20 August, 2013
Planning law campaign enters the halls of power
The community campaign to convince the government to withdraw or substantially amend its flawed Planning Bill gathers pace today as community representatives from across the state converge on Parliament House in Sydney to personally lobby their local MPs.
The Planning Lobby Day follows the embarrassing admission by Planning Department Director-General Sam Haddad last week that the draft Bill had “gone further than the government intended”, and that staff may have spread “inaccurate or misleading information” during the consultation process.
The community lobby day has been facilitated by the Better Planning Network (BPN), an affiliation of more than 420 community groups, and the Nature Conservation Council of NSW (NCC), which represents more than 120 of the state’s environmental organisations.
“The government simply isn’t listening to the people so they have decided to deliver the message directly to their MPs in the halls of parliament,” BPN spokesperson Corinne Fisher said. “There is broad community opposition to the proposed changes and even the department has admitted the draft Bill has gone too far. The people participating in today’s rounds of meetings want their MPs to do what they were elected to do – represent the best interests of their constituents.”
NCC Chief Executive Officer Pepe Clarke said the proposed changes to the planning system were deeply flawed. “In their current form, the reforms are unacceptable,” Mr Clarke said. “If the government wants community support, it will have to make dramatic changes. The proposed changes represent the mostsignificant backward step in public participation and environment protection in more than a generation – they must not become law.”
Newcastle community activist John Hayes said the proposed changes would further restrict the ability of people to challenge major destructive mining and gas projects. “People want access to the courts to ensure that bureaucrats and politicians are held accountable for the decisions they make, especially when they approve destructive mining projects,” Mr Hayes said. “Under Barry O’Farrell’s plans it is very unlikely that community legal challenges, like the one the Bulga community won against Rio Tintos, would be possible. O’Farrell’s approach is unbalanced and unfair because it favours the big end of town over the communities the government is supposed to serve.”
Save Hunters Hill Municipality Coalition Co-convenor Philip Jenkyn said the proposed planning reforms made a mockery of community involvement in planning. “Community rights have been sacrificed in favour of developer needs,” Mr Jenkyn said. “By moving community input from the development assessment stage to the strategic planning stage, it effectively robs communities of any right to comment on inappropriate development in their neighbourhood. And with our judicial review rights also removed, communities have basically been sidelined. This is the complete opposite to Barry O’Farrell’s election promise.”
Key deficiencies of the Planning Bill and White paper include:
- The removal of the principles of ecologically sustainable development, including the precautionary principle;
- The proposal to have 80% of development in NSW assessed as complying or code assessment, with no community consultation and no assessment of the environmental and social impacts of proposed development;
- Proposals to reduce the number of environment protection zones, removing important protection for hundreds of thousands of hectares of land in NSW;
- Provisions that seek to restrict third-party merit appeal proceedings and judicial review proceedings (despite statements that appeal rights will not be changed in the new planning system) and prevent enforcement of community participation; and
- Failure to heed the advice of the Independent Commission Against Corruption.
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Planning and Development
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