Page 3124 - Week 08 - Thursday, 25 June 2009
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government. ACTPLA is one of those agencies where getting efficiencies and getting things right in ACTPLA have a big impact on our economy. We know that the amount of economic activity that gets delayed through delays in the planning system and the planning agency is significant and has a significant effect on jobs in the ACT.
There is never a good time to have planning delays. In good times people are looking to invest and get that money out there. But in slowing times, at times when the economy is slowing and there is more difficulty in getting finance for projects, delays can be fatal. Delays can be fatal to the viability of projects and therefore can be job destroyers. There needs to be the attitude in government that ACTPLA is an important economic agency. It is about planning our city, and planning it well, but it is also critical to the economic viability of industry in the territory, because we know that the construction industry is such an important part of our overall economy, such a large part of our private sector here in the ACT.
It is well known that there are processing delays and backlogs in the planning system. In this budget the government seeks to remedy this with a one-off $1.73 million allocation for the effective delivery of services. There are no plans in place for post-2010 when this money runs out, and there will undoubtedly be further backlogs. To help inform the public, the committee recommended that the ACTPLA website include regular updates of the number of development applications in the system and the estimated time it will take to process each application.
The government has agreed to include regular updates of development applications in the system, but it will not agree to provide an estimated time it will take to process each application. The rationale that was given in relation to that was an interesting one—that there was potentially some sort of deterrence in providing the estimated time. I think that it is important that we have that transparency. Actually doing that will perhaps also act as a bit of an internal accountability mechanism: if you have to give an estimated time, you have to keep it reasonable. If you are speeding things up, the estimated times will be less likely to be a deterrent.
We are keen to see the development system implemented. If it is done properly, this will make lodging applications much easier for people and, hopefully, make it faster. We desperately want to see the system improved here in the ACT, because of the importance to our economy and the importance to the overall amenity of our city. We need to get the planning system right, ensuring—we have had some discussion, and I will not go over the discussion we had earlier this morning—these fundamentals of ensuring that our city grows in a sustainable way. They are important to how Canberra grows; they are also important to our economy. Working on putting in place settings for our planning system that encourage activity, growth in the right areas, vibrancy in our town centres and a sustainable transport system is what a well-working planning system should be doing.
There was some discussion of section 63 and section 84 in Civic. Section 84 has not been completed, many years after being sold. ACTPLA has granted two holding leases; the current lease expires in August 2011. There was some discussion about this in the committee. The minister referred to a Canberra Times article on this issue of section 84 as fiction, I think. But when asked which part of it was fiction, the minister
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