It’s time.Throw the Keneally/Sartor baby out with the bathwater

“Thirteen years of emasculation of the State’s planning laws have culminated in a call by the Parliamentary Committee for a ‘complete rewrite and overhaul of the current legislation and a review of the planning framework’, said Ms Hale.

“Labor’s decade-long dismantling of the critical features of the EP&A Act has resulted in the concentration of power in the hands of the Minister for Planning via Part 3A and the paring back of rights of consultation, notification, and appeal.

“The State has been left with planning laws that satisfy no one other than the development lobby.

“Among the long list of deficiencies the Committee has identified are the exclusion of local government from strategic planning, particularly in regional areas, the downgrading of regional planning offices, and the absence of community involvement.

“The Committee’s recommendation that the Standard Local Environment Plan template be reviewed is an acknowledgement that the ‘one-size-fit-all’ approach of former Ministers Sartor and Keneally fails to recognise the very different needs of urban, coastal and rural localities.

“Yet Labor has trumpeted all the changes that have rendered the State’s planning framework unworkable as being in the interests of ‘efficiency’, ‘certainty’, and the cutting of ‘red-tape’.

“These glib mantras have done New South Wales a great disservice.

“The Committee is comprised of representatives from across the political spectrum.  For them to be calling for a fundamental review and rewriting of the planning laws suggests that no one should be relying on the system to deliver certainty or efficiency.

“There were twelve moths of intense of consultation with all levels of the community preceding the introduction of the 1979 Act. That process should be a pre-condition to any re-writing of the Act,” said Ms Hale.

Contact: Colin Hesse on 02 9230 3030 or 0401 719 124