DARLING HARBOUR AUTHORITY AMENDMENT AND REPEAL BILL
Second Reading
The Hon. J. W. SHAW (Attorney General, Minister for Industrial Relations, and Minister for Fair Trading), on behalf of the Hon. M. R. Egan [2.47 p.m.]: I move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in
Hansard.
Leave granted.
This bill marks another significant milestone in the ongoing evolution of one of Sydney’s premier entertainment, leisure, recreation, business and lifestyle precincts. It was only ten years ago that Darling Harbour was officially opened and since that time it has grown to be Sydney’s third most popular tourist destination. It is a testament to the work of the Darling Harbour Authority that it has been able to achieve these magnificent results - transforming a derelict and rotting part of Sydney into the jewel of the harbour city that it is today. And as everybody in this House is well aware, the Darling Harbour story only became possible through the great vision of Neville Wran and the delivery skills of Laurie Brereton. However, the development of the Darling Harbour precinct is now substantially complete and thus there is little justification for the continuation of its strong development consent powers.
The objects of this bill are twofold. Firstly, it provides for the provisions of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act to apply to the Darling Harbour Authority development area with the Minister for Urban Affairs and Planning becoming the development consent authority. In transforming Darling Harbour from its state as an abandoned railway goods yard into the world-class waterfront development it is today it was necessary for the Darling Harbour Authority to have extensive planning and development consent powers over its own site. However, as I have already pointed out, it is now no longer necessary for these powers to reside with the Darling Harbour Authority. Indeed, all development at Darling Harbour, including that being undertaken at present, will be complete within the next 18 months. This bill gives effect to these practical considerations and brings Darling Harbour into line with planning arrangements for other development projects such as Homebush Bay and the city west precinct. It is anticipated that the provisions of this bill relating to DHA’s planning powers will be proclaimed to take effect on the same day as the provisions of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Amendment Act 1997, namely 1 July.
The second outcome of this bill is to make provision for the repeal of the Darling Harbour Authority Act 1984 so as to dissolve the Darling Harbour Authority. This is in line with the Government’s decision to consolidate all planning authorities and planning powers around Sydney’s valuable harbour foreshore. Through the introduction of this bill and the Sydney Cove Amendment Bill which is being introduced by the Minister for Urban Affairs and Planning the Government will put in place a clear planning approval system and will provide a coherent and consolidated process for the overview the city’s foreshore from Garden Island in the east to Blackwattle Bay in the west. Whilst the bill puts in place a process to dissolve the Darling Harbour Authority this will be done by a sunset clause which will not take effect before 1 January 2001. The reason for this provision is that the authority will be needed in the interim to manage the second largest Olympic precinct. The bill also contains a number of amendments to other Acts consequential on these changes to the Darling Harbour Authority Act 1984.
Darling Harbour today stands as a powerful testament to the vision and commitment of delivering large-scale projects by Labor Governments. Throughout this century, the people of New South Wales have come to know that if anything grand needs to be built in this State, if any major project needs to be undertaken, if vision is required, it will be done by a Labor Government. The Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Snowy Mountains Scheme - built by Labor; the Opera House and the harbour tunnel - Labor; the new Sydney showground (built in record time) and our magnificent Olympic construction program - Labor; and of course Darling Harbour - all done by Labor.
When Neville Wran announced the decision to redevelop Darling Harbour the area was little more than an unused tram depot, woolstore, derelict wharves and a railway goods yard. And when Darling Harbour officially opened in 1988 it was the first time in 150 years that this strip of prime waterfront property had been accessible to the people of New South Wales. In the last ten years, of course, the people of New South Wales have embraced Neville Wran’s vision heart and soul. More than 150 million people have visited Darling Harbour since it was opened on 16 January, 1988 and last year Darling Harbour had 15.2 million visitors. Since its opening Darling Harbour has always been a place of the people and hosts more than 700 separate events each year.
However, under the previous Liberal/National Government Darling Harbour was left to atrophy. But that is really no surprise because it opposed its creation. Under its reign there were no new developments or attractions undertaken at Darling Harbour. This Government has not been so shortsighted. We have approved many new developments at Darling Harbour which will ensure that it remains a focal point of Sydney’s social life well into the next century. And as a backbencher in the Wran Government I was a strong supporter of the development of Darling Harbour. It has been a source of great pride to me to be able to complete his and Laurie Brereton’s legacy. New developments at Darling Harbour that have been undertaken since 1995 include:
• the world’s largest cinema screen in the IMAX theatre;
• the Darling Walk entertainment complex which contains Sega World;
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• a $60 million refurbishment of the harbourside shopping complex;
•a $57 million expansion to the convention and exhibition centre to provide a new 1,000 seat auditorium and a new 1,000 person banquet room;
• an expansion of the Sydney aquarium; and
• the building of the new Cockle Bay wharf development.
Part of the Darling Park development on the eastern side of Darling Harbour will contain restaurants and cafes owned by some of Australia’s best restauranteurs. However, Darling Harbour is not just a place for people. It also brings real economic benefits to this State. Darling Harbour employs almost 4,000 people and the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre alone contributes more than $200 million to the economy each year. And Darling Harbour will play a key role during the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games when it will be the biggest Olympic precinct outside of Homebush Bay. Five Olympic sports will be held at Darling Harbour. They are volleyball in the entertainment centre, wrestling, judo and boxing in the exhibition centre and weightlifting in the convention centre.
The redevelopment of Darling Harbour broke new ground in urban development and renewal. It was a model of public and private sector co-operation that has been copied right around the world. The transformation of the formally derelict site demanded a powerful single task force approach which would not have been possible under normal planning mechanisms. However, whilst the success of Darling Harbour and the Darling Harbour Authority has been nothing short of phenomenal, this bill recognises the need for a more integrated planning approach to the whole of the Sydney Harbour foreshore for the next century. Finally I would like to thank all those who have served so ably on the Darling Harbour Board since my time as Minister: Gerry Gleeson, Michael Eyers, David Richmond, Sam Fiszman, Helen Lynch, Nene King, Peter Anderson, Rhoda Roberts and Helen Wright. I would also like to congratulate Alan Marsh personally, and his staff, for the great work they have done over the last three years. And they still have much to do before 2001 both for Sydney and the Olympic Games. In that respect I commend this bill to the House.
The Hon. PATRICIA FORSYTHE [2.48 p.m.]: The Opposition does not oppose this legislation, because the reduction of quangos generally is a good thing, and because specifically the Opposition supports as a matter of principle the consolidation of the various authorities that deal with planning issues on Sydney’s foreshores. In 1993 the then Minister for Planning identified at least six consent authorities in the central Sydney area and established a commission of inquiry to examine the broader issues of planning in the central Sydney area. Although the principal focus of that inquiry was the role of the central Sydney planning committee, the Minister at the time, the Hon. Robert Webster, identified the Darling Harbour Authority as one of the authorities whose role should be examined. So in many ways the legislation has its origins in the work initiated by the Hon. Robert Webster.
A key part of the bill is the repeal of the Darling Harbour Authority Act. I note that this will not occur until 1 January 2001, after the 2000 Olympics. Darling Harbour will be the second venue for the Olympics and Paralympics and therefore it is appropriate that changes in its role do not commence until after the Olympics. Having said that the Opposition does not oppose the legislation, I cannot allow the second reading speech of the Minister for the Olympics to go without comment - and I suspect that the incorporated second reading speech in this House was in identical terms. There was so much humbug and rewriting of history to suit the Labor Party by the Minister for the Olympics that I wish to put a few facts on the record. The only way that Labor Party members can ensure a satisfactory place in history for themselves is to rewrite it to suit them. The Minister said in his second reading speech:
. . . if vision is required, it will be done only by a Labor government.
It is no wonder that the Minister did not include the monorail on his list of great achievements of the Labor Party, because there is nothing visionary about that monstrosity that is part of the Darling Harbour development. He included the Opera House on the list, but it took the coalition Government to get that construction right. He mentioned the Olympics, but the Sydney Olympics were also a coalition vision.
The Minister described Darling Harbour as Neville Wran’s vision - taking what he described as a derelict collection of wharves and railway lines and turning them into the Darling Harbour that we know today. The Labor Party was in government from 1976 to 1988, in a period that coincided exactly with other foreshore and disused dockland developments across the world - in Vancouver, Boston, San Francisco, London, Singapore, New York and Baltimore. People who have visited Baltimore will have noted the similarity between the facade facing the harbour at Darling Harbour and that at Baltimore.
The Minister claimed that the only people who ever did anything for Darling Harbour were members of the Labor Party. He claimed that under the Liberal-National Government Darling Harbour was left to atrophy. That is just not so: it is simply a misrepresentation of the years from 1988 to 1995. The Minister said that the current level of visitors to Darling Harbour is 15.2 million a year, about 1.3 million a month. Yet in 1990, not long after Darling
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Harbour was opened in 1988, there were an average of one million visitors a month. Under the coalition there was a strong program to attract tourists and visitors to Sydney. If there were any complaints at the time they were because of the building, the design and the program of development at Darling Harbour.
The commercial retail sector of Darling Harbour was one of the first developments. This was considered to be the wrong order of development, compared with developments in Boston and London. The first thing to be done in recreating a dockland area is to put in place the residential component - which was the last component added at Darling Harbour. People should first be brought to the area and then retail developments undertaken. People do not change their shopping patterns and their way of doing things. That was discovered at Darling Harbour in the early 1990s. It was all well and good to have the high quality retail shops and restaurants, but without people coming to the area it was impossible for those developments to be an instant success. With the development of the residential sections immediately behind Darling Harbour, such as the Goldsbrough Mort development, which was approved under the coalition, and the Pyrmont-city west area, we are now getting it right and Darling Harbour is much stronger today than it was in the early 1990s.
The Minister’s claims that the coalition left Darling Harbour to die are not correct. While it was appropriate to construct the convention centre and to develop the area as a central focus, the residential developments were needed up front. The Minister said that under the coalition reign no new developments or attractions were undertaken at Darling Harbour. The 1990 annual report of the Darling Harbour Authority shows that at that time the corn exchange, Darling Park, Darling Wharf, Paddy’s Markets and the early stages of the Goldsbrough Mort development were under construction. By 1993 the Ibis Hotel could have been added. The Minister just got it wrong, and I will not let his remarks go unchallenged. In 1993 the Darling Harbour Authority board undertook its master plan review, and its report for the year ended 1994 stated:
In 1993, the Darling Harbour Authority Board decided it was time to take stock, review developments to date and to plan for completion of development at Darling Harbour by the year 2000.
All the things the Minister for the Olympics referred to were visions of the coalition, which were about working for the year 2000, having the developments in place and possibly being able to end the role of the authority after the Olympics. The report went on to state:
The timing of this Master Plan Review proved fortuitous in terms of:
•Sydney winning the bid for the Year 2000 Olympics -
and other developments at the time. The Minister’s suggestion that nothing happened at Darling Harbour under the coalition is simply wrong. I am happy to acknowledge the work of the existing board, as the Minister did, but it would have been to the Minister’s credit had he referred to the work of previous Darling Harbour boards. I note in particular the work of James Graham, the chairman under the coalition. The trend is the right way: we should get rid of the excessive number of authorities that have a hand in determining Sydney foreshore development. We recognise that this is a step forward by placing all approvals in the hands of the Minister; and we may wish to say more about this in future.
The Hon. ELISABETH KIRKBY [2.59 p.m.]: I support the Darling Harbour Authority Amendment and Repeal Bill. The bill is part of the Government’s proposal to consolidate all Sydney foreshore planning authorities and planning powers. The Minister for the Olympics has alleged that Darling Harbour is Sydney’s third most popular tourist destination, which surprised me. He said that the Darling Harbour Authority has been able to achieve these magnificent results by transforming a derelict and rotting part of Sydney into the jewel of the harbour city. Perhaps the Minister for the Olympics has been too busy at Homebush Bay to see what has happened at Darling Harbour. If it is Sydney’s third most popular tourist destination, why has it constantly lost money? It is still not paying its way.
In the lead-up to the bicentennial celebrations, when the Darling Harbour complex was being built - long before this Government came to office - great concern was expressed about the blow-out in costs, the deals that were done between the then Minister for Public Works and various contractors, and the amount of money the contractors managed to extract from the then Government. Darling Harbour has created an enormous debt and there have always been problems in relation to its management. It is certainly not the shining success a Cabinet member in another place might like to suggest. It is laudable that the planning of Sydney’s foreshores should be the responsibility of one authority. However, the success of the proposal will depend on how the Minister responsible exercises his power.
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I am perturbed about what has happened with east Circular Quay, and I am not the only person in this State who is concerned about it. I am also extremely disturbed about what has happened in city west and the way that public and community amenities in Pyrmont have been literally bulldozed to allow for the development of high-rise luxury units. This development has totally destroyed the face of Pyrmont and has left little open space for leisure activities for the people who will live in the area, particularly those with children. Children have nowhere to play except the foreshore, which has been paved and landscaped with a few palm trees. However, the area is not suitable for children because it is too close to the Star City casino complex.
Most parents would not wish their children to play near casino complexes because, regrettably, they attract undesirable people, crime figures, compulsive gamblers and others who behave in an inappropriate manner. East Circular Quay has energised and revived public interest and scrutiny in harbour use, public access and amenities. I have received a copy of a letter addressed to the Minister for Urban Affairs and Planning from the Save East Circular Quay Committee. The committee is in favour of the changes made by this legislation and it believes that changes to east Circular Quay during the past decade reveal only too clearly that current community consultation does not work. The committee stated in its letter:
Notifications under the E.P. & A. Act and other cognate instruments invariably fail to evoke serious grass-roots responses. Exhibitions, displays and ideas quests have likewise proved ineffective in achieving significant input at community level.
In the light of this committee’s experiences at East Circular Quay, we strongly advocate the establishment of a community-based advisory committee, resourced by government but holding the degree of autonomy sufficient to allow for independent non-political input into issues associated with harbour-front land.
Such an advisory committee should be established as an early priority, to ensure that adequate community input is available to you as Minister during your period as development consent authority and beyond.
On behalf of the general public the Save East Circular Quay Committee would also expect government to give an undertaking that due process, by way of public notification and exhibition of all development proposals and applications, will be carried out at all times.
There are many methods (particularly involving computer graphics simulation) of achieving a complete understanding by the general public of design proposals. The committee deserves an appropriate explanatory mechanism in all cases. The disaster at East Circular Quay may have been avoided if, for example, a computer graphics simulation of the proposal, including a walk-through at the viewpoint of a pedestrian approaching from the ferry wharves, had been part of the public exhibition of the development application. The Committee considers the harbour-front lands to be of such critical importance that computer-aided illustrative methods should become mandatory requirements, by regulation if necessary.
The bill gives the Minister for Urban Affairs and Planning total control. I hope he will conduct true community consultation and therefore avoid disasters such as Pyrmont and east Circular Quay. I believe a similar disaster exists at Finger Wharf, Woolloomooloo. I refer to the blocks of apartments planned for the left-hand side of Woolloomooloo Cove. The adjacent arenas have blocked off that entire area for public use. Through the efforts of Jack Mundey and others low-cost housing at Woolloomooloo was preserved. However, as a result of the inappropriate behaviour of some children in the area it has been suggested that public housing will be taken away from the current residents. Therefore, the residents of Woolloomooloo will be only those on very high incomes - not normal, middle-salary incomes but millionaire incomes - because the price of the apartments starts at $2.95 million, well beyond the means of the average person.
It is necessary to repeal the Darling Harbour Authority and to have more centralised planning for all harbour foreshores, but problems will still exist, particularly if the Government is determined to turn Sydney harbour into a replica of New York and Rio de Janeiro, where only the wealthy can afford to live on the harbourfront and people live in undesirable conditions on the streets. I support the legislation. I hope the Minister will assure the Save East Circular Quay Committee that there will be true community consultation about any further developments.
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Reverend the Hon. F. J. NILE [3.10 p.m.]: The Christian Democratic Party supports the Darling Harbour Authority Amendment and Repeal Bill. This legislation will help to bring about efficiency in the administration of Darling Harbour and ultimately will lead to the amalgamation of such authorities, to avoid duplication and to achieve more efficiency in government expenditure. This bill is the first in a two-step program to amend the Darling Harbour Authority Act 1984 so that the Darling Harbour Authority ceases to have environmental planning functions with respect to land in the Darling Harbour development area. Those functions are to be exercised instead by the Minister administering the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979.
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The second step in the program is to repeal the Darling Harbour Authority Act and dissolve the Darling Harbour Authority, with the assets and functions of the authority to be transferred to such other body as the Minister administering the Act determines. The long-term aim of the Government is to amalgamate a number of such authorities, including the authority covering The Rocks, thus providing for more efficiency in the functioning of such authorities and efficiency in the spending the taxpayers’ dollars.
The Hon. J. W. SHAW (Attorney General, Minister for Industrial Relations, and Minister for Fair Trading) [3.11 p.m.], in reply: I thank honourable members for their support for the bill, which I commend to the House.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a second time and passed through remaining stages.