Watch this space, Rudd's plan will leave us all in a jam

FOLLOWING GroceryWatch, FuelWatch and RefugeeWatch, the Rudd Labor Government intends to launch CityWatch - a centralised city planning operation to develop state capitals.

Labor's planning record in NSW is not particularly happy. Successive Labor ministers have shown an unerring instinct for second-rate design and third-rate development. But Rudd Labor is no better. While it claims it wants long-term solutions, it has shown a predilection for short-term responses. It is somewhat ironic that Rudd has anointed himself as the nation's new city-planner-in-chief less than a week after two of his predecessors joined to excoriate the design of Parliament House, Canberra. Malcolm Fraser's government commissioned the building, which Paul Keating's government was the first to occupy and both men share some responsibility for the folly. Fraser's government approved the design and Keating was on the planning committee. Now they both think it was a huge mistake. The business of city planning should be straightforward, and would be if it were not for the swarms of former Labor MPs and ministers now acting as developer lobbyists. Our future generations need cities that will, first and foremost, function. Melbourne, which has a vastly more efficient public transport system than that which Sydney residents suffer, has also built arterial roads that cope far better with traffic flows than do Sydney's. The infrastructure in the nation's cities is simply unable to keep up with the population growth, not least because the state governments have attempted to control the price of land through holding back the release of residential property. In the next 40 years, the population is expected to grow to 35 million and it is a fair bet that most of those new residents will want to live in either Sydney or Melbourne. A national development template for the guidance of city planners is needed, but not more interference from Canberra. The Constitution clearly outlines the roles of the states and the federal government and city planning does not fall within the realm of the Federal Government's responsibilities. It would help if the Federal Government could manage those areas in which it does have jurisdiction, facilitating a national transport system, co-ordinating uniform educational standards, even managing the nation's largest river system while there still remains water to be managed. But the Rudd team has become habituated to announcing plans and more plans and letting them drift through ever-increasing circles of committees and study groups. It is a government of press releases, not achievements. It talks the talk but it does not walk the walk despite spending record sums of borrowed money. The best example of the implausible nature of the Rudd Government's aspirations remains its own 20/20 RearVision conference staged last year. A gabfest for the self-anointed morally superior, it achieved nothing. Handing the planning of the nation's capitals to such people or worse, to committees of Canberra-based politicians or bureaucrats, would ensure that today's bottle-necks would remain choked forever.