PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT REPORT

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (14:38): I have a supplementary question. Is the minister aware of any assumptions that were used to arrive at those calculations?

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning, Minister for Small Business) (14:38): The planning review is the property of the planning reviewers. There is no doubt that, if one streamlines our planning system as recommended by the planning review, there would be very significant savings. Quite clearly, the most significant of those savings will be in the opportunity costs—a reduction in holding costs—relating to land.

We have about 7½ thousand new dwelling applications every year. If the honourable member cares to look at it, the planning review report contained statistics detailing for every single council the average time for development applications. One would presume from those figures that they would have made an estimate about what the cost would be at current interest rates of holding that money if the applications linger in the system.

If it takes six to 12 months, as it has in some cases with some councils to get building approval through, clearly there is an enormous cost to consumers. If you are renting a house for that period of time, there is a cost there and, of course, if you have paid for a block of land, whether you are a developer or an individual wishing to build your own house, you are holding that cost for six to 12 months. If you multiply that by 7½ thousand applications for new dwellings across the state—not that necessarily all of those are on greenfield sites; at least half of them would be—the cost to consumers of that particular process soon involves very large sums of money.

If one is looking at the cost for local government, again, the planning review consultants went into a great deal of detail. In fact, they spent 12 months doing that to make those estimates. Of course, we had consultants do it because it would have been enormously demanding for government to carry out. However, whatever methods they used and whatever queries one might have about them, very significant savings will be made as a result of the introduction of the code. If we can get the code right, we will be able to translate those enormous savings in GSP and in cost to local government, and consumers will be the beneficiary of those reforms.