Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Australian Politics and Policy
Although Australia is a vastly urban nation, attempts by the federal government
to articulate a national urban policy have been episodic. Urban planning is a key
tool in the urban policy toolkit. The intra-governmental arrangements around
urban planning are therefore important. In this context, it is important to note
that:1)localgovernmentisnotreferredtointheConstitutionoftheAustralian
Commonwealth – local governments' responsibility for managing regulatory
planning at the local level is deferred from the states/territories; 2) in the absence of
a national urban policy, the federal government does not have any direct political
oversight over urban planning at the state/territory level; but 3) the federal
government may provide funding to the states/territories for large-scale infrastructure
in cities, either as block funding or through one-off arrangements (such
as City Deals, below). Therefore, the states/territories are powerful actors in urban
and regional planning in Australia, but urban policy and infrastructure funding
tensions are present between the federal government and the states/territories.
National urban policy
Globally, interest in formulating national urban policy peaked in the 1970s, with
high levels of government intervention aimed at realising equity goals through
provision of public housing and other public goods. The highpoint in Australia was
the Whitlam government's (1972–75) urban and housing development initiatives,
which focused on the rapidly growing suburbs. During the 1972 election campaign,
Gough Whitlam famously explained that:
a national government which cuts itself off from responsibility for the nation’s
cities is cutting itself off from the nation’s real life. A national government which
hasnothingtosayaboutcitieshasnothingrelevantorenduringtosayaboutthe
nation or the nation’s future. 22
Following the shift to efficiency goals, the most notable federal interest in cities
was expressed in the Hawke–Keating government’s ‘Building Better Cities’ program
(1991–96), which focused on the renewal of former industrial sites in the inner
city to provide higher density housing (in Pyrmont and Ultimo in inner Sydney,
inner Melbourne and inner north-eastern Brisbane) as well as the redevelopment
of mainly government-owned land in East Perth.
However, more recently, cities have crept back up the national policy agenda,
reflecting growing understanding of their role as the underpinning drivers for
national economies. In 2011, the Rudd–Gillard government launched a national
urban policy, ‘Our Cities, Our Future’, 23 which sought to guide public intervention
and private investment around four themes that remain widely deployed in
22 Whitlam 1972.
23 Australian Government Department of Infrastructure and Transport 2011.
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