Page 1257 - Week 04 - Thursday, 7 April 2016
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Under the current Planning and Development Act a DA that is either a prohibited development or requires an EIS cannot be lodged until the territory plan has been varied or the EIS process completed. Varying the territory plan can take months or even years to complete. We also see many instances where a territory plan variation, taken in isolation, is difficult for the community to assess. One such example of this could have been the Brumbies development in Griffith where many people did raise concerns with the opposition about what they felt was the built form outcome of the proposed development; yet during the territory plan variation the actual built form outcome was not what was being discussed. It was, in effect, simply the land use plan.
After the land use was changed, it then became the right opportunity to comment on the built form outcome. However, given the territory plan variation had already gone through, the DA before the community and before the government did of course comply with the new-found definition of what the territory plan meant in that area. Therefore it was very difficult for the community to determine the impact of a draft variation when the clear intention of the built outcome was not also incorporated in that same proposal.
In most cases the government or another proponent will have an idea about what they want to build. However, because the community do not have access to this information they are unsure how to respond to such a draft variation. The variation is often hypothetical and the community may have significant concerns that could be dispelled if an actual DA was available for them to consider.
The amendments in this bill allow a DA to be submitted before the territory plan variation and EIS are finalised. Consultation can then take place on each of these elements at the same time. To ensure that the integrity of the planning process is not undermined, a decision on the DA will not be made until the territory plan variation and EIS processes are complete. This means that a decision on the DA may take longer but hopefully the decision-making time for the development as a whole will be reduced and there will be more clarity as a result of this revised process.
Allowing proponents to have territory plan variations, EISs and DAs occur concurrently does involve a risk proposition for the proponent. There is a risk that the DA will be rejected after significant time and effort has been put into it because it would not comply with the territory plan as the variation may not have gone through or the EIS was rejected. For this reason, the concurrent process is optional rather than mandatory.
The opposition would, however, flag that we do have some potential concerns whereby a territory plan variation and a DA done concurrently could result in the territory plan then being amended to suit, in effect, a DA. But then if finances fall through or if the DA is not actually successful you could get an unusual circumstance whereby the territory plan has been varied and there is no longer a viable project on that site. That is something that we are very concerned about.
Therefore we call upon the government to make sure that there is a reasonable level of certainty with regard to ensuring that, if a territory plan variation is going to occur to
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