NSW PLANNING BILLS UPDATE

NSW Planning Minister Brad Hazzard announced on 28 November that he would withdraw the NSW Planning Bills until February 2014.  This followed the significant amendments to the Bills which were made in the Legislative Council (the Upper House of the NSW Parliament).  The amendments were made by Labor, the Greens and the Shooters and Fishers parties.

Minister Hazzard attacked in parliament what he called the "unholy alliance" of the parties who had supported the amendments to the Bills.  He claimed this alliance had "jeopardised the housing supply our community needs".  He also claimed that an "unprecedented coalition" of business groups had supported the Bills.  These supporters included  the Civil Contractors Federation, the NSW and Sydney Business Chambers, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, the NSW Minerals Council, the Property Council of Australia and the Tourism and Transport Forum. (See the  Sydney Morning Herald report of 28 November .)

It is no surprise that these organisations representing the development industry supported Hazzard's proposed planning system.  It gave them enormous advantages.   At the same time it disempowered local communities which is why there was such a determined grass roots campaign against these planning changes.

The Better Planning Network's Convener, Corinne Fisher, in a letter to The Sydney Morning Herald in response to the article about Hazzard, called on the Minister to take responsibility for the failure of his Bills rather than blaming everyone else.  She referred to the cost and the time spent on the comprehensive , independent review of the planning system (the Moore and Dyer report) and the fact that the Minister ignored its more than 374 recommendations.

She  pointed out:  "The Planning Bills utterly fail to effectively address the two key problems associated with our current planning system: complexity and community acceptance."

"The NSW Planning Bills are a missed opportunity for genuine reform and will not solve the problems that have plagued and continue to plague planning and development in NSW.  Let's go back to the Moore and Dyer report and do better," she concluded.   ( The Better Planning Network website.)

Obviously the Government and Minister Hazzard, as well as the development industry,  will be lobbying Legislative Councillors in the hope of changing their votes when the Bills next come before the Parliament. Also there is no doubt that those opposed to Hazzard's Bills will also be actively lobbying members in both houses over the next few months.

NSW PLANNING BILL AMENDED IN THE UPPER HOUSE

The NSW Government's controversial Planning Bill ( last discussed on the CVCC blog on 6 November in New Planning Laws before NSW Parliament ) was amended substantially by the Legislative Council (the Upper House of the NSW Parliament) on 26 November.

The changes included:

• Deletion of Code Assessment from the Bill. This means that those NSW citizens who were being disempowered by this provision will retain their right to have a say on development in their neighbourhoods.
• Amendments relating to affordable housing for new developments.
• Removal of the controversial provisions of the Mining SEPP (State Environmental Planning Policy) which the Government recently added to the SEPP. There were serious concerns that these recent amendments (which made economic factors the principle consideration in the approvals process) made new coal mines almost impossible to refuse. (The change to the Mining SEPP was the subject of the CVCC post Proposed Changes to NSW Mining  on 25 August)

Of course, the amended Bill will have to return to the Legislative Assembly (the Lower House) and be passed there before it becomes law.

However, even if this happens,  there are still very serious deficiencies in the legislation as Corinne Fisher from the Better Planning Network points out.

"There has been very little change to the Minister's wide discretion that the Independent Commission Against Corruption stated was a corruption risk.  The amendment to restore the rights of objectors to appeal also failed.  That amendment would have been a major corruption safeguard," Ms Fisher said.

"The system will still be top down planning where high order strategic plans will govern what happens at local level.

"We are still stuck with Strategic Compatibility Certificates (SCC) that essentially allow Local Plans to be ignored so that prohibited development can occur whenever a developer can convince the Government  that it is consistent with a higher order strategic plan.  There is  no merit assessment when an SCC is issued," she said.

Another major concern is the exclusion of ecologically sustainable development as a major principle in planning decisions.  This has been replaced in the new  legislation by "sustainable development" which according to the Minister for Planning, Brad Hazzard, "balances" the needs of the environment with social and economic outcomes. This weakening of consideration for the environment has been a feature of Premier Barry O'Farrell's Coalition Government just as his Government's reframing of the state's planning laws has focused on the promotion of the interests of the development industry to the detriment of the interests of local communities.

Months ago the critics of the proposed new planning system called for it to be withdrawn and re-written.  The extensive community criticism led to some minor changes before the Government brought the Bill to Parliament.  Critics still believe that the Bill needs to be withdrawn and re-written  to ensure that NSW has an effective, fair and transparent planning system in the future.

NSW GOVERNMENT REJECTS CALL TO LOG NATIONAL PARKS

Those who value our NSW National Parks are relieved at the State Government’s rejection of a parliamentary inquiry's recommendation that more than one million hectares of the northern NSW National Parks estate be opened up to logging. 

Background to the Recommendation
 In 2012 General Purpose Standing Committee No 5,  a committee of the NSW Legislative Council (the state’s upper house), held an inquiry into the management of public lands in NSW. This Inquiry was at the instigation of the Shooters and Fishers Party (which has two members in the NSW Parliament) and Liberal/National Party members of the committee.  According to the Committee Chair, the Shooters and Fishers Party's Robert Brown, the inquiry was to "thoroughly review how public and private land is acquired and converted into conservation land, and the effectiveness of public land management practices dealing with fire hazards, weeds and pests, and issues such as public access and land use."
It was quite obvious that the inquiry was motivated by a desire to attack national parks and the reasons for their existence and  to question the decision-making process in the creation of national parks in the  previous decade or so.     

The Committee's Report  which is available on the Inquiry website  was published in May 2013 and the Government had until this month to respond to the report and its recommendations.
 
The Recommendation to Log National Parks

Recommendation 10 of the Report:

That the NSW Government immediately identify appropriate reserved areas for release to meet the levels of wood supply needed to sustain the timber industry, and that the NSW Government take priority action to release these areas, if necessary by a ‘tenure swap’ between national park estate and State forests. In particular, urgent action is required for the timber industry in the Pilliga region.

  

This recommendation was the result of the anti-environment and anti-National Parks stance of the  committee's conservative majority as well as the extensive lobbying by the NSW Forest Products Association (FPA).  The FPA used the Inquiry to publicise its concerns about the impending supply shortfall from the state’s public native forests in the north of the state.  This shortfall is the inevitable result of years of over-commitment of timber resources in our state forests by the state’s forest bureaucracy.

The NSW Government Response
In its official response on 19 November the NSW Government rejected the call for logging in National Parks.

The peak North Coast conservation body, the North Coast Environment Council (NCEC), welcomed the Government’s  decision.

 “There is little doubt that the Government has seen the support and love that National Parks enjoy from a wide spectrum of the community.  There has been overwhelming opposition to its decision to allow hunting in National Parks.  Logging was clearly a bridge too far,” said NCEC President Susie Russell.

While welcoming the decision, North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) spokesperson Dailan Pugh has called on the Government to reduce logging quotas to a sustainable level so that the hardwood sawlog industry has a future in our area.

“The Government must come clean with the public by releasing last year’s timber review and acting urgently to stop the gross over-logging of publicly owned lands,” Mr Pugh said.