Page 2409 - Week 06 - Thursday, 24 June 2010
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of certification of energy assessors. I look forward with eager anticipation to the next COLA bill which will rectify these problems. The Greens are supporting this COLA bill and look forward to many in the future.
MR BARR (Molonglo—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Planning, Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation and Minister for Gaming and Racing) (12.11): I thank Ms Le Couteur and Mr Seselja for their support of this particular piece of legislation, acknowledging that it does follow on from earlier reforms and continues the government’s drive to ensure that planning and development in the ACT deliver for the community and for industry and, of course, are more environmentally sustainable.
I acknowledge that this will be one of many bills in this area, and there is a considerable amount of work currently underway across a range of different areas covered by the COLA legislation. Ms Le Couteur is right: this certainly will be an area that there will be close Assembly and community scrutiny of, and that is rightly so. It is an important area and obviously at times very complex and technical. For those of us who are not expert practitioners in the relevant areas, it can be quite challenging to get across all of the detail. But it is, nonetheless, an important process for this Assembly to engage in. A test of a good legislative process is where laypeople seek explanations and understandings from the technical experts through this legislative process, and that can certainly aid in delivering a better outcome and ensuring that the community also understands the nature of the reforms.
In relation to this bill today, the scrutiny of bills committee have reviewed the bill and made no comment on it as it was originally presented. Can I take the opportunity to thank the committee for their consideration of the bill and to quickly recap why this reform is needed. Back in 2007 the Assembly unanimously passed the Planning and Development Act. In doing so, it introduced sweeping improvements to the territory’s planning system. These reforms included an expansion of the range of things that can be built without the need for a development application.
As the Assembly is aware, a DA is an important document that is applied for by the lessee or their nominated representative. It provides information to the building surveyor in the role of building certifier, and, importantly, a copy is placed on the building file. This is an important step as it allows future prospective buyers to know if the building was built lawfully.
In addition, a building approval, or a BA, cannot be issued if the building required development approval and none was provided. A BA is required to be placed on the building file. Although the concept of DA-exempt development was around prior to these reforms, the community and industry indicated that more exemptions were desirable. It is this expansion in the range and scope of DA and BA exemptions and the need to provide adequate documentation for future users that led to the need to make these amendments.
It is also likely that the range and scope of exemptions will continue to expand in the future. This has become clear to the government over the past 18 months as we have listened to industry and the community. In April last year the existing exemption for a single dwelling in a greenfield residential area was extended to all residential zones.
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