Page 1940 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 15 June 1994
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If the Minister fails to make a decision ... before the expiration of the prescribed period, the Minister is to be taken to have refused to approve the application.
Subsection (1) of section 237, "Objections - general", reads:
Any person who may be affected by the approval of an application may, within the prescribed period, object to the grant of the approval.
Subsection (1) of section 235, "Duties of concurring authorities" - for lease variations the concurring authority is the ACT Planning Authority - reads:
A concurring authority to which an application is referred by the Minister shall, within the prescribed period, give notice in writing to the Minister that the concurring authority ...
The subsection then goes on to describe approval, conditional approval and objection.
Madam Speaker, I understand from the department that the prescribed period for each step in the lease variation process is publicly available and that, as soon as practicable, the department advises applicants for lease variations of the expected timeframe for the processing of their application. There are also very clear requirements for public notification and third party appeals in the Land Act. In the "User's Guide" to the Territory Plan, under the heading "Specific Users - Lessees", it states in part:
Where a proposal appears to be consistent with the relevant controls the application will be processed in accordance with the requirements of Part VI of the Land Act. Consequently there will be an opportunity for third party appeal under Part VI of the Act unless exemptions from third party appeal apply.
Clearly, Madam Speaker, the mechanisms in the Land Act are vastly superior to those of the City Area Leases Act.
On receipt of a draft of this Bill from the Office of Parliamentary Counsel I thought it advisable once again to seek a briefing from the Department of the Environment, Land and Planning on the relevant issues. I spoke some weeks ago with another three officers from the department, and a number of issues emerged. The fact that there was no definition of an application under the City Area Leases Act was reiterated. The point was made that any letter or communication to the department at any time indicating that a lessee might like to vary a lease would be considered to be an application. The department believed that there are about 30 outstanding applications, with most near completion, but there could in fact be many more. If a sunset clause were introduced it may bring many more applications out of the woodwork, and applicants' rights need to be considered where an application has already been made, and these may be adversely impacted by a sunset clause.
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