There are serious questions for the Rockliff Government to answer about the influence of donors and developers in their decision to attack planning appeals.
More than a decade and four Planning Ministers ago, the Liberals took a planning policy to the 2014 election that was heavily influenced by the Property Council and their then-CEO – and soon-to-be the new government’s head of planning reform – Mary Massina. This policy included a promise to put limitations on who can appeal planning decisions.
While the government progressed efforts to undermine proper planning process, the policy to limit appeals fell by the wayside and was no longer government policy – until now. So why the sudden change?
Have there been more meetings behind closed doors? Have any political donations been made?
This decision looks like it’s been made simply to deliver an outcome to donors and developers.
RTI documents show that last year Ms Massina – in her capacity as CEO of a controversial developer – met with the Planning Minister to push for the old plan to limit planning appeals to be revived. Months later the government has, out of nowhere, done just that. That’s happened despite the Minister’s own briefing material showing just how unnecessary this change is.
There are serious questions about vested interests influencing this decision. The Liberals are well-known for doing the bidding of developers, and we now know at least one controversial developer has been pushing for this policy – Mary Anne’s Island Pty Ltd, the proponent behind the highly problematic Arm End project.
Fuelling our concerns further is the way this change has been announced. The developer pushing this change is a client of the Liberal-aligned lobbying company Font PR, and the announcement of this policy was made exclusively on Font’s own podcast – by the Premier no less. One of Font’s head honchos ran the Liberals’ recent election campaign, and another is married to Mary Massina, who put this policy back on the table.
All this is just way too cozy. It has the hallmarks and the stink of a quid pro quo.
Given how deeply dodgy this entire situation is, the Liberals need to come clean and reveal any political donations they’ve received from developers and individuals associated with them. If they won’t, there’s only one reasonable conclusion that can be drawn: they have something to hide.
Regardless of how we got here, the Greens strongly oppose this change to planning appeals, and we will be joining with communities to fight back. This is a huge and damaging overreach, and we will do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t get through Parliament.
