Bills

Planning, Development and Infrastructure (Transparency) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 30 October 2019.)

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL (20:26): I rise on behalf of the Greens to support this bill. It will come as no shock to members, because I have spoken about the State Commission Assessment Panel in this place many times. I am not sure if I am on their Christmas card list, but I am certainly a frequent flyer when it comes to attending meetings of the State Commission Assessment Panel, and I have been critical of that body over a period of years, long before they achieved their new name, back when they were the Development Assessment Commission—way back. I have appeared before the SCAP and its predecessor many times, and I have been very critical of many of their operations.

The bill that the Hon. Clare Scriven has put before us is a very simple reform in relation to SCAP. It requires that body to meet and deliberate in public, as local council development assessment panels do, and also requires that the members who serve on that panel are accredited to the same standard as those who serve on council assessment panels; so it is pretty straightforward.

Whilst I am not proposing to move any amendments to the honourable member's bill, there are a number of other reforms that could equally have been put in here, not the least of which amendments would be to require them to publish more of their materials and to keep those materials available in an archive.

What I am talking about here is that when someone applies for a development approval, the SCAP will usually put the plans and the planning officer's report and all of the supporting documentation on their website, and they will put it on their website for a brief period of time. The day that public consultation ends, they pull those documents off the website, and a snide little comment goes up saying, 'If you want to see these documents, you must go through freedom of information.'

These are documents that were publicly available for download on the SCAP website. The minute that they can hide them, they hide them, and they tell you to go through FOI. That says a lot to me about the culture of that organisation. They do not really welcome community input, they do not provide reasons for the decisions that they make, and that is one of the reasons the Hon. Clare Scriven has moved this bill. Even the Law Society agrees that if you are not providing any reasons for your decision you might as well allow people to sit in and hear the deliberations. It is a very logical position.

The fact that they do not provide reasons for their decision is an insult to those who take the trouble to make written submissions and who take the trouble to turn up to hearings and have their say about the future of development in this state. To then only find out some period of later that it was approved with no reason whatsoever given for that decision, I think is appalling. I support the Hon. Clare Scriven's introduction of this very simple bill, and I look forward to its passage through the Legislative Council tonight.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment) (20:29): I rise on behalf of the government to speak to the Planning, Development and Infrastructure (Transparency) Amendment Bill. As we know, this bill is designed to achieve the following:

1. Require all members of the State Commission Assessment Panel (SCAP) to be accredited professionals.

2. Mandate public access to all SCAP meetings.

3. Require details of all development applications to be published on the SA planning portal within two business days after the application is made.

All three of these measures are unwarranted and, in some cases, fundamentally problematic.

Firstly, a key element of the act is the creation of an accredited professionals' scheme to lift the performance of, and improve confidence in, professionals undertaking functions in the planning system. Accredited professionals are able to undertake assessment functions under regulation, with the intent being to depoliticise decisions at a local level by allowing for objectivity and skills-based assessment.

The State Commission Assessment Panel, or SCAP as it is better known, is appointed by the independent State Planning Commission, members of which are appointed by the Governor. The commission must have the necessary skills and qualifications as set out in the act. All SCAP members are currently accredited under the scheme, though the act provides for additional expertise to be brought in to assess complex matters as required. Given the range of matters SCAP deals with, wider expertise is required from time to time and should not be limited by specificity of the accredited professional scheme only.

Secondly, in regard to public access to SCAP meetings, following an internal review in 2018, the State Planning Commission and the Marshall Liberal government has supported improvements to public access to information and enhanced transparency in the planning system. It was recommended that, with few exceptions, all information before SCAP should be made publicly available before assessment decisions are made. In response to the review, new operating procedures have been established to require all meetings to be open to the public, except for the deliberation and decision-making, which are in camera. Decisions are recorded and minutes are made available to the public online.

Enshrining the operational requirements in legislation in a way more onerous for SCAP than other assessment bodies may be too rigid an approach and may not provide SCAP with the flexibility it needs to operate effectively.

Thirdly, the act seeks to shift the focus of public participation in planning and development up-front to the strategic planning and policy stages of the process, and away from the scrutiny of individual development applications. This is because development applications are assessed against policies which have already undergone extensive public consultation and have been determined to be appropriate for their location and zone.

To require all details for all applications to be published on the portal may in effect make all applications subject to scrutiny and review by anyone. People who are otherwise not entitled to be notified may be able to view plans and make unsolicited representations outside of the current process. This may undermine the spirit of the act and may create a significant burden on assessment authorities. Given the majority of development applications are for dwellings, many home owners might be unhappy to have their house plans published for the whole world to see.

There are some 30,000 to 35,000 development applications every year, with the total number of plan drawings running to hundreds of thousands. The resources required to vet every application to determine what specific plan or plans should or should not be published may be significant. The opposition does not appear to have considered or costed this in their proposal.

The act and regulations enhance online access to information via a central point register for plans to be viewed when a development is publicly notified. This keeps proponents easily up to date with the status of their application and reduces red tape, allowing for the status of applications to be determined without the need to physically attend council offices. Such measures enhance public access to development information while ensuring privacy, security and intellectual property rights are appropriately maintained.

Based on the departmental review of the online application registers in all other states and territories, the best advice is no other Australian jurisdiction allows for online public access to all development application plans. To allow public access to all development application plans would be unprecedented and may also cause conflict with the federal Copyright Act 1968. With those few words, the government will not be supporting the bill as proposed tonight.

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN (20:34): I thank all speakers for their contributions to the debate and I particularly thank SA-Best and Greens MLCs for their indications of support for this bill. This bill will greatly improve the transparency of the SCAP's development assessment processes. Indeed, it will require the SCAP to be subject to the same transparency provisions as already apply to council assessment panels as well as the same professional accreditation standards for its members.

These are important reforms because they are likely to bolster the public's confidence in our state's planning system. As mentioned during the debate on this bill, the experience of council assessment panels has been that when the public is given the opportunity to hear their deliberations, there is a greater understanding and a greater acceptance of their decisions. That is something that has to be positive for the transparency of the planning system.

The Hon. T.J. Stephens interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: The Hon. Mr Stephens, please, giving advice.

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN: Yes, I did, thank you. I thank the Hon. Mr Stephens for his advice; always appreciated. Conspiracy theories, which sometimes surround some development approvals, can be avoided through the opportunity to have access to the documents so that the decision-making process can be more transparent.

I will briefly respond to a couple of the objections raised by the Hon. Mr Ridgway. Firstly, essentially, wider skills are needed on occasion than would be provided through people having the mandated professional accreditation standards. That is a line of argument that has been prosecuted, I understand, by the Urban Development Institute of Australia (SA Branch) but it is not a view shared by the Law Society nor by the LGA SA whose representatives at a building communities forum could not understand why the business of SCAP was qualitatively different from that of council assessment panels.

In fact, representatives of these organisations are of the view that, because the SCAP assesses more complex development applications, the onus on its members to be professionally accredited could be even greater. The government also referred to their existing reforms, which they claim should be sufficient, essentially. Recent experience has revealed that the public's access to development assessment documents considered by SCAP, in addition to public access to meeting proceedings, remains limited; that has been alluded to by some of the speakers in this debate. Public access to SCAP deliberations is also not granted.

An example of the deficiencies of the current arrangements includes one of the processes that was referred to during the debate involving the Australian Walking Company's recent development application for the construction of tourist accommodation dwellings on Kangaroo Island. In that example, development plans were slow to be uploaded to the SCAP's website and the SCAP's deliberations were held in private. Clearly, those objections have been addressed already in this bill. As the Hon. Mr Parnell said, this is quite a simple bill. Therefore, I commend the bill to the chamber and look forward to its swift passage.

Bill read a second time.

Committee Stage

Bill taken through committee without amendment.

Third Reading

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN (20:39): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time and passed.