and that any consultation would be a sham. It is the NCA that is charged to defend the National Capital against inappropriate developments. Had all these questions been raised and objectively considered by the NCA in the context of its own mission statement the project must surely have, at the very least, been subject to greater public scrutiny. But, to date, the NCA has failed to stand up to the proponents of the ASIO building. In order for the public to be able to take an informed view I urge you to establish as soon as possible: 1.when was the NCA first aware of the ASIO design for a building of this size? Was it before or after Amendment 60 to the Griffin Legacy was adopted in 2007?

2. whether the NCA explored alternative sites? 3.what were the criteria used to approve the ASIO plan in principle when it visibly departs from Amendment 60’s published guidelines and drawings in Appendix T8? In a letter to me dated 27 August 2009 Mr Rake of the NCA wrote: “The NCA was aware of the potential development of Section 49 Russell for a Commonwealth Government tenant and factored this into the preparation of Amendment 60 [my italics]...The building is of a scale similar to that indicated on this site in Amendment 60” But this single building spanning the whole block from Wendouree Drive to Blamey Crescent is not a series of ‘perimeter block’ buildings as shown in the indicative drawings in Amendment 60, all of which show at least half-a-dozen buildings on the site. There is a mismatch here; either the NCA knew that the ASIO HQ was to be a massive single building but produced drawings and a model that did not reveal this or they only knew about the scale after Amendment 60 was promulgated but then abandoned the Amendment 60 guidelines.

Is it in the spirit of Griffin for at least half of the base of the Parliamentary Triangle to be wholly occupied by Defence and Security buildings from Russell to Anzac Parade?

Is an ASIO HQ likely to contribute to a ‘vibrant, mixed-use Boulevard’?

Can this project be seen as ‘providing a transition in building scale and use to protect the amenity of adjoining residential areas’?

Can the ‘design of [this] building ‘ achieve human scale in relation to built form’?

Does this building create ‘an open and legible network of paths and streets that extends and connects....Campbell...to Constitution Avenue, Kings and Commonwealth Parks and Lake Burley Griffin’? 4. why did the NCA allow the ASIO building to breach the Amendment 60 height guideline of 25 meters? The elevations show that, at its western end, the building will be 33 meters high 5. whether the NCA is satisfied with the traffic arrangements suggested to cope with cars arriving to fill the 1175 parking spaces, given the withdrawal of funding for the duplication of Constitution Avenue? You can appreciate that voters are angry that the DoF first sponsors this building and then cuts the funding that might have alleviated the traffic problems.

Here please note that Todd Rohl’s letter of 25 June 2008 granting the NCA’s ‘in principle approval’ warns ‘the key matter that requires further discussion is the proposed traffic arrangements...’. Does this not undermine the whole notion of bringing thousands of new employees to work on Constitution Avenue?

I believe that the answers to these questions would reveal that the ASIO project as it now stands cannot be seen as consistent with the NCA’s stated aim ‘...to restore ...the spirit and intent of the Griffin Plan’.

Since the Executive in the persons of the responsible ministers in Home Affairs, Finance and DEWHA seem impervious to expert opinion or public comment, it is surely up to the Parliament to rein in the executive on this issue. The NCA is supposed to be the body that defends the national public interest in cases like this but, as a recent letter to the Canberra Times suggests, it looks as if it has become the National Capitulation Authority, rapidly losing any respect it might have had enjoyed in the community. Your committee seems to be the only governmental body that could air these issues, restore some authority to the NCA and get the ASIO building resited or reduced in size.

Yours faithfully

Andrew Schuller 6161 8214 [email protected]