Page 2589 - Week 07 - Thursday, 1 August 2019
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The opposition also has concern about the additional administrative burden that this places on our planning system. These changes will do very little in improving building quality but go a great way to adding additional red tape and processing times to construction projects. Coupled with what is already one of the most complicated planning systems in the country, one that is unnecessarily long, ambiguous and technical, it places further restrictions on the development industry achieving a good built form.
Coupled with this minister’s dismal performance in keeping development application and processing times under control, the adding of another layer of assessment only seeks to drag out the time it takes to get projects approved. When we are hearing of major projects taking in excess of 12 months to get a development application approved, that is of significant concern. It is not just the time it takes to get the administrative approval process done, but the flow-on effects that that has.
A company that is engaged in building seeks to commence one project and then, at the completion of that, commence the next one, keeping a consistent flow. When there are significant gaps between projects, we see people with the expertise and the specialty skills that are used on those projects being without work. I do not think that any of us in this place want an outcome of additional regulatory burden on industry to be people losing their jobs.
That is what this minister is facing. That is what he is staring down the barrel at. The exorbitant processing times for applications—blowing out beyond 90 days as an average, and on many major projects in excess of 12 months—are seeing an impact on jobs in the local industry. They are the jobs of people who are employed directly by construction and development firms but also of those who are employed by subcontractors and their affiliated trades. This has flow-on consequences throughout the entire economy and is something that we should be very mindful of before we simply throw more processes, more approvals and more reviews into the pipeline for getting projects up and running.
Whilst the principle of the design review panel is sound, and I think everyone in Canberra would like to see a better quality of the built form, the concern is that this is going to be done at the expense of efficiency in the industry. That has flow-on effects, as I have said, for jobs and also for cost. We are all hypervigilant about the impact of housing affordability, and rightly so as it has spiralled out of control in some areas of the ACT in recent years under this government. More should be done to reduce that. More regulation and more compliance seek to add cost. That cost ultimately has to be borne by someone. At the end of the day, it is going to be the purchaser of the property.
As I said, the opposition will be cautiously supporting this legislation today, noting that there are some uncertainty issues around the advice provided by the design review panel currently and that those fixes have not been incorporated into this legislation. Also, we will be looking at the addition to the red tape that is placed on business in the construction industry for compliance with these changes and what impact that has on the time it takes to get a project up and running and to get people on the ground working.
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