Reversing Sydney's backward momentum

C14 Should new planning legislation provide a statutory framework for strategic planning?

C17 To which geographical regions should strategic plans apply – catchments or local government areas?

C21 Should there be a review process to deal with issues arising between the Department and councils that relate to the preparation of local environmental plans?

Such questions must produce incredulity in intelligent readers and indicate pre-choices, further reducing the consultative and policy value of the process. Mant referred to the popularly-rejected "templates", and other submissions to the "gateway" rezoning process, which the Minister and officers said at the outset were to stay. (C1 in particular is ignorant of the principles of localism. A6, C1, C2, C8 and C17 and others disregard the logic of the localism packages.)

Meanwhile the myth of amalgamations as a solution is still driving private sector commentators. The Development and Environmental Professionals' Association and the Committee for Sydney in its "Benchmarking" report of 2010 did not assess the increasingly obvious alternative. (The "unificationist" cause was abandoned here in the 1910s. London took until 1965 to achieve a restricted version which failed in 1986 and has been revived in very limited form – the real history is not well understood here.)

The government's inquiries had the challenge before them. Community consultations are heading in "uninformed" directions and restricted scope, and quiescence by professional institutes in particular implies acceptance. The consequences of unsuccessful statutory change in "local governance" are frightening. A century ago Thomas Hughes, John Daniel Fitzgerald, John Garlick and the like pushed Sydney to the forefront of world thinking. The current generation looks weak by comparison.