Planning and Development Fund

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (14:53): My question is to the Minister for Planning. What explanation can the minister provide for apparently spending, seemingly without statutory authority, more than $10 million collected from developers to support the creation and enhancement of open space by local councils to support delivery of your controversial planning reforms? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Ms BEDFORD: On 18 June, the government made regulations that would authorise expenditure from the Planning and Development Fund on various elements associated with the planning reforms. On 4 and 11 July, articles in The Advertiser pointed out this would take money collected from developers to support creation and enhancement of open space by local councils.

Both the Urban Development Institute and the Local Government Association oppose the regulation. An examination of budget papers for the past two years suggests the government has allocated more than $10 million from the fund without statutory authorisation, which could potentially lead to maladministration of public funds.

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL (Schubert—Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government, Minister for Planning) (14:54): I do thank the member for Florey for that question, but the last part of her question I do think is a massive, massive stretch. These planning reforms, to remind everybody in this chamber, were voted on in 2016 by the former government, so they are not my laws. They are laws that this parliament put in place—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: —and there are those in this chamber—

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: You voted for it.

The SPEAKER: Minister for Education!

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: —who voted for those laws who are now trying to suggest that somehow they didn't.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL: It was always envisaged that part of these reforms were to be paid for out of the Planning and Development Fund. In fact, it is something that has happened over a long period of time. It is not something that is unique to this government, and it is not something that is unique to me as minister.

The reason for that is quite clear, and it is that this new system, the one that almost everybody in this parliament who was here at the time voted for—in fact, I think everybody voted for—is one that is going to deliver a better and more efficient planning system for developers and for the community at large: an e-planning system that is going to deliver 10-day turnaround times on planning decisions for Deemed to Satisfy houses, a planning system that is going to reduce to 20 days instead of some 70 days-plus decision-making time frames for merit decisions, or what we are going to call Performance Best Assessed decisions, which is a massive step forward.

It is an e-planning portal which, instead of every Friday every developer having to ring up every council they've got planning applications in with, trying to find out where they are up to, is actually now having an online platform to get that information straightaway. This system is going to benefit developers as much as anybody else across the state, and so the Planning and Development Fund is an appropriate use of those funds. Yes, there was a regulation that was put in place, but this is an authority that has existed and certainly the fund has been used for this purpose for some time.