Page 5066 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 26 October 2010
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believe that the government thought that it was acceptable that DA notifications did not necessarily have to have any particular relationship to the actual content of the DA. We know that Mr Barr and ACTPLA already knew what they were planning to propose back in June, as Mr Barr flagged it in his speech. He said:
This brings us to the Latham DA which is being used as an example for the need to introduce these provisions. Following this case, ACTPLA has reviewed its internal procedures concerning verification of notifications. As a result, the government will be introducing amendments to the Planning and Development Act to provide a legislative process to allow re-notification of applications. These will be able to occur prior to any decision being made on the DA where there may have been a deficiency in notification.
I acknowledge that the government have taken a slightly different approach to solving the same problem than we did, but this is exactly what the amendment process is for. If they were not ready to do it at that stage, I would have been quite amenable to adjourning debate until they were. I do not really mind that the Greens have become a think-tank for the government, but it is poor form to dismiss our proposals in the chamber and then present them as their own ideas.
We have seen this kind of thing from the government before. Last year Amanda Bresnan introduced legislation to regulate the solarium industry in the ACT. The government refused to support the Greens’ legislation and instead adjourned debate and introduced almost identical regulations to address the issue themselves. There are numerous other examples where the outcomes have suffered because the government have not collaborated or engaged with Greens-led initiatives. However, in the end, I am pleased that the Assembly continues to slowly achieve improved results for the Canberra community.
In terms of the bill itself, I am very pleased to see that this bill proposes to renotify a development application if ACTPLA becomes aware that the original notice is defective and—this is what ACTPLA have borrowed from my bill—the defect is likely to:
(A) unfavourably affect a person’s awareness of the timing, location or nature of the development proposal in the application; or
(B) deny or restrict the opportunity of a person to make representations about the application under section 156 …
This may be because the contents of the notice are incorrect, incomplete or misleading. This clause applies to the same three public notification areas which I wished to address—public notice to adjoining premises, registered interest holders and major public notifications. The Greens, of course, support these provisions, as they are certainly an improvement to the current notification process. I can understand why there would be a clause allowing ACTPLA not to renotify if a sign was displayed but then subsequently moved, altered, damaged, covered or had access to it prevented. However, I would hope that all steps possible would be taken to avoid these situations.
Given the causal effects of public notification not being carried out effectively, meaning that people may not put in objections and are therefore not given standing to
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