Planning and Development Applications

Mr PISONI (Unley) (14:37): My question is to the Minister for Planning. What were the circumstances for the minister's decision to declare specific developments for retirement villages, residential aged care and any associated development as assessable outside of local DPAs?

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) (14:37): I thank the member for Unley for this question. It is an interesting question. First of all, just to clarify a matter about what has and what has not happened, the declaration of a major project does not mean that there has been an approval for anything. What it means is that there has been a particular process engaged for the assessment of a proposal or, in this case, a class of proposal. That's the first thing.

Therefore, any of the commentary or discussion that has occurred recently in the media to the effect that there has been an approval by me, or by the government or somebody else, for certain types of developments is not true. There has been no approval for anything. All that has been done is that there has been an indication that a particular class of development would not be placed in the noncomplying category for development. If I can explain that briefly, under the Development Act as it presently stands you can have zoning that explicitly prohibits or does not permit certain activities.

To pick an extreme example, an abattoir would be a prohibited activity in a residential area, for example. It would not be a merit-assessed activity. It would be a prohibited activity, and I am sure that everyone would agree that that is probably a damn good idea, but there are other things, such as residential care facilities for people who do want to age in the communities in which they live, which is an entirely reasonable aspiration.

Because the development and thinking about the way we accommodate older citizens have changed a lot over recent years, these particular types of development were never really contemplated when the existing zoning criteria, which are now embedded in the zoning of virtually all metropolitan and regional councils, were established. It is not so much that the communities there think that having aged care is a bad idea: it is the fact that, in the form aged care is presently presenting itself as an opportunity both for citizens to find a decent way to be accommodated as they get older and for employment generation, it was not really contemplated in the past and therefore it is absent altogether from the zoning rules, which leads us to the potential problem where there are gaps in the zoning rules.

There is no doubt in my opinion that when the new planning and development legislation comes into effect, there will be zoning criteria that will be sufficiently flexible to contemplate and offer opportunity for this type of development. Unfortunately, short of going back to each individual council zoning and individually changing those zones and going through the whole process—which would not even be completed by the time that whole zoning practice itself became redundant by virtue of the new act coming in—this was the only method by which we could get this conversation happening. Can I just allay the fears of anybody who would be concerned that there has been any approval. There has not. All there has been is permission for a conversation to occur about this type of development.