Page 1897 - Week 05 - Thursday, 5 May 2011
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year. We certainly support ACTPLA having the ability to make guidelines about what can go in the requirements for a social impact assessment. I understand that the intention is that the process for social impact assessment will mirror the environmental impact assessment scoping process.
Clause 28 allows exemption notices for development approvals to be issued, which will no doubt help many property owners when they sell their properties. Clause 31 clarifies what information should be given to the Land Titles Office, which will help keep consistency across the information held by the office.
The key set of issues with this PABLAB for the Greens is noting the amendments around replacing the word “consultation” with the word “notification” throughout sections relating to development applications. Although we appreciate this will not change anything around the way that the community comment is handled for development applications, this is a major symbolic change. Through this PABLAB, the Planning and Development Act has undergone a reality check, and the bill tabled today recognises that sticking a sign in the ground is not, in fact, consultation. It is notification. So from that point of view, we actually very much support the change.
However, I have often been contacted by members of the community who are frustrated that ACTPLA has not done sufficient consultation on particular developments and it has not of course been clear to the general public that ACTPLA in fact only has to notify a development application and that notification is not consultation.
During his tabling speech, Minister Barr stated this bill will make modern, accessible planning laws and ironically noted in that speech that the most important is the community. The explanatory statement for the bill states that the clauses will clarify the nature of notification, vis-a-vis consultation, for development applications. Thus, I do support the contents of the bill before us today.
But I would also like to take the opportunity today to put forward a number of amendments around the current—I am not sure whether I should use the word “consultation” or “notification”—processes, both the pre-development application processes and the consultation processes for the range of development applications.
As well as the issues I am attempting to solve through my amendments, there are also a number of problems with the Planning and Development Act and related processes which I would like to raise today, some of which I have outlined on previous occasions. I have received many suggestions from members of the community on how we could improve the planning legislation, as I am sure many members have also done so. But here are some which I will go through as having some merit.
Generally, I believe there needs to be more in the way of a planning 101. There needs to be more basic information about development application processes available on the ACTPLA website and in a booklet form for people who do not have easy online access or people who find online access hard to deal with.
I do acknowledge that the ACTPLA website has improved over the years and I also acknowledge that it is very large and has a lot of information in it, which is both good
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