Page 6081 - Week 14 - Thursday, 9 December 2010
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As I said when I presented the bill, this is an important piece of legislation. The bill amends the Planning and Development Act to give effect to the government’s review of the operation of schedule 4 to the act. Schedule 4 sets out the types of development activities and associated thresholds which trigger an environmental impact statement, or EIS. The bill refines these triggers in line with experience with the operation of schedule 4 since the commencement of the act in March 2008. The bill reaffirms the original intention of the planning reforms that the level of assessment to which a development proposal is subject should be commensurate with the likely significance of any environmental impacts.
The central purpose of this bill is to ensure that only those development proposals which are likely to have a significant adverse environmental impact will need to be assessed in the impact track and require an EIS. The experience with the operation of schedule 4 has been that some proposals which have clearly been unlikely to have a significant impact were likely to trigger an EIS. The act lacked sufficient flexibility to allow such projects to be assessed in the normal merit track.
The present bill provides greater flexibility to decide whether a proposal should be assessed in the impact track or in the merit track, which is generally quicker and less costly. The bill clarifies that the associated EIS process should only be required where the proposed development is likely to have a significant adverse environmental impact.
New section 124A of the bill clarifies the term “significant” by spelling out the matters which should be taken into account in determining whether or not an environmental impact is likely to be significant. What is significant depends often on the context. It is frequently not something that can be determined by simply reading off a table or a simple check list; it requires informed and balanced professional judgment. The bill provides greater flexibility to take the context of the proposal into account while maintaining appropriate environmental safeguards.
I would like to give some examples of this. The key change in the operation of schedule 4 is the greater role given to the Conservator of Flora and Fauna and the Heritage Council in helping to assess whether a particular proposal is unlikely to have a significant adverse environmental impact and whether an EIS should be triggered.
Section 138AA introduces a pre-application process allowing a proponent who believes that a proposal will not have a significant impact to seek an opinion from the relevant authority. An environmental significance opinion from the conservator or the council will allow the specific development proposal to be lodged in the merit track rather than the impact track. The main consequence of this is that an EIS will not be required and the DA will be decided within 45 working days. An assessment of probable environmental effects may still be needed in some cases, but this will not be a separate process to the DA.
There are other areas where the amendments to schedule 4 give greater flexibility, which will particularly help on-the-ground adoption of environmentally friendly technology. The government is committed to supporting such developments. The areas where this is so include solar and other renewable energy generation, waste water treatment and reuse and stormwater management.
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