Page 3172 - Week 07 - Thursday, 1 July 2010
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I would suggest that one important step for the government would be to actually bring it all under one. The development of a proper infrastructure plan would be another step. It would give more certainty and some level of confidence that there is a desire actually to do things. I have got no doubt that change of use did not have an impact so much on those sites as other sites but there is no doubt that that will dampen demand across the board as well and create more uncertainty across the board in terms of what is happening.
I want to touch on some of the decisions that have been made by ACTPLA. One in particular is the one that was reported in the Canberra Times on 19 April this year, under the heading “Kingston quayside plans in turmoil”. There are no winners out of this. There are no winners when we see the government planning authority get it so wrong. There is a developer that has gone ahead, presumably in good faith, and has said, “This is what we want to build,” and ACTPLA has turned around and said, “You can build that.” It has gone ahead and sold. There are buyers who have committed their deposits and there are people waiting to get into the market. There are employees who are waiting to go.
So when we see these kinds of decisions, they do not really help anyone. But it is unfortunate that it gets to that point. It seems to me, from what the tribunal had to say and from the fact that ACTPLA did not bother to appeal it to the Supreme Court, that it was a pretty significant error. I have looked at the case, and it is hard to understand the rationale and the interpretation.
The report was that the ACT Planning and Land Authority would also be called upon to explain how an approved development was found by the tribunal to be too big, too tall, with too little open space and too few car parks. The tribunal’s senior member wrote in her decision that it was a mystery to the tribunal how such a proposal could have been approved. When we get it so wrong, there are consequences. There are consequences in terms of the court costs. There are always legal fees, even in ACAT, when these things happen. So there is a cost to the taxpayer, there are costs to the developer. There are the holding costs. Then they have got to go ahead and re-do it. There are those who have bought. Do they get their deposits returned? Do they wait until it gets another approval in a different form?
We asked questions about court costs. It was noted by ACTPLA, in an answer to a question on notice, that it had spent $565,467 to date in 2009-10 on defending legal cases. We recommended that ACTPLA include in its annual report, for each legal case where a decision by ACTPLA is overturned, the cost of each case and the reason for the outcome. I think that would be a reasonable thing for transparency. It will be good for us to get an idea as to how much is being spent as a result of poor decisions.
There will be cases that are very marginal. There will be cases that are very marginal and merits review, where one planner sees it one way and another person sees it another way, and it is a tough call. But this appears to be a fairly clear-cut case. We saw one in Kingston some time ago, with an extra floor approved. That does undermine confidence a little. This result will undermine confidence and it has some significant costs flowing on from it.
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