Question Time

PLANNING SA

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (14:23): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Urban Development and Planning a question about the so-called new-look Planning SA.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: When the current Rann Labor government assumed office in 2002, the department of transport and urban planning (as it was) comprised a number of agencies, including Planning SA and the Office of Local Government. This remained as such until 1 July 2005, when significant changes were made to the department's portfolio structure and the aforementioned agencies were transferred to PIRSA.

A joint press release issued today (and, of course, we have just heard the ministerial statement from the minister) by the Minister for Urban Development and Planning and the Minister for State/Local Government Relations announced a new-look Planning SA which, as it states, integrates several agencies working with local government in a single department to create a department of planning and local government. The Minister for State/Local Government Relations boasted in her media release that the combination of planning and local government under one department will encourage a collaborative and successful working relationship between state and local government.

I remind this council that, throughout the time of the former state Liberal government, those agencies were housed jointly, with a recognition that such relations are fundamental to an efficient planning system. My question to the minister is: as part of this government's $11.9 million commitment to planning reforms, how much of that money is being spent on re-establishing an arrangement that existed under the former Liberal government and was disbanded by his government?

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning, Minister for Small Business) (14:25): There is no cost involved with transferring an agency from one department to another.

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway interjecting:

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: No, nothing could be further from the truth. Under the Liberal Party the department dealing with both planning and local government was buried within the Department of Transport and inevitably it was very much overlooked. That is why the planning review in its most recent report highlighted the fact that one of the changes that should be made was to make Planning SA and those related parts a stand-alone department, and that is what has happened. Local government is a very important part of the planning system. Over 95 per cent of all development application decisions are made by local government, so it is a very important part.

The important thing this government has done is to have a department with Planning SA, with its associated agencies of local government—so important to the planning system—together in one department and not buried within a much larger agency as they were previously, in particular, under the previous government. It is quite different.