1. What is your name?
Mona Hecke
2. Which Local Government Area are you from?
Gold Coast City
3. What are your top 3 economic development and/or infrastructure priorities for the region?
Planning ahead, anticipating the needs of our future community, top priorities for the Gold Coast must be:
1. LIVEABLE AND BEAUTIFUL CITY: greening, cycle and pedestrian pathways
2. TRANSPORT AND CARPARKING: M1 fix, public transport, parking stations
3. JOB DIVERSITY AND SECURITY: sustainable businesses, convention centre, CBDs, major tourism major projects – surf and rainforest
4. Are you aware that the development industry contributes substantial funding to Council through infrastructure charges and the development of local infrastructure?
Yes. I acknowledge the significance and am familiar with the Urbis report 2018:
- Development industry = third largest Queensland employer (10% workforce + indirectly 13%)
- Almost same reflected %s on Gold Coast – 24K direct jobs + 31K indirect jobs; 10.9% of coast’s employment; 2.1% annual growth (over 10 years); contributes $1.6B in wages and $7.3B to Gross Regional Product.
- Development industry ranks 4th behind health, retail and accommodation/food.
- Direct employment is planners, architects, builders, subbies, tradies.
- Indirect employment is finance/insurance, businesses services, manufacturers
providing services/products for the development industry.
5. What do you see as being the role and contribution of development activity to this region? How would you go about stimulating additional development?
Role and Contribution
- To make a real contribution, development activity needs to create local jobs and improve the quality of the city. When that happens, the creation of good urban places is an economic development stimulant in itself.
- Making the city the best it can be for locals, is also attractive to tourists and other investors. In essence, good urban design creates a virtuous circle.
- And the Gold Coast can be better than just good and virtuous. With planning and design excellence it has the potential for greatness and sustainability; to be one of the most liveable and beautiful cities in the world. It is a privilege to be able to shape a city and create a legacy. I want developers to be inspired to do their best work here, to gain profit and pride from development outcomes.
Fairness and Consistency
- As the responsible authority for town planning and development control our council must be the moderator – facilitating development activity and ensuring orderly and proper development.
- What developers, town planners, property salespeople and tradies want most is fast processing of development approvals, and consistency. No unnecessary delays, no unreasonable hurdles, and also no political favouritism.
- Fairness and consistency over time, are subtle and strong stimulants that contribute to economic stability and sustainability and a better reputation for investment attraction.
Better Design of Council Capital Works
- As the collector of infrastructure charges and provider of local roads and community infrastructure the council has influence to lead by example with good design of parks, libraries, pools, sports facilities, footpaths, cycleways, bridges and local roads.
- I will have a keen eye on ensuring these are well-designed to enhance the city, endure well, show that we care, and save money.
- I understand that developers want to see where development charges are invested. Collection and expenditure of infrastructure contributions must be transparent, and where possible there should be a locational nexus between the contributory site and expenditure.
City Greening
- I want to bring an extra focus on greening our city. The great natural beauty of our region, the ‘Green Behind the Gold’ needs to be enshrined by the City Plan. We need to protect this image with environmentally responsive and responsible development, plus a genuine City Greening Program.
- Greener cities are healthier and more beautiful to live in. With better design and greener streets, the Gold Coast could be on the top 10 list of the most liveable cities in the world.
- I want to transform the Gold Coast Highway into a tree-lined boulevard from Coolangatta to Helensvale.
- I want to ensure that shade trees are planted in every street of new housing estates.
- And let’s plant our parks and street verges and roundabouts with subtropical species that bring greenery and softness into our built environments.
Sustainable Business
- I want to foster sustainable business and generate more diverse and meaningful employment opportunities, to enable and encourage our educated and talented young people to stay and be part of making our city.
- I will continue support for our IT, health and education sectors to grow.
- I want to speed up delivery of digital infrastructure so it becomes normal for people to live and invest here, while working anywhere in the world.
- I want to help untap potential in tourism niches for health and fitness, adventure, sports, eco and nature-based holidays.
- I want to boost our creative industries of many forms – design, film and television, the arts and crafts.
- And there are some smart, fledgling agri-businesses that are leading the way in local food production.
- I will set up an independent expert taskforce to support growth in current and emerging sustainable businesses.
Major Projects
- I will support the State Government to expand the convention centre to capitalise on the lucrative business tourism market, but not to build a Cruise Ship Terminal, a Cableway or a second Casino.
- I want their support to establish major tourism destinations that showcase aspects of the Gold Coast that are truly of world significance: a Global Surf Hub at the southern Gold Coast; and Gondwana Natural Wonders environmental education and action centre – as a gateway to our hinterland.
Put the central business into our CBDs
- Our council chambers should be in the heart of Southport. Not a ‘Taj Mahal’ but a civic meeting place with an outdoor square for public gatherings.
- The 2500+ council workforce could be redistributed over time from the Bundall Office Precinct to commercial office accommodation that is well served by public transport at Southport, Robina and Coomera.
- This will lead the way for a new wave of allied investment in commercial and residential property development, and stimulate business and vitality in our CBDs.
- With council leading by example, we will be better-positioned to press for Federal and State Government and Corporate Head office relocations.
Transport and Carparking
- Transport and mobility to and within our city is crucial.
- Most urgently, we need to fix traffic and transport flows between Brisbane and the Gold Coast. M1 congestion has become a serious handbrake on our economy.
- Easing this problem will not only improve life for Gold Coasters. It will also stimulate our drive and short-stay tourism markets from Brisbane and the region.
- We need collaboration and serious commitment from the State and Federal Governments to define and speed up delivery of an integrated, regional transport plan for South-East Queensland/Tweed, including fast rail to Coolangatta.
- More innovative thinking is needed as the light rail is extended. Technology is changing and more adaptable, potentially less expensive options need to be considered. Our council needs to be ahead of the curve on this issue, actively engaging with the State Government.
- To complement road and public transport infrastructure, I want our council to significantly increase investment in delivery of active transport infrastructure – pathways for pedestrians, cyclist and personal mobility devices. Every active transport trip equates to one less car on our roads – and healthier, happier people.
- And finally… car parking. The council is in the process of selling Bruce Bishop Car Park and I think that’s a mistake. In Surfers and most of the older retail and dining precincts access and parking problems inhibit success and vitality. Smartly designed, multi-level, multi-use public car parking stations, with real-time wayfinding signage would be really beneficial to these traditional business centres. Parking stations will complement light rail and bus services and help to ease problems that have emerged in residential streets near light rail stations where passengers park-and-ride. Let’s begin with Chevron Island, Broadbeach, Burleigh and Palm Beach.
6. In your opinion, is the local planning scheme for your region balanced and facilitative? Would you consider changes to the scheme?
City Plan Implementation
- A key problem with the Gold Coast City Plan is not its content but the way the council ignores it to grant excessive relaxation of design provisions. This practice should not be normalised. There will always be justifiable exceptions for good planning and design – which is what Performance Planning enables.
- Routine disregard of City Plan provisions signals a need to either apply more discipline to assessment, or to amend the City Plan to match desired outcomes. Planning schemes are not static documents, set in concrete. The council must always be reviewing and updating the City Plan to optimise its effectiveness, to ensure it is balanced and facilitative.
Priority Planning Scheme Changes
Presently, our City Plan is falling short of community expectations in various respects. The pressure points are high-rise buildings and new residential estate subdivisions so these would be my initial priorities.
- Tall buildings can be beautiful – the City Plan provisions for high-rise development are enabling buildings that have really negative, sometimes devastating impacts on neighbours and streetscapes, particularly at ground zero. The all-too-close buildings are compromising not only the amenity, but also the development potential of next-door sites. The buildings being constructed now will stand for many decades so we need to ensure they do the right thing and add to their neighbourhoods. The design code needs to be adjusted and applied to ensure that developments provide adequate setbacks, landscaping and car parking. Height as the only trigger for Impact Assessment is not enough. It needs to be coupled with at least one other control measure like density or plot ratio, or a sliding scale on height and site cover.
- New suburbs can create community from Day 1 – Some of the new estates in the northern growth corridor, both sides of the M1, appear like barren, alien landscapes. Having watched the evolution of suburbs like Robina over 25 years, I know that over time, vegetation grows to soften the landscapes, and community services and facilities eventually come to these places, but the subdivision design and construction of many of these newest estates lack even the potential for that to occur. City Plan provisions for new residential estate subdivision should create neighbourhoods that are safe and attractive. In the very least I want to see streets with shade trees, footpaths and cycle ways that give convenient access to local parks and schools.
Local Area Design Guides
- The 2016 City Plan dispensed with Local Area Plans (LAPs). The former LAPs needed to be updated, but they should not have been thrown out.
- I want to reintroduce a finer grain of planning to guide development in some areas such as: Burleigh Heads, Mudgeeraba Village and Springbrook which have unique local character; and others like Palm Beach and Nerang which have experienced massive change but still retain essential qualities that we love.
- We need Local Area Design Guides to show how public and private building and landscaping works in these areas can contribute to conserving and enhancing the texture and flavour of these places.
State of the Environment
- Gold Coast Council doesn’t have a comprehensive strategy for sustainable development but it’s pretty clear we need one. To inform environmental action I will re-introduce ‘State of the Environment’ reporting to keep up to date on trends, benchmark our progress and guide us to fine-tune our City Plan and council operations. We must optimize sustainability and resilience. We need to:
- design our transport policy and infrastructure to ensure that we will always be able to move efficiently around the city
- diversify our economy, innovate and generate new employment opportunities in sustainable businesses
- improve energy efficiency and speed up a just transition to renewable energies
- plant more shade trees in our urban areas to reduce the heat island effect that makes our streetscapes unbearable
- safeguard our city against severe climate impacts
- improve our water and waste management
- protect biodiversity through nature conservation
Housing
- Federal and State Governments are primarily responsible for housing affordability, homelessness and aged care accommodation, but our council can help too.
- Through the City Plan, the council can promote housing diversity. The current focus on highrise, high-density projects and greenfield estate subdivisions, overshadows opportunities for more well-designed, low-rise medium-density housing. I think the City Plan could be adjusted to incentivise medium-scale apartment living, 4-8 and where appropriate up to 10 storeys, along future east- west public transport linkages e.g. Nerang–Broadbeach and around existing shopping centres.
- Homelessness is a visibly growing problem in our city. So too are complex issues around aged-care, mental health and crisis services. Our council should not be silent on these matters. I will set up a Housing Taskforce to do the research and identify solutions that suit our population and housing market. With leadership, compassion and collaboration with State agencies and local service providers, we can identify solutions and act to make a difference. We need a housing policy and action plan.
7. If elected, would you undertake any reform to streamline development assessment, development approval processes, and / or Local Government Infrastructure plan processes and outcomes?
Reforms
- Planning consultants have told me that they want the Development Assessment process to provide clarity and certainty. Presently, they hesitate to give advice on site opportunities because the Council is routinely approving relaxation of City Plan provisions, often without justification. It’s open slather and inconsistent. It skews the land and development market into an unhealthy speculative environment.
- For low impact uses like home offices, and small-scale developments like small-lot subdivisions and duplexes, they suggest we should have simpler and cheaper processes.
- For short-term accommodation uses like AirBnB and Party Houses they say we should have clearer guidelines and compliance protocols to protect neighbourhood amenity.
Partnerships
- Gold Coast City is not an island. It is linked to the whole of South-East Queensland and Northern New South Wales. We need to coordinate and work effectively with other governments and organisations to make our council budget go further on infrastructure delivery.
- We must collaborate with our neighbouring councils to ensure coordinated regional service and infrastructure delivery. I will re-join the South-East Queensland Council of Mayors and establish regular cross-border communications with the Tweed Shire Mayor.
- I will also forge stronger partnerships with our higher levels of government to secure their commitment to address the needs of our growing city, and a fairer share of their funding allocations.
- We must not waste council funds on the provision of infrastructure and services that should be funded by other government or commercial sectors.