Planning and Development

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:17): My question is to the Attorney-General in her capacity as Minister for Planning. How can local communities become more involved in the planning process without any legitimate appeal rights and very little input allowed on development applications affecting particularly traffic and the amenity of their residential areas?

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: Standing Order 97: that question clearly contained substantial argument.

The SPEAKER: I will give the member the opportunity to rephrase, but I'm not sure necessarily that it did.

Ms BEDFORD: How can communities become more involved in the planning process?

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Planning and Local Government) (15:17): I welcome the question. As the fairly newly minted planning minister, I have loved this role and it has been refreshing to see one of the benefits of the PDI Act and the reform that followed the repeal of the Development Act. It was one on which I had strongly agreed with the former Attorney-General and Minister for Planning, and that is that it is too late to expect the people to look at the amenity within their district, township or suburb, at the time of an application for a development on a site—far too late.

What was really important was that whatever the new reform development law should do, it would be to allow the people to have a say at the time of the planning of the area. That is what we now call code amendments after the whole area has been zoned, a code amendment to change an area. Often, they used to be called DPAs, in short planning language, which were very commonly undertaken by councils.

The code amendment process enables the councils, as they have always done, to develop and consider—in consultation with their own community—the advance of a proposal, a code amendment, or in fact an individual developer can do that. What is critical is that the community have the opportunity, in a public consultation process, to make a decision about what is going to go on in that area, what are the rules going to be—not too late, when there's suddenly a six or a 10-storey building going on it.

I am very pleased about that initiative. In introducing it, one area which I think needed improvement which I have required now occur, is that at the time any application comes in—two of these code amendments have to come to my office apparently, to have the approval for the council to go out or the developer to go out—they have to publish at the time, to get that approval, their program of public consultation: meetings, anticipated dates, a format medium of which they are going to undertake that consultation process.

If there was any weakness in this new system, it is that there would be an announcement to the extent that somebody would find out about it, they would talk to their neighbours about it: 'What's going on? Have you heard anything about this?' 'No, I don't know anything about it. Go online.' We now have an electronic portal and you can keep an eye on everything happening right in your own street if you want to. Every day you can go into it and you can check what's happening.

An honourable member: Do people do that?

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: They do. There are people who are sitting at home doing it right now. That's something that's a great initiative, and I am very pleased that that has been undertaken. So, yes, there is. What I frequently get are calls from media or calls from people who say, 'I'm really cross about this development on such and such.' I say, 'Well, that was under the old Development Act.' So we did need significant reforms, and they are now in place as of 19 March, so I have welcomed that.

Where I find it a bit curious is this. Tea Tree Gully council, for example, last night made a decision that they were going to progress a 4,000 population—I think it's something like 1,500 homes—in their council district. There has already been a bit of public outcry about it. They decided that they are going to progress it. They are going to go through a public consultation period, and I applaud that. There are various ways by which people can become involved in both the planning of the region in which they live or work and, in addition to that, at the time of the proposed individual development. I urge the public of South Australia to stay involved in their community and the amenity around it.

The SPEAKER: Before members depart the chamber, I note that the crossbenchers only had three questions today. It may be that a member of the crossbench would wish to move to extend question time if an additional two questions might be asked, but that would be a matter for the chamber. So I invite a member of the crossbench to address me on that subject, if they wish. No further questions.