Page 1270 - Week 04 - Thursday, 7 April 2016
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To ensure that there is the opportunity to at least consider the merits of a proposal, there needs to be a mechanism to allow this potential benefit to be assessed and, if appropriate, realised. This bill provides this mechanism.
Clause 32 amends section 136, development proposals for prohibited development, to state very clearly the very limited circumstances when the planning authority can accept a development application for prohibited development. The bill, while providing a voluntary mechanism for a proponent to seek a variation to the plan and to lodge a development application in anticipation of that variation, also places restrictions and protections throughout legislated administrative processes for the variation itself and the development application.
In this way the bill delivers both transparency and robust administrative processes for varying or amending the plan while maintaining the integrity of the existing provisions. For instance, the bill enhances community engagement by not only maintaining existing consultation periods but also extending these periods for concurrent development. (Extension of time granted.)
I want to reiterate a comment I made when I introduced the bill, and that is that the single most important benefit of this concurrent notification is to the community. This is because the community will be able to see just what is envisaged by a territory plan variation and be able to arrive at an opinion about that variation with all the facts on hand. No longer will the community have to think the worst of a variation because they cannot envisage what it means on the ground.
This alone provides a significant value to the community but also to the developer and to government. The bill, through this basic simple concept of concurrent processing, not only delivers a reduction in red tape but also makes eminent sense.
For a bill that delivers very real benefits, the amount of amendment to the territory plan provisions is minimal because of careful, considered drafting by the parliamentary counsel and the Planning and Environment Directorate.
The bill creates the concept of a concurrent development application and defines this new concept at the new division 7.3.2A, concurrent development applications, and includes definitions that tie the whole concurrent development application together. The amendments also pick up the new concurrent consultation period at new section 147AA (1).
The amendment provides that for a variation that is associated with a development application the new minimum consultation period is 35 working days. That is a minimum increase of five working days, which can be increased by the Planning and Land Authority, if warranted, to reflect the complexity of a variation or the development application.
The commitment to consultation periods is further evidenced by amendments at section 90 on limited consultation. Again, the period for consultation, for a technical amendment that requires limited consultation, has been replaced with a new definition
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