Ms BURNET (Clark) – Honourable Speaker, I will talk this evening about planning matters. We heard during Question Time this morning that not long after the Tasmanian Planning Commission’s draft assessment report of the Macquarie Point Stadium was released, seeds of doubt were planted by the Macquarie Point Development Corporation. Through their interstate lawyers, they launched an extraordinary attack on an independent body set up by the Tasmanian Planning Commission which features, among other experts, a former deputy solicitor-general and Treasury secretary. It was almost entirely predictable. We saw one type of process bypassed for another process so that it fits the bill, and this is not the way to do planning.
Planning is a really fundamental part of our system. We know the government has been hell bent on taking planning away from local government in decision‑making with that statutory planning process, and we see it eroded time and again. Quite often it is councils which are doing a lot of the heavy lifting for strategic planning that is often not undertaken to its fullest or best extent by an ailing government that falls short.
There is a pattern emerging wherein if a developer or the government do not get their desired outcome from existing planning processes, a path around the process is created. This is what we have seen with the Macquarie Point Stadium proposal. If you cannot build a shopping centre because it does not align with the planning scheme – and this is another example that we had to consider in this place at the end of last year – you might work with the local planning authority to address these concerns, or you might lobby the government to update the planning scheme and change the laws. You might want to get a decent, updated and relevant, contemporary Regional Land Use Strategy in place.
It is much cheaper and much faster to take out a full‑page ad in the paper spelling out your demands, because just a day or so later the parliament will swing into action behind you with special legislation approving your development, literally and figuratively bulldozing your way through. This is what has happened with the Stony Rise shopping centre proposed by developer Tipalea, whose proponents did not even try to hide the fact that they had donated to the major parties, presumably motivated by a sincere passion for democracy ‑ I say that tongue in cheek.
We now have the spectacle of the Premier laying the groundwork for an escalation of these tactics at Macquarie Point. Enabling legislation is quite on the cards. The Greens are very concerned about this, as are many members of the community. Not only are the Greens concerned, the president of the Tasmanian branch of the Planning Institute of Australia said in a media release dated 4 April:
This is the second project within four months where parliament is setting aside a legislated approval process for a political decision. This reinforces our previous concerns about the ongoing lack of investment by the state in Tasmania’s planning system. Parliament may not like the current Projects of State Significance process, but good planning outcomes require a strong social licence –
A strong social licence – I would like to emphasise that –
– in the decisions that are made, which requires trust in the approval process and assessment criteria. Since parliament clearly has concerns over the functions of our planning system, they need to find solutions to fix those problems for everyone. The current legislative interventions for special projects risks a two-speed planning system: one for those with political contacts and another for those of us without.
Time expired.
