Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure, $636,641,000

Administered Items for the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure, $9,719,000

Membership:

Mr Speirs substituted for Ms Chapman.

Minister:

Hon. J.R. Rau, Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for Consumer and Business Services, Minister for the City of Adelaide.

Departmental Advisers:

Ms S. Smith, General Manager, Investment Management, Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure.

Ms A. Allen, Manager, Planning Reform, Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure.

Mr A. McKeegan, Chief Development Officer, Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure.

Mr B. Cagialis, Chief Finance Officer, Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure.

Ms G. Vasilevski, Manager, People and Place Management, Renewal SA.

The CHAIR: Welcome back, Attorney. We are now looking at Planning and the Cemeteries Authority, so you are appearing in your capacity as Minister for Planning and Minister for the City of Adelaide. I declare the proposed payments open for examination, and I refer members to the Agency Statement, Volume 3. I now call on the Attorney to make a statement, if he wishes, and to introduce his advisers to us.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: First up, I have with me Anita, Sally and Andrew from Planning, who are part of the excellent staff there, who have done an extraordinary job, particularly in the last 12 months. They have been working very hard indeed on the planning reform legislation and the implementation of that.

I have to say that, although their sense of time and mind is slightly different, they make a considerable effort to get things done very quickly, and they have done an extraordinary job in circumstances where it may be the case that they have had unreasonable time lines—some would say that, anyway—imposed on them. They have done an extraordinary job anyway, and I would like to put on record my appreciation for them and their team and the great work they have done in supporting what is I think a very significant economic reform for the state, which should bring greater certainty, greater transparency and be quite competitive for investment opportunities.

Can I also say that, before we came formally into this session, I spoke briefly to the member for Goyder. I just want to indicate to the Chair that the member for Goyder does not think he needs to speak to the West Beach Trust or the Cemeteries Authority, and we have agreed to discharge them so that they do not sit here listening to what for them might not be very exciting conversations. I am happy, in the time that would otherwise have been allocated to them, for the member for Goyder to ask questions in other areas, if that is suitable.

The CHAIR: Just to clarify, the overall timetable has not changed.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Yes, I do not wish to change the timetable.

The CHAIR: So, we replace the Cemeteries Authority with extra questions on planning.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Mind you, if the member for Goyder wants to finish a bit earlier, that is fine, too, because we can go off and have a sandwich or even something better—we might even have a hot meal—but, if he wants to take up the full time, then the mere fact that the others are not here is fine.

The CHAIR: Okay, thank you.

Mr GRIFFITHS: Can I just clarify the point that the Cemeteries Authority were not asked to give evidence not because I did not need to ask some questions. I just want to state that, as a former member of the Cemeteries and Crematoria Association of South Australia, and indeed a curator of cemeteries, I have a great interest in it, but there are very few references actually in the budget paper for it, so I can pursue the information I require at another opportunity.

The Hon. A. PICCOLO: It is buried deep in the budget.

Mr GRIFFITHS: There are two lines, so it is rather hard to find. All of the questions will relate to just two pages also, which are Budget Paper 4, Volume 4, pages 81 and 82, but it is important for anyone listening to this to understand the significance of what is contained within the outcomes in the last year, what the highlights are and what the targets will be in the next year also.

As a person who, with the minister, his staff and many other members who sit in this chamber, was involved in the lengthy debate that occurred with the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Bill, I have a great appreciation for the importance and significance of it, and the implementation of it. I assume that the minister's question about the time frames that are in place and the difference he has with members of his staff relate to that five-year period still being highlighted instead of the much shorter time frame that he, I and many others would probably like to see occur.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: It is not just that. I would like to think if we have an idea on Monday, we could have a bill by Thursday and we could have it into parliament by the following Tuesday. For some reason that appears to be difficult. The reason is because you have to do a whole bunch of stuff to make that happen, which slows me down, but they are very polite, they keep telling me, 'You know you cannot do that; it will take longer than that,' and whatever. I do have a sense of urgency about all of these things. It is not just that five-year timeline, it is how quickly we can get bills into parliament, how quickly we can get change actually rolling out on the ground. I am pushing for timelines shorter than that five-year timeline, for most of it. It might be of some interest if I could, perhaps, just give a very quick overview of the implementation. Would that be of any value or not?

Mr GRIFFITHS: Not for me but for others that might read it. Unless you are actually talking about the targets that you are setting for the next 12 months?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Yes, I can. The planning legislation is going to be switched on at different times and the old legislation switched off at different times, according to how we are getting on with the job. Some things are going to be necessarily sooner in the process than the others. For example, getting on with the establishment and planning commission is a central requirement. Our intention is to get cracking with that pretty much now. As far as that is concerned, for the immediate future what we have got is this: in the rest of this year we have the transitional bill, which I indicated to members before would need to follow the first bill. I am reliably informed that that will be done and dusted by the end of this year. Obviously I would have liked to have got it fixed this week but end of this year seemed good.

Mr GRIFFITHS: September.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: The new planning commission we hope to be in place by March next year. That commission, as the member for Goyder would appreciate, plays such a central role in all the other activities that it is pretty important that it is up and running.

The Community Engagement Charter: we would like the planning commission to actually be getting cracking on that as a very early piece of work. I do not think we can complete that work without the commission being established and ready to go, but I regard that as being a high priority.

The specifications for the planning system: we should be in a position where a rudimentary version of the planning portal is available later this year, but obviously the fully functioning, all-singing, all-dancing planning portal will not be entirely operational until all of the elements that sit behind it have been switched on.

The framework for assessment authorities: these are things like accreditation to professionals, assessment managers, assessment panels and so forth. We would be looking at all of that being sorted out by the middle of 2018.

The planning instruments: again, we are looking at state planning policy, regional plans, planning and design code. I am hopeful we can give all of those a bit of a push as well. That said, we have made a commitment, which I consider to be very important that we stick to, that this rollout has to be done in a collaborative fashion, involving councils, industry associations and interest groups. To that extent, I have a fairly high-level group of industry and council reps that I regularly meet and consult with. I am using that as a high-level reference group, and we are intending, under that, to establish—as indeed the act contemplates—reference groups under the act that will help us deal with particular consultations in relation to particular aspects of the process. It is full steam ahead as far as we are concerned, and I hope to be able to turn as much of this on as soon as possible.

Mr GRIFFITHS: Some of my questions will seek some clarification and some time frames. My first question relates to the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Bill which was passed through both chambers. I have two potential dates for when royal assent was provided: 21 April and 17 May, but when does it come into force?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: That is the point. What is going to happen is that bits of it will come into force at different times. We are sort of decommissioning the old system and commissioning the new one, so there will be a series of simultaneous commissionings and decommissionings. As bits of the old thing are switched off, the corresponding bit of the new one will be turned on. That will roll out in a 'when ready' sort of time frame, but we are looking at about two years, within two years.

Mr GRIFFITHS: If we can just turn to the planning commission, I think you earlier referred to March 2017 for the commission.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Correct.

Mr GRIFFITHS: I note that the current Development Assessment Commission, for example, has been appointed until June 2018—and that is a bit of a side issue—and I understand that you want to have an overlap just in case. Given the importance of the planning commission and the fact that the first stage of the legislation, which was key to getting anything going, is through the parliament, why is there a 12-month delay between the completion of that debate and the appointment of a commission?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: We have to settle a number of the ideas around exactly how the commission is going to be established and how it is going to function, how it is going to be supported. I am leaving a fair bit of time in there for recruitment because I have the view that this person is going to be an absolutely critical person and I want to make sure we get the right person and we spend the time we need to. In the best of all possible worlds, between now and the end of the year an ideal person might come out of the woodwork, and, if they do, I will grab them. That timeline anticipates that there might be a recruitment process that takes a bit of time, perhaps advertising or whatever. This role is one that is an absolutely pivotal position.

Mr GRIFFITHS: I understand that, minister. Does that mean that there will be a combination: potential headhunting opportunities where you target somebody, or if someone who you believe has the skills and qualifications required volunteers their services to you, or advertising for it? Will it be a mixture of all three? It just depends on what occurs, does it?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I am open to all of that. We intend, I gather, to start advertising next month for people to put their hands up. I cannot emphasise enough, though, just how important it is to get a quality candidate.

Mr GRIFFITHS: I agree. Given the importance you place upon the position, is that an interview process that you intend to be a part of?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I do not know that I am professionally competent to be part of a primary interviewing panel. I am not a planner and I do not profess to be aware of the esoterica of the bureaucracy, otherwise I would not keep insisting on these crazy time lines. But I would obviously be very interested in the process and I would expect to receive a report from a competent interview panel which would say, 'We assessed the candidates as having these strengths and these weaknesses.' I do not think it would add much value for me to be an interviewer.

Mr GRIFFITHS: And I respect the fact that that would be unusual if it were to occur.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Yes, you are quite right. Ultimately, the recommendation comes from me to the Governor, but I will be relying on having a pretty solid panel of people who can assess the capabilities of a person. Also, the other thing is that a lot of this is going to come down to leadership and whether or not the person concerned has a demonstrated capacity for leadership and inspiring other people around them. These things are easy to describe but difficult to assess.

Mr GRIFFITHS: To identify, certainly. Just on a point of clarification: the commissioner will be appointed first and then the commissioner will be part of the total commission appointees, the individual panels?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Yes, that is the idea. The idea is, once we have this person there, I want that person then to be a partner in all the decisions we make, so that that person does not get the idea that they have been brought in and then had a whole bunch of stuff inflicted on them. They should be brought in and be in a position where they are actually intimately involved in what we do.

Mr GRIFFITHS: But appointments of all those people will be by March 2017?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: That would be the plan, yes.

Mr GRIFFITHS: In your introductory notes, you referred to the appointment of assessment panels in the middle of 2018. What about design codes?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Good point. I regard the design code and the public engagement charter as being two of the highly important elements of this. We have already been doing some work on a really rough crash-dummy version of what a design code might look like, on the understanding that it is only as a way of saying, 'It might look like this,' without any sense that that is what it has to look like in the end. I think we need to actually consult extensively about that design code. Basically, in terms of the public perception, this legislation has a very particular set of enthusiastic observers in the building and construction industry and the development industry—

Mr GRIFFITHS: It does, and in the community in this area, too, to be fair. There was a lot of community feedback on this.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Yes. It has the community, which is looking at it from a different perspective sometimes. There are two bits that the community, I think, are entitled to be very interested in, and must be interested in. One is the community engagement charter which, as all of us know, from the many hours we spent debating this, is intended to engage the community at the front end in the formulation of development policy for their community. That is really important and I think that has to be highly visible to people.

The other bit is the design code. Most people who complain about development ultimately are complaining about horrible design or inappropriate design for context. My intention—and I know the member for Goyder and I have discussed this before—is that the design code should be a fairly high-level document. It is not like, 'All bricks must be cream and all windows must be blue,' or that sort of thing. It is a high-level thing about design principles.

The idea would be that those things are so embedded in this planning system that a natural inquiry in respect of each development application will be: how does that development application respond to the set of principles which are universal principles with which all development should be complying? That is the elevated level it is supposed to get to. It is fundamental.

Mr GRIFFITHS: I agree, and it demonstrates the need for consultation to ensure you have the right guidelines in place.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Absolutely.

Mr GRIFFITHS: Additionally, on the charter for community engagement, is it a matter of determining what it is or will you consult on what the community engagement model will actually be? And, if you do, what are your plans for how to consult on what the community engagement charter will be?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: It is a chicken-and-egg thing, isn't it, to some extent?

Mr GRIFFITHS: It is.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I can start off with what I had in mind. I did not want it to be prescriptive. In other words, I do not want the community engagement charter to look like, 'On day 1, a letter will be sent, and on day 14, the time for responding to the letter expires. We will clear the letterbox on day 21 and throw it all in the bin on day 22.' That is not what I had in mind. I had in mind a more performance-based set of engagement criteria, rather than prescriptive-based.

That is easier to say than to do. I think what we will wind up doing is coming up with a set of alternative principles or models for that non-prescriptive consultation model. We will then take those out as best we can, through local government and other fora, to try to get some feedback. Ultimately, we will then get to the point where we have a draft model engagement thing which we would then consult on. I know that is laborious and time consuming, but I think if we are going to get community buy-in, we have to go through that process.

Mr GRIFFITHS: I agree that it is necessary, too. Community support for planning and development models is important, I believe, otherwise we will all be bombarded by complaints.

Mr SPEIRS: Can I ask for a quick clarification on the community engagement framework? Do you intend for it to have the gravity that, if a planning proposal did not follow the guidelines set out there, they could be challenged? Is it simply an advisory framework or is it significant enough that an application could end up in the ERD Court because they did not follow it?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: That is a very good question and can I answer it this way, at the moment the community becomes engaged at the very end of the process which is the assessment of the garage next door to them. We are moving this engagement to the planning policy for the precinct in which you live which states whether or not that garage can be built at all. That is the first point. It is not about the assessment: it is about the policy.

The second point is that, to make this community engagement thing work, we have to actually have some performance criteria which must be achieved by the engagement before the engagement phase can be concluded. Here is where it gets complicated because if you have gone for the old-fashioned prescriptive engagement process—you can tick off on your calendar that I sent the letter last week, I had a public meeting this week, the submissions close next week and then I can ignore them—that is easy in terms of proving that you have gone through the steps.

One of the challenges we will have here is to actually formulate within the charter a reasonably robust assessment of whether the charter has achieved a threshold of engagement, and I do not underestimate the difficulty of doing that.

Mr GRIFFITHS: That is a key difference with the current system versus the future system too on how it is going to work. However, given that the charter is one of the early responsibilities of the commission, are you setting in place a time commitment in the charter that the commission has to meet for a charter to be confirmed?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: It does not mean that we cannot do preliminary work before the commission is up and running—and we will be and we are—but we will not have a finalised charter product before the commission is in place. We would basically hand over our work to the commission and say, 'Look, by the way, here is something we prepared earlier' and give it to them and say, 'You run with it and take it wherever you want.'

Mr GRIFFITHS: I understand. Can we check on the resources that are required for its implementation? I know that, in an earlier briefing to the ERD Committee, you referred to 12 new staff who had been engaged in a relatively short period of time, but when I look at the budget papers and the FTEs as at the 2015-16 and the estimated result of 87.3 and 2016-17 is 87.3, is that an accurate figure? I would have presumed that there would be more bodies or people associated with doing this work. I apologise, it is 134.7. I was looking at the wrong page. It is 134.7 down to 130.9, so we actually lost people.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Can I get back to you on that one? I will check that out. I know that, according to my advice, we have employed seven people recently, so there are new people coming on. I think I will need to get you more information on this, but, as a general proposition, as I am understanding it, within the DPTI budget the administrative support for the planning aspect of DPTI is being recorded for budget purposes predominantly in another bit of the budget papers for DPTI. So what appears to be a reduction in staff is actually having more planning people, but less admin people.

Mr GRIFFITHS: Minister, as part of your detailed response you will provide me, could you just highlight over the course of 2016-17 how many more people will be employed to be involved in this?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Yes, understood.

Mr GRIFFITHS: Just on the e-planning system that is going to be in place, I particularly note there is a cost component, and that is in the budget papers, that has been reported upon. The budget papers also reflect upon a council levy, and also an increase in development fees. Are you able to provide me with a breakdown of that across the future years of what that will be?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: You want it over the forward estimates?

Mr GRIFFITHS: Yes.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I will have to get you that. I do not think we have that. I have how the money is being spent over the five years, but you are asking how other contributions have been collected.

Mr GRIFFITHS: For example, the Local Government Association were not advised of this and they are rather interested about what the cost impact is going to be upon member councils. I understand an increase in fees depends on the number of applications that come in, I understand that; but when you talk about a levy component, there must be some structure that is in place or proposed for that.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I think I had better get you a more comprehensive answer, but I have been advised that inasmuch as we are talking about local government, there had been communication with them. There was a flat fee of $4,000 applicable to councils. I will get further information because I understand your question and I want to make sure we give a full answer.

Mr GRIFFITHS: They did not indicate the $4,000 per council fee to me. How long is that intended to be in place for? It comes back to the basis of all these questions about the financial matters: is this intended to be a full cost recovery? Is the government advancing funds on the basis of introducing e-portals or e-planning on the intention to recover all of that over a period of time? If so, how long?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Yes. The intention is that it does recover its cost. I am advised that there is a 13-year period for recovery.

Mr GRIFFITHS: Just to be sure, is the government accepting the lost interest component of that cost, or is it intending to recover what the interest on the funds expended at the start would be too?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I would have to check.

Mr GRIFFITHS: That is just an accounting treatment, that is all.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Accounting is quite mysterious, I know.

Mr GRIFFITHS: I note also that the Local Government Association, as part of its pre-budget submission, requested support for training requirements for staff. I have a figure of something like $300,000. Is there a provision in the budget to assist with that, or is that the responsibility of individual councils?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I am advised that the department will be doing both training and secondment of council people into work with the department on these projects. I do not know that there is a formal training budget as such, but there is a notion of people being brought in and engaged with the process. The budget for training and development, which I would assume picks up all of this, has $180,000 in 2016-17.

Mr GRIFFITHS: So it is not just within your own staff, that is externally also?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: External as well. Then $45,900 in 2017-18, $46,818 in 2018-19, and $47,754 in 2019-20.

Mr GRIFFITHS: Minister, in relation to the application costs and the potential for them to increase, I am aware that you have a high-level group of which some components of the development industry are associated in the implementation of this. Have they been briefed on what the increase in the development application cost will be, and do they support it?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I do not believe we have got into the nitty-gritty with those people yet. We have talked to them in general terms. I think they were all of an understanding of the cost recovery model, but it may not be that, at this point in time, we have gone down to that level of detail. It would not be turned on until 12 July 2018 anyway.

Mr GRIFFITHS: Yes, I know there will be an implementation period, I understand that, but the position put to me is that any additional costs associated with development—

The Hon. J.R. RAU: It would be my intention that we do talk to them, obviously. The answer is we will be talking to them, yes.

Mr GRIFFITHS: A different question area now, minister, the environment and food protection area, which we have a bit of a difference of opinion on about the implementation of it. I am advised that DPTI has written to, I believe, 35 landholders who have a right attached to a rural living at the moment within that environment and food protection area. I am wondering if it is possible to provide me with the names of those property owners because, as I understand it, there is a two-year transition period upon which a right continues to remain but then will be lost. Is that correct?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I do not know about rural living and I certainly do not know about whether particular people have been written to. I will try to find that out. In general terms, there was a recognition that within the EFPA there may already be some allotments (not many, but a few) which have already been divided into relatively small sized pieces and have not yet taken advantage of the existing development rights attached to that property. It was thought that it would be unfair to remove those development opportunities from those people without notice.

What was decided was that those people should have the opportunity to have a period of grace to determine whether they wanted to develop their property or not, or whether they wanted to sell their property to a third party with the knowledge that the third party would have a window of opportunity or not. My assumption is that your question is about the relatively few people who are affected by that particular—and it is from commencement, yes, it is not from the date of the passage of the legislation.

Mr GRIFFITHS: That is an important point to qualify. I was going to try to get some clarification on that. Much of the value attached to a parcel of land is the ability to use it in a particular way. It reflects considerably on what you are able to do there, so I am pleased that there is at least an opportunity on that. As an extension of that—and some of it, I believe, is within the EFPA area but it also goes beyond that, where the interaction between agricultural uses is challenging sometimes—they have a conflict on how they are managed, and you have been aware of discussions and I am also. Is work being done to actually progress the challenge of trying to put a fix in place for that?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Yes, there is. This is one of those contested points of policy because you have new owners versus established owners, you have new use versus old use, you have rural versus urban, and you have the question as to whether the appropriate management vehicle lies within primary industries or whether it lies within planning and if it does lie within planning, planning is not equipped to make the policy decisions about the appropriate responses because that skill lies within primary industries.

A classic example is: I am growing grapes, you are growing wheat; we have an adjoining property; you want to spray your property for your purposes, I want to spray mine for mine; the stuff I spray on mine is really good for mine and really bad for yours, and vice versa; what do we do about that if we want to actually develop up to our fence lines?

Mr GRIFFITHS: You are well briefed minister, I must say. That is the exact example that has been posed to us many times.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: That is one situation; and another situation is that you have historically a use like grazing on one lot of land and you have, say, vines on the other, a new purchaser arrives on the grazing land and wants to put something else on there which is still horticulture, agriculture or whatever but a different variety, which has its own completely unique management regime and which then impacts on you. So, we get into buffer zones and a whole bunch of conversations.

My view is that, ultimately, once the public policy about that, which is essentially a PIRSA conversation, has been resolved, it might be that planning might be able to play some part in the notification. There is an interagency working group looking at this problem, but for those who are interested in it I just want to make really clear that those people who are involved in planning, and I, are not the experts in agricultural farm compatibility or whatever—that is not our skill set. So, we need a multiagency approach. Whether or not ultimately the instrument to deliver that policy sits somewhere in a planning code or something is a debate for the future—it may do.

But, even if it does, I can say without any fear of being wrong, which I normally cannot do but I can on this particular topic, that we will still be confronted with the status quo the moment the new regime comes in, and future people. It is one thing to regulate future people, fairly or unfairly, by requiring them to have a buffer that they previously did not have, or whatever it might be, but to retrofit these solutions on existing problems will be extraordinarily complicated, I think.

Mr GRIFFITHS: And I agree that you cannot do it that way, but the dilemma is that, because of the management controls that have to be in place and the conflicts that occur, it has put some people in serious debt about what they can do, and for them there has been a desire to look at other opportunities to get themselves out of that with realignment of boundaries and an ability to develop smaller properties, and all that sort of stuff. It is a great dilemma, but I urge, from your position, minister, that you urge PIRSA to do its work quickly, because the future fix I believe comes from planning principals. So, ensure that it is done right.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I cannot emphasise enough: the people who are next to me and behind me here are absolutely brilliant at planning policy in as much as what is the need for land parcels for urban development in this precinct of the city, etc., but they are not real good on grape vines and apricot trees—that is not their long suit. We need the experts on that to put in.

Mr GRIFFITHS: I refer to the 30-year plan review. I noted in the estimates of last year that you referred to the fact that the consultation would commence later in 2015, were I believe your exact words, whereas a review of the website yesterday highlighted it starting next month, I believe.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: This is another one of those things that I wanted done next Tuesday about two years ago, and as usual I underestimate the amount of work involved in these things. There has been a lot of work, a lot of consultation in this. We have got to the point where we are very close to having a document that we can put out there for final conversation. It is very close, like I mean weeks, isn't it?

Ms SMITH: It is weeks.

Mr GRIFFITHS: So, it is on the record now, Sally.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: How many weeks?

Ms SMITH: Mid to late August.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: There you are.

Mr GRIFFITHS: Can I get a briefing before it opens then? I have a nod also on the record.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: And we have been having targeted consultations with a whole group of people, including local government. The idea is that the new document will come out, and that will be our draft 30-year plan revision, and as we heard, it is going to come out in weeks, and then there will be a conversation about that which then will be settled. That document then becomes an element which underpins the new planning regime, because it is one of those state strategic planning principles.

I can, however, give you a few little teasers about what might be coming. The 2010 document made a whole bunch of assumptions. Those assumptions were, to varying degrees, informed assumptions, but they were, nevertheless, assumptions, as they had to be. We now have had the opportunity of observing actual behaviour and being able to map divergence of actual behaviour from assumptions underpinning the 2010 document. I will give you just a few examples of how there has been a divergence.

The 2010 document envisaged the consumption of 400 hectares of land per year. We have seen 320 hectares, that is the average over the five years, and at the present time it is around 200. So, we have had well below the 400, with trending down, significantly down, to the point where presently we are consuming about half of that.

Secondly, in terms of the yields, the assumptions in 2010 were that we would get 10 dwellings per hectare. The average, since that time, has been between 11 and 14 per hectare, with some areas, like Mawson Lakes, getting up to 47 per hectare. Of course, as our infill policy starts to gather a bit of steam, you would expect to see those actual dwelling yields continue to rise, certainly in parts of the city.

In terms of population, the anticipated population was 560,000; the actual is 545,000. That means that the number of dwellings required, under the assumptions in the original document, was 258,000 by 2036. That is now 248,000 by 2045. So, you can see that the demand for dwellings is coming down, compared with the assumptions. The uptake of land is coming down, compared with assumptions. The yield per hectare is going up, compared with assumptions.

In terms of dwellings constructed, there was an assumption that there would be 8,500 constructed. Last year there were 7,819, which is not too far off, but not bad. The five-year average is—sorry, start again. 7,420. The average construction estimates are not right either. The other thing we need to also take into account is that we now have 62 per cent of households that are one or two person households, and that is a growing number as a percentage of overall household formations, but three-bedroom homes account for 72 per cent of the housing stock.

You can see that there is quite a significant mismatch between housing formation requirements, that is one to two person households, and the housing stock, which is 72 per cent three-bedroom properties. They are just a few of the things which are going to be illustrated in the context of the revised plan to demonstrate that things are changing.

Mr GRIFFITHS: Any reduction in numbers concerns me, and it must you also, because it impacts upon the economy—

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Yes.

Mr GRIFFITHS: —and the vitality and strength of it. Certainly from a development industry perspective, while you have stated the five-year average, and it is close to that, as I understand it, the 2010 or 2011 projections were of 10,100 homes per year?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: That is not my information. I think you will find that the 2010 document had a series of ranges, and they usually plump for the higher end range. There are things about demolitions and replacements being included, or not, as well.

Mr GRIFFITHS: So we are talking about net, not gross.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Yes. I was pleased to see recently that our performance in terms of building activity is clicking up here in South Australia. We are going to see a period of ups and downs in this whole thing, but at the moment it looks like we are moving into a reasonably positive space.

Mr GRIFFITHS: I think all of us in this room will hope for more than what the figures project anyway, but can I just clarify? As I understand it, there is an intention to have 15 years' of land available for development to be zoned in such a way or ready to go.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I think the legislation requires the planning commission to commence an investigation if we get below a 15-year land supply, so there is an automatic trigger in there. It is not up to the minister: it will happen.

Mr GRIFFITHS: I understand that but, given the greater density of homes per hectare, as you have referred to, minister, does that mean there will not be land that is currently zoned residential that will be removed from that and put as deferred urban, for example, or anything like that?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: No.

Mr GRIFFITHS: It will remain as it is, okay.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Let's say, in 2010, we had 20 years' worth of land rezoned, and let's assume none of that land was consumed between 2010 and now. What it will mean is, given the size of the house, the consumption rates, the densities and all of those other things, that 20 years' of land, without being touched, might turn into 32 years' of land because the consumption rates have changed. So, that is not a static number: that is a product of consumption, size of property, density and a whole bunch of other considerations.

Mr GRIFFITHS: I understand that, minister, but do you go beyond looking at the simple numbers to actually look at locality and opportunity in different areas also?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: To a degree.

Mr GRIFFITHS: I do not want to see any particular part disadvantaged. As you said, for some people, if they had to move from the south, it would be like moving interstate for them, and equally from the north also, so there has to still be that chance. So, does that become part of the deliberations?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Yes, it does, but let's just talk on that for a moment. There is quite a bit of rezoned land in the south presently. There is not as much there or as much ever going to be there as there can be and is in the north—that is a function of geography, the Hills face zone and various other things—but there is plenty of opportunity down south for there to be higher density, so that people could still live there.

By higher density, I do not mean skyscrapers, but I mean townhouses or various other things: maybe two, three or four-storey properties near the beach and places like that where people find it desirable to live, and also around the major centres there like Noarlunga where you have large shopping complexes and good public transport linkages. I do not think we are at any risk of there being nowhere for people to live. It just might be that the housing choices or the options are different from one part of the city to another.

Mr GRIFFITHS: I just wanted to get the clarification because I think we both believe it is important for opportunity to exist in multiple areas. Can I just check then on the money that has been spent so far on the 30-year plan review because I am aware that, in a previous budget, I think in DPTI there was $1 million from the Planning and Development Fund for work to have occurred? Can the minister confirm what the expenditure was in 2015-16, and if all the rest of the funds will be expended in 2016-17?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I am informed that it is largely internal staff time, so the cost is not easily extracted, but we will see if there are any consultancies that are explicitly attached to this. Obviously, a number of staff hours of many staff have been engaged in this, but we will check and see whether there is any external work.

Mr GRIFFITHS: With the North Terrace tram extension announcement, and the possibility or probability of that going to different areas into the future because you are doing a 30-year plan, will the 30-year plan highlight time frame expectations for that sort of infrastructure development?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: It will not give you time line expectations for that because, to answer that question, you need to look at the other fundamental policy document, which is the Integrated Transport and Land Use Plan. That Integrated Transport and Land Use Plan has always contemplated that there will be a menu of options, including electrification to Gawler, Strzelecki Track, tram extensions and such like. As and when funding became available, and some of this may become, as has indeed been shown to be, a question of the preference of the federal government or federal minister of the day as to whether they like rail or road, those things will be accelerated or not according to availability.

So, we could not make the 30-year plan hostage to things over which we have no possible control. The plan is at a more general level to say that we acknowledge that these forms of transport are likely in the future to be going in certain places. What does that mean in terms of planning policy?

Mr GRIFFITHS: Minister, as an extension of the 30-year plan, but from the regional areas perspective, and I know you referred earlier to the state planning strategy—for example, I can quote the Yorke Peninsula regional plan is 2007—is there also a program in place for the update of all of those? I have a date: Mid North is 2011, Far North was 2010.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: That is a good question. There is a lot of talk about Adelaide, but it is not the whole place, is it?

Mr GRIFFITHS: Thank goodness.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: There is some compilation going on with—I am sure you know Lisa from the LGA. The idea is that we have a two-year program commencing at the end of this year or beginning of next year, in conjunction with the LGA, to transition all of those regional plans and prepare new ones over a period of about two years, starting at the end of this year or beginning of next year. Can I say that it is really helpful, potentially, for areas like Yorke Peninsula, where there is a real opportunity, I think, for a regional local government voice, forum or congregation, as there is in the South-East with the SELGA group and as there is on Eyre Peninsula.

I would encourage those areas that want to accelerate their opportunity to be dealt with in the queue of people who might be lined up there. The more interest and excitement they generate themselves about that and the more they are prepared to partner with the department, the more quickly will be able to accelerate them. This is very much the early bird gets the worm, eager beaver—

Mr GRIFFITHS: So be quick and shout loudly that you want to do it, yes.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: And be prepared to put some of your own grunt behind it.

Mr GRIFFITHS: Absolutely.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: If you can maximise your capacity to offer assistance by actually working with adjoining councils, by pooling your efforts, the more the better. The new legislation also does attempt to facilitate voluntary regional approaches to things. We have shied away from the compulsory amalgamation thing. We have tried to make that legislation extremely attractive for regional collaboration between local government bodies.

Mr GRIFFITHS: The final question on the 30-year plan is: because it represents an urban uplift opportunity in many ways, is there dialogue occurring with the development industry about that so that they are aware and from their membership base they know what their future opportunities are? What level of consultation occurs with them?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: We have kept them involved in all of these consultation sessions about the 30-year plan. I have to say that we are approaching this whole planning reform thing on a partnership basis with the development industry and local government. We all recognise that we have to work together to make this thing really deliver the positive outcomes it needs to.

Mr GRIFFITHS: If I can ask a regional-based planning question. It is about the character preservation zones in McLaren Vale and the Barossa Valley, and the legislation that was put through. I also understand that a review was to take place in five years. Is that scheduled to occur during this financial year?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I would have to check. To some extent, things have been made a little more complicated for those two regions because they are now doubly protected.

Mr GRIFFITHS: They are.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: They are very, very protected.

Mr GRIFFITHS: Just on that, is there an intention, from your point of view, to look at any other areas of the state?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: At this stage—

Mr GRIFFITHS: For the legislation opportunity, not the EFPA but other character preservation areas.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: At this stage, no, because my concern has always been that the biggest threat to our environment and food production areas is likely to be unrestrained urban sprawl, and there is only one part of the state that has any possibility of exhibiting that behaviour, and that is the City of Adelaide. We are also obviously placed in a very high rainfall part of the state where the potential for agriculture and horticulture and all sorts of other activity is significant. We are not just dealing with the fact that it is a place where lots of people potentially could sprawl out and consume land, it is actually quality land with decent rainfall that could actually be feeding us.

Once we managed to get the EFPA in, it did two things: it secured the Hills Face Zone, going from just a policy proposition to something which has a statutory base, and it also put a cap on the north-western element of the city by just drawing that line along the Gawler River basically to the sea. I do not see any other areas of the state being at risk of that sort of unrestrained development pressure.

The EFPA, as you might recall, is a buffer zone of about 50 ks or thereabouts extending from the end of the metropolitan rezoned area. The reason it goes that far is to stop the towns in that space becoming the targets of unrestrained growth themselves. Otherwise what we would do is we would put a stopper on people crossing the road in Willunga and building houses on one side of the road but we would allow the township of Willunga to expand uncontrollably to consume it from the other direction, for instance.

It might turn out at some point in the medium to longer term future that that buffer zone that the EFPA has around the metropolitan area is not thick enough, but I think we have plenty of time to worry about that. I do not see there being any other part of the state where this is a problem. That said, again, if somebody could come to me and say, 'We've got either high heritage value or high agricultural value here and it's being threatened by some other thing' and that other thing might be industrial activity or it might be inappropriate farming or it might be any number of things, obviously we would look at it.

Mr GRIFFITHS: The other side of the argument about the EFPA is that it prevents the growth of those communities beyond the current town boundary. I know this up for review at a later time; I understand that. I do have a question on—

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Hang on, just on that one, you must also understand that most of those town boundaries are a larger footprint than the existing built areas of those towns.

Mr GRIFFITHS: Yes, I understand.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: And it also assumes that those towns will never ever change the method of—

Mr GRIFFITHS: Of occupancy.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: —occupancy that they presently have. In the wonderful electorate of Schubert even, I have noticed that there are townhouses in some parts or two-storey dwellings that look slightly denser than the 800 or 900 square metre blocks which might be the typical—

Mr KNOLL: You cut those out. The latest one only had 500.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: That is the council; that is not me.

Mr KNOLL: No, it was not; it was you.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: There are always opportunities for growth in those towns. If it got to a point where a town was literally being strangled by the EFPA, or by something, that is why the commission is there. A town in that situation would go to the commission and say, 'Look, we've got all sorts of trouble here. Can you help us, please?'

Mr GRIFFITHS: My remaining question is a quick one. I have always had concerns about the Coordinator-General and the $3 million threshold for applications. I note that, by virtue of regulations for the Port Adelaide Regional Centre Zone—which I believe you brought in in April last year—you have created a subcommittee of the DAC that will consider applications above $3 million in Port Adelaide. Why have you enabled proposals to be considered at two dollar-based levels?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: The answer to that is that it is a bit like what we have done in the City of Adelaide. That enables us to have a different approval process, but an approval process that involves design review. It also changes the role of the council in relation to that, but the council does have a representative on that body. It is just that the body is not the council DAC.

The CHAIR: There being no further questions, I declare that the examination of the proposed payments be adjourned until tomorrow. Thank you, Attorney, and thank you to your advisers. We are now looking at ReturnToWorkSA.