Page 1209 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 March 2013
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programs. The worth and proportionate nature of these exemptions has been demonstrated by the experience of the last few years. Madam Acting Speaker, I commend this motion to the Assembly.
MR SESELJA (Brindabella) (10.44): We will not be supporting this motion today.
This exemption was initially introduced to support emergency stimulus funding. Of course, much of that has been completed. The government has provided no compelling arguments to justify this extension. We believe that residents do have a right to comment on buildings near their homes, especially central spaces such as schools. It does allow room for many unintended consequences, and it does beg the question: if it is good enough for schools, why is it not good enough in a range of other areas?
The exemption in section 1.99C was put in place in March 2009. It allows for the development of new buildings or alterations to an existing building to be exempt from development approval. Examples of the types of buildings covered by the section include a dormitory, hall, auditorium, gym, library, classroom and environment learning centre. The building must not be within six metres of the school’s boundary in a residential zone, and there are height restrictions.
The minister brought on a disallowance motion to force members to support the exemptions in the Assembly on 26 March 2009. The justification for the exemptions was that the minister wanted to speed up building and the exemptions were necessary because approvals were so slow. The exemption expires on 31 March unless the Assembly resolves to continue it. I say again that, despite requests, there have been no compelling reasons put to the opposition as to why this is now necessary, why it is necessary to now extend.
We believe that there is a case for looking at appeal rights, and we have had a difference of opinion with the government in other areas, which is why we find it particularly interesting that they are applying a different standard here—in particular, a different standard mainly for themselves. We are mainly talking about government projects here. They are saying that government projects, indefinitely, should not be subject to the same rigour and the same community feedback as many minor things that go on in the suburbs. In fact, based on this exemption, there are many cases where relatively minor changes in the suburbs are subject to far greater scrutiny—far greater scrutiny—than the government will allow themselves to be subjected to when they are completing school projects.
We do not believe that appeal rights, particularly people’s enjoyment of their property, should be lightly set aside. In essence, this attempt today seeks to permanently remove appeal rights on school sites. We have seen what the rationale was. Let me go back to what Mr Barr had to say in 2009:
… the removal of third-party appeal rights is consistent with what occurs for major commercial developments in the town centres.
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