Urban Development

The SPEAKER (14:52): Minister, a supplementary: has the minimum sill height been raised from 1.5 metres to 1.7 as part of this initiative?

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—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) (14:52): As usual, Mr Speaker, you ask a very, very good question and I will have to take that one on notice, but I can say this. One of the things that we have discovered through this process is that some people who develop properties are very clever at utilising a set of prescriptive rules to achieve what they want, which somehow doesn't seem to achieve what the prescriptive rule was intended to achieve in the first place, if that's not completely double-dutch.

What we are trying to do with the design guidelines is to have them more focused on the outcome. For example, if you are talking about overlooking, rather than saying, 'All overlooking problems will be solved by having a balcony that is 1.7,' for example, we would rather say, 'The requirement is that from your balcony you cannot look over your neighbour's backyard,' for instance. That might mean in your particular street that's a 1.7-metre balcony; it might mean in someone else's that it's 1.9, depending on the proximity of the properties and so forth. We are looking to get performance orientated design guidelines—

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Oh, what a shame.