Page 1585 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 6 June 2023
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If the Assembly chooses to commence the interim Territory Plan, the Standing Committee on Planning, Transport and City Services has already announced that it will conduct an inquiry into the Territory Plan. Inquiring into the Territory Plan will give the community and the industry the opportunity to look at the full set of documents in this next phase of the project and provide submissions to the inquiry. The committee will run hearings, just as it did for the Planning Bill, and will make recommendations based on the evidence provided. The government will have four months to respond to these recommendations, which may result in an amended Territory Plan, and the Assembly will have to vote on that Territory Plan. We are part of the way into the journey and there is still a long way to go to bring about changes. This is just the first step.
MR CAIN (Ginninderra) (10.48): As the national capital, our city ought to personify the essence of Australia: a city well equipped to change with the times while retaining the character of the place—by extension, the nation; a city that Australians are proud to call their capital and Canberrans are even prouder that they live here; a city that is governed with integrity and accountability, to serve as a shining example to the nation.
These noble aspirations for our city have been placed under severe risk by the Labor-Greens’ ambitious outcomes-focused approach to planning, as set out in this bill. The development and presentation of this bill has highlighted the very worst of a tired and strained government under Chief Minister Barr. Significant governance and integrity issues, astoundingly poor community consultation—I say again: astoundingly poor community consultation—and a complete disregard for Canberra’s unique characteristics have plagued this reform process from the start.
The Planning Bill 2022 has been produced as part of the four-year ACT Planning System Review and Reform Project, along with the draft new Territory Plan and draft district strategies by the Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate, EPSDD, led by the Director-General of the EPSDD, who is also the Chief Planner.
Herein lies our first major concern: a significant lack of governance reform. Governance, being the systems and processes by which accountability is driven, is essential to a fair, accountable and functional planning system. Since the review’s beginning, the planning minister has explicitly ruled out governance reform as an outcome of the planning system review, despite it being one of the main talking points stemming from community and industry consultation. The bill reveals that the chief planner has subsequently proposed the further accumulation of authority in the hands of senior public servants while further limiting the oversight of members of the Legislative Assembly.
The rebranded territory planning authority would be granted expanded functions for the consideration of development applications, while the new Territory Priority Projects represent a significant increase in the discretionary power for the Chief Minister, the planning minister and senior planning bureaucrats to green-light developments while restricting Assembly oversight and third-party review recommendations. It is something from an episode of Utopia. The current head of the planning system conducts the planning review along with the minister, giving themselves a high distinction and then recommending that they be given more power.
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