House of Assembly Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1) 55 1 Parliament of South Australia House of Assembly published Grievance Debate Planning and Design Review Planning and Design Review The Hon. A. PICCOLO House of Assembly Light The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (15:51): Yesterday, the Minister for Planning in a media statement mentioned that there were around 700 submissions to the planning and design law review, including 40 submissions from councils across the state. First of all, I would like to congratulate the minister for undertaking the review and also the panel he assembled to oversee the review. I was not surprised to see that many people make submissions to this review because planning and development is a space that often has a lot of competing interests and it is often contested by different views. It is a vexed area of public policy and getting the balance right is a difficult task. In some ways there are two groups in the area of planning: there are people who are investing for their home or a place to raise their family and it is an integral part of where they live and their communities and then we have the other group of investors, who are people who want to generate an income for themselves and are usually some type of developer. Both groups are investors, so we need robust processes to ensure we get the right outcomes. The objectives of the last round of planning and development reforms were twofold: one was to create certainty in the system—in other words, the assessment process of development where people knew what the rules were and the rules were quite clear for both residents and also investors—and the second part was clarity—in other words, the community understanding what role it played in the development process. That was identified as playing a key role in the preparation of policy development. In other words, the community puts the policies in conjunction with councils and the government puts the policies in place and then you have an independent process to assess applications—two worthy objectives. These objectives were meant to reduce the amount of conflict in the system. Personally, I do not believe we have quite achieved that balance and conflict still exists. I would like to demonstrate that through a case study in my own electorate. Currently, there is a process for a code amendment to change a zone into an employment zone. In itself, it is a difficult thing to explain to people what an employment zone means, but it is essentially a commercial zone. The code amendment has been initiated by a proponent on behalf of a group of investors and there is nothing wrong with that. The role local council has or has not played in the process has raised significant concerns in the community affected by the proposed code amendment. It should be noted that the council is not the final decision-maker and the minister is. The issue that has arisen is about community engagement and consultation about the proposed code amendment. It is clear that the proponent is responsible for all investigations and undertaking community consultation. This will form a part of the report to the minister. The council have argued that they have no role in engaging the views of the community on this matter; in fact, they have gone one step further and stated they are prohibited from engaging the community on the proposed code amendment. They blame the state government for their inability to engage the community on this critical issue. To date, the council has made two decisions on this matter without any engagement with its own community to form its own opinion. Firstly, they have supported the initiation of the process for a code amendment and, more recently, have indicated that if the proponent meets the technical requirements of the code amendment, they will support the change. But no-one seems to be asking the question: is the proposed development in the right location, as distinct from doing the right process? If the council is correct in its interpretation of the law, it raises important issues. When do the community get the opportunity to have their say in the development of policy as the planning reforms had intended? Who speaks on behalf of local residents if not the council? Is a privatised or outsourced engagement process desirable, and does it give residents an effective say? If the council is right, then the law needs to be changed. If the council response to date is wrong, it has effectively left this community without a real voice in this process on what is a very important issue. What redress do the community have for this failure if that is what is found? Now the community has to find their own way through the whole process to ensure that they are heard. While the community consultation undertaken by the proponents is desirable, I do not believe it is sufficient for public policy decisions to be based upon it. In this case, the community feel disempowered by the process to date and it is up to the council to rectify that.