Page 1778 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 21 August 2007
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I do not think this legislation gets the balance right. It fails by placing too much power in the hands of the minister and the planning authority, and it fails by placing too many obstacles in the way of effective community power to oppose inappropriate development. We need an independent arbiter such as a land and environment court to ensure that the high sounding objects of the act, such as sustainable development and intergenerational equity, actually get expressed in day-to-day planning decisions.
In my view, the problems start with the object of the bill. While it admirably incorporates a form of sustainable development which I have just referred to, it makes no attempt to include social equity in that definition. The ACTCOSS submission on the draft bill points out that intergenerational equity is to be considered but equity in the here and now is not, that planning to support an inclusive society is not considered and that community wellbeing in all its broader senses is not addressed. ACTCOSS also notes that key social justice principles that could be in the object provisions of the act or in the territory plan are simply not there.
The planning and land authority is not governed by a board that could be held to account on principles such as these. It is simply an entity with responsibilities to maintain relevant records of land and development and to manage the planning and building processes. As far as possible, it is required to give effect to sustainable development, but I have serious doubts as to whether there is sufficient political support to develop this concept and to make the ACT into a truly best practice jurisdiction in terms of pushing social and ecologically responsible practices.
ACTPLA does not appear to have any greater vision, and it can be directed by the minister. Codes of conduct did exist under the PALM regime and I suspect that if they had been developed upon, refined and appropriately resourced and advertised, they would have been an extremely useful component of a socially and environmentally best practice planning regime. Such codes would set minimum standards and good faith guidelines that participants in the development process would have to abide by.
Under this scheme, major changes such as variations to the territory plan require minimal public consultation, no response from government to that input and no necessity for it to be considered by an Assembly committee. It could be that this government views that level of accountability as sufficient. As a senior ACT bureaucrat has explained in a different context, consultation for the government really happens once very four years at the ballot box.
In my view, that is inadequate. The Greens are not going to propose complex amendments to the bills this week. The habits of majority government have shown us that little would be gained by enlisting significant parliamentary counsel resources to redraft this bill into something more responsive and community based. Instead, the Greens will promote some more substantial changes to the bill in the lead-up to the next election when the imperative to cooperate might result in better outcomes.
That is not to say that officers from ACTPLA and the various ministers have not been helpful and have not considered our concerns. (Extension of time granted.) With a bit more time at this end of the process before the main debate, I think a number of small but meaningful, and in that way substantive, amendments to the bill could have been
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