Page 1340 - Week 04 - Thursday, 12 April 2018
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and technical amendments to the statute book. Omnibus bills are an effective means of keeping the ACT’s legislation up to date and give the government the ability to respond quickly to changing circumstances. The PABELAB is specifically focused on legislation administered by the Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate.
This PABELAB contains minor policy and technical amendments to the following four pieces of legislation administered by EPSDD: the City Renewal Authority and Suburban Land Agency Act 2017, the Heritage Act 2004, the Nature Conservation Act 2014 and the Planning and Development Regulation 2008.
I would now like to outline the provisions of the bill. The bill makes two technical amendments to the City Renewal Authority and Suburban Land Agency Act 2017 related to delegations. Section 19 of the City Renewal Authority and Suburban Land Agency Act provides that the City Renewal Authority Board may delegate the board’s functions to the authority’s CEO. Similarly, section 49 provides that the Suburban Land Agency Board may delegate its functions to the agency’s CEO. There is no explicit power to delegate either the authority’s or the agency’s functions as opposed to their boards’ functions. The bill amends the City Renewal Authority and Suburban Land Agency Act explicitly to provide that the authority’s and the agency’s functions may be delegated to their respective CEOs.
The bill also makes one minor policy amendment to section 65 of the City Renewal Authority and Suburban Land Agency Act related to housing target determinations. As members may be aware, section 65 of the City Renewal Authority and Suburban Land Agency Act requires the relevant minister to determine affordable, community and public housing targets for new residential developments in the territory. While the amendments in the bill seek to preserve the intent of section 65, the section has been redrafted and clarified.
In practice, the wording of section 65 has proved problematic, as it does not specify to which type of development housing targets apply. The requirement that targets are expressed as a percentage of a development rather than an absolute number of dwellings in a development has also proved impractical to administer.
The amendment to section 65 includes a number of improvements so that it will, firstly, clarify that the targets apply to the building of new residential dwellings on unleased or government-leased land, either as a result of urban renewal or in a new suburb; permit the targets to be expressed as absolute numbers rather than percentages, an amendment which is not designed to affect the delivery of public housing in the ACT; provide that a housing target determination for a development must state the maximum number of dwellings anticipated to be built in the development; provide for housing targets to continue until the target is met by the completion of all dwellings in the development that meet the housing target; and provide for the description of a development within a housing target determination.
The bill makes a technical amendment to section 49 of the Heritage Act 2004. Section 49 allows the ACT Heritage Council to make a decision on a proposal to cancel the heritage registration of a place or object. The council can decide either to
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