Page 302 - Week 01 - Thursday, 16 February 2012
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what will happen with those appeals. From what I can tell, it is slightly unclear what will happen with those appeals. Even if the regulation is disallowed, I think legally it is still a little unclear. It would have been vastly superior had we considered this last year. Anyway, we did not, so let us keep on going.
On the issue of business certainty, I think that a lot of this comes back to the quality of ACAT decisions. If the situation was that everything went to ACAT, as far as planning is concerned, and ACAT said, “You’re wasting your time; ACTPLA has got it right,” we really would not be bothering having this discussion. There would clearly be absolutely no point in the third-party appeal. However, that is not the case. I would like to quote from ACAT findings on a recent Kingston development, the most recent one in Quayside. In paragraph 3 they said:
It is a mystery to the Tribunal as to how such a proposal could have been approved.
I find that utterly bizarre. They go on to say in paragraph 18:
The witnesses called by the developer, and the expert called by the Planning Authority, succeeded in tying themselves in knots in trying to justify how the higher elements on this building are not three building elements of 20 metres by 37 metres but instead were six elements of half that size, in pairs joined by articulations which are the three lift wells.
They say in paragraph 19:
A simple look at the plans demonstrates to the Tribunal that the developer’s and Planning Authority’s view cannot be sustained.
Unfortunately, this is not just happening in the Kingston foreshore area. I recently read the ACAT’s determination about the Marsden Street development. In it they also found that there were some significant issues with ACTPLA’s approval which they felt, clearly, because they disallowed the approval, was simply not consistent with the territory plans and codes. I think this very much demonstrates why we need an appeals process.
If we were looking at an area to remove appeals from—not that the Greens, of course, are suggesting that we should be removing appeals from anywhere—we simply would not choose the Kingston foreshore because it is one of the most complex areas in Canberra from a planning point of view. There is the territory plan, which is everywhere, but in this case there is also the national capital plan. Also, the LDA has its own set of rules which were put into place in terms of conditions when land was sold. In effect, we have three different planning authorities in the Kingston foreshore area and we have three different sets of rules. I have had the view put to me that, because Kingston was fully master planned, there should be no third-party appeals because clearly everybody knows what is going on. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Clearly, not everyone does know what is going on. That is part of the reason we have the situation we have here.
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