Page 2218 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 23 June 2010
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penalised for the procedural, administrative or interpretive errors of the approval agency.
The HIA raises an important point. There are many small businesses involved in the building and construction industry. This bill has the potential to severely impact on those businesses, particularly small builders, who face very significant holding costs on developments. We are aware of one builder—an example of many others—who is a small businessman who has been paying $500 a day in holding costs while his development has been stuck in the ACAT. These businesses should not be penalised by government errors.
These are important voices raising serious points, and their views must be considered. The Property Council has stated that it does not support the amendments proposed in the bill as they would not set out leading practice principles set out in the Property Council’s DAF model, and that they will result in increased instances of abuse of the third-party appeals process. This is another important point. It is well known that the ACAT is at capacity now. We should not be putting more pressure on the ACAT when it is apparent that the feedback that we are getting is that it already takes too long to move cases through the system.
We are also concerned about the amount of money the government already spends in cases in ACAT. The Minister for Planning, when asked by the estimates committee what the total amount spent on legal fees in defending cases by ACTPLA in this financial year to date was, informed the committee that it had spent $565,467.
When it comes to the issue of the number of claims that may or may not ensue, the Greens have stated that the New South Wales jurisdiction, upon which they place some reliance that these changes will not open the floodgates, has an entire judicial tier, a whole court, that does nothing but deal with these issues. Notwithstanding that New South Wales is obviously a much larger jurisdiction, it is still instructive that it requires the mechanisms of an entire court structure solely to deal with planning and environment issues. And, obviously, if there are not going to be any extra claims, why is there any need to broaden the standing? It can only be to allow claims from people or groups who are at the moment not granted standing because, although they are interested in an issue, their interests are not affected enough by an issue to warrant halting the growth or development of the city.
The other main issues raised in this bill include giving ACTPLA and ACAT the right to consider what is ostensibly a broader range of matters when reconsidering a planning issue.
We have had some discussions with Ms Le Couteur’s office about the situation as it currently stands, which is in the Planning and Development Act, schedule 1, “Reviewable decisions, eligible entities and interested entities”, item 3, which confines the decision to being “subject to a rule and does not comply with the rule; or … is not subject to a rule”. The proposed amendment, in clause 20, proposes to remove the clause confining merit track review to being subject to a rule, which means, as I understand it, that the overall intent of the territory plan can be considered.
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