Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, I might just remind the minister, if you want a real and tangible way to lower our emissions, you might be advocating in government for an end to native forest logging.
Mr Duigan – Is that what we were talking about before?
Ms O’CONNOR – I do not mind being disciplined occasionally and sometimes I will pay attention.
There is clearly an argument, in certain circumstances, for a permit to be extended. I do not think there is any disagreement about that, which is one of the effects – well, that is the effect – of this amendment bill that we are talking about today. The issue that has been raised is why it has seemed necessary to give the minister that power, which was previously held by the planning authority, to extend for a final time a permit for two years in the absence of the substantial commencement of a project. We asked that question today in the briefing. The answer was simply something along the lines of, ‘We thought it was strategically sensible. We focused on the minister because it is about extenuating circumstances. State oversight seems a reasonable approach.’ Well, the most reasonable approach is to allow the people who have been part of the process since the beginning to be the planning authority that can receive a request for a permit extension.
In the other place, we sought to amend this bill to change out the word ‘minister’ for ‘planning authority’ in line very much with some of the amendments that the member for Elwick is putting forward.
Let us be really clear about the context here. There are three bills, sequential to each other on our order of business, which are all connected. The thread that connects them is a minister who is more than a little tipsy on power. He has given himself extra powers here to be the good guy who hands out the permit extension.
Ms Forrest – What a power trip.
Ms O’CONNOR – It is a power trip – that he has been able to turn around and say to the Stony Rise developers, ‘Hello, here I am. I have come to save the day for you again.’
Then, of course, there are DAPs, which substantially increase ministerial powers. The effect of all of this is a gradual but persistent corrosion of the independence of our planning system and of the role of local government as planning authorities.
This bill itself, only thin though it is (not quite as thin as the minister’s second reading speech), but it mentions the word minister eight times. That is what we are dealing with here – a minister who has got hold of the levers in planning and thinks, ‘Right, I am going to make my mark.’ Now, that is a completely normal human response, to want to make a mark, to want to make things better by your lights. However, making a naked grab for power through the planning system is not the way to achieve the results of having a planning system that has public confidence, public participation, and respects the role of local government as a planning authority.
We can amend this bill here today so that it is more proper and have it passed through here. The issue that has been raised by the Leader of Government Business and the minister just now, for example, around the Port Latta windfarm is dealt with. These are not mutually exclusive propositions, and that is why I would encourage –
Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2.30 p.m.
Resumed from above [2.50p.m.]
Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, I will not speak for very much longer on this bill. We have a set of three bills and the two next ones will take up a fair bit of the Council’s time.
I was saying before lunch that there is a consensus in here that there is an argument for a capacity to extend a permit for an extra two years, in certain circumstances.
We want to be mindful of the risk of land-banking, of course, which is what is happening in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area with expressions-of-interest process developments, many of which are just land-banking. There is an argument here that everyone more or less agreed with, from what I can gather from the contributions. If we want to resolve that issue and that need – in the first instance for the Port Latta windfarm – then we can do that in a way that is consistent with planning principles that are already in place and already in LUPAA. We can agree to the amendments that will be put forward by the member for Elwick, which will deny the minister his little power grab here but will solve the problem that the government has identified to us. We can achieve the desired result without handing power to the minister. However, we need to see this legislation in the context of the two I have talked about before.
Also, a matter that came up for disallowance yesterday – and I will talk about it in broad terms because it is still an order of the day – is we have a regulation that removes parliament entirely from oversight of major developments from our largest GBE. I believe Hydro is our largest GBE. It is another example of a government that – I mean, when we asked about this, the minister told me it was about pulling every available lever – that was for the Hydro reg. If we asked minister Ellis about this, he would probably give a similar kind of answer. It is the ‘making things happen’ kind of answer. We can make things happen in a thoughtful and proper way – that would be to amend this bill so that it sorts out the issue.
We have had some strange claims from the minister for planning, particularly in relation to the development assessment panels legislation, where he makes the claim that this is about taking the politics out of planning. Well, we have just inserted a politician. What the government is trying to do is insert a politician as the ultimate decision‑making body on the extension of permits out to eight years. Let us not cop this. I guess its casual gaslighting, but let us not cop this. This is not about taking the politics out of planning. It is about inserting the new planning minister into positions where he can wield more power than he otherwise would have.
Do we want that? I am not sure the Council should want that, because it is not necessary for the minister to have that authority for the issue to be dealt with. Whether it be the Port Latta proponent or another proponent who, for a whole range of reasons, and we know this, has had delays to substantial commencement.
We did not support this bill in the lower House. We tried to amend it to take the minister out and insert the planning authority in. I think we should listen to the voices in here today, particularly – I mean all voices of course, but we have had people with a wealth of experience in local government who have expressed an informed view, a perspective. I do not have that experience in my professional life, so I have listened carefully and heard those issues around development applications and the challenges that councils have with resourcing. This is not about council resourcing. This is about providing a mechanism under LUPAA simply to extend a permit, by a planning authority, for an extra two years. Let us leave the work determining what is a matter of a complex or technical nature to the planning body that has been dealing with this permit since it was first approved.
If the bill is unamended, I will vote against it. If the Council accepts the honourable member for Elwick’s amendments, then I think the bill is eminently supportable.
