Page 1367 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 28 March 2012
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Greens have received a lot of community feedback on a number of issues relating to public involvement and notification and interest in the ACT planning system. This bill is an attempt to get the balance between the need for an efficient planning system—a planning system which has certainty for all sides, a planning system which is not bogged down by red tape, green tape or any other coloured tape—and the rights of residents to have a real say in what affects them in their neighbourhoods, what affects them in terms of what is happening next door to them.
This bill is part of a balancing act. What the Greens are saying with this bill is that we would like to see the balance move a bit more in favour of consultation and ensuring that people know what is happening in their neighbourhood and have a say in it.
The bill does five key things to extend public notification and information requirements. Firstly, it requires written notification of proposals for deconcessionalisation to houses within 500 metres of the site. Secondly, it requires written notification of draft variations to the territory plan to houses within 500 metres of the site if the variation contains a proposal for a change of zone. Thirdly, it moves proposals for the building of some single-dwelling houses in existing suburbs from being exempt from the need for development approval into the code track. Fourthly, it requires public notification for single-dwelling proposals in the code track. And, lastly, it inserts a requirement for signage at building sites of single dwellings in existing suburbs to give information about where the approved building plans can be examined.
The bill also extends the period before regulations made under the Planning and Development Act can commence, to ensure that the disallowance period in the Legislative Assembly has passed. At present, when a planning regulation is notified it generally commences the next day. But the minister then has six sitting days to table it in the Assembly, and then there is a six sitting day disallowance period when the Assembly can move a motion to disallow the regulation. This bill proposes that the regulations cannot commence until after the disallowance period has passed.
I am moving these because of the issues from the regulation that was introduced last year and to disallow third-party appeals in the Kingston foreshore area. This was eventually debated in the Assembly. I moved a disallowance motion. This was amended by the Liberal Party, I think, so that third-party appeals were reinstated in some, but not all, of Kingston.
This has led to the situation where there is a case in the Supreme Court and a case in ACAT. They are both at this stage, it is my understanding, debating whether ACAT has standing—whether or not it is possible to bring an appeal to ACAT. That is because it is very unclear what the legal status of the regulation was in this interregnum period between when it was notified by the minister and then when it was disallowed by the Assembly. Given that this is potentially quite a long period of time—in months, even if not a long period in terms of Assembly sitting weeks—we think it is important to have clarity here. That is what is behind that.
I will go through the specific issues. Firstly, I go to public notification requirements for deconcessionalisation. This is on the agenda because of the first deconcessionalisation under the new Planning and Development Act 2007.
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