Speech to Chambers

Delivered by Councillor Seal Chong Wah, to the Debate on E&C Committee Report Clause A –  Amendments To Brisbane City Plan 2014 – Indooroopilly, Carindale And Nundah Major Centres, 4th November 2025

I rise to speak on the E&C Report Clause A, about the Indooroopilly, Carindale and Nundah Major Centres.

This Council administration is planning to upzone around these three centres.

On the face of it, it makes sense for more people to live in these areas. Indooroopilly and Nundah have frequent train service. 

All three are served by some high-frequency bus services. They’re already lively local centres.

But it’s not enough just to raise the height limit. 

We need to make sure that these centres are sustainable for the future. That means we need to maintain setbacks for air and light flow. 

We need a variety of unit sizes, suited to everyone from young adults, to families, to retirees. We need more deep planting to counter the urban heat island effect that comes from more concrete.

I’ll just take a second to say: did other Councillors know that this administration is no longer raising deep planting requirements to 15%?

These higher and stricter deep planting requirements were meant for redevelopments exactly like these. This Council voted for the increase in 2022, so that future high-density precincts would have more shade and cooling. 

But between the vote and the amendment consultation, with no announcement, this administration dropped it back to 10%, and made it even easier for developers to ignore. 

I only found out by chance when I was looking at the CityPlan website. If these neighbourhood plan amendments don’t include strict 15% deep planting requirements, then these neighbourhoods are in for even more scorching hot summers.

Just as importantly, people need to be able to afford housing. We need mandatory inclusionary zoning in these precincts, to make sure that hundreds of new public and affordable community homes are included in these precincts.

The State’s Shaping SEQ regional plan requires Brisbane to build more housing. 

But it also sets the goal of 20% of new homes in SEQ being social and affordable housing, which we’re far behind. That regional plan recommends inclusionary zoning to address this problem.

For reference, of the thousands of homes in Indooroopilly, just over 1% are public or community housing. In Nundah, it’s closer to 6.4%, and in Carindale it’s less than half a percent. 

In total, only 3.6% of hundreds of thousands of dwellings within this Council’s local government area are public or community housing. That’s a long way from 20%.

We can’t just ‘hope’ that some new homes are affordable. That’s failed time and time again. 

We need to mandate it, through requiring 25% of dwellings in each new development be given to public and community housing providers. 

We need mandatory inclusionary zoning. 

If this Council doesn’t, then the LNP administration will just be handing shopping centres and developers millions of dollars in speculative property value before anything has been built.

I hope that the planning for these centres listens to the needs of Brisbane’s residents. We need a thriving city that is affordable and sustainable.