THE federal government and planning ministers across the country have agreed to urgent planning reforms to ensure there are no delays in development approvals during the covid-19 pandemic.
Federal Minister for Cities and Urban Infrastructure Alan Tudge and his state and territory planning minister counterparts including New South Wales’ Rob Stokes; Victoria’s Richard Wynne; Queensland’s Cameron Dick; Western Australia’s Rita Saffioti; South Australia’s Stephan Knoll; Tasmania’s Roger Jaensch; Australian Capital Territory’s Mick Gentlemen; Northern Territory’s Eva Lawler and David O’Loughlin, president of Australian Local Government Association have agreed in principle to ensure the building and construction industry continues to function during the covid-19 pandemic.
The ministers said the reforms will ensure jobs and businesses can be maintained at this critical time and that the system supports economic recovery.
Tudge said the impact of covid-19 means swift changes to planning regimes are necessary to ensure development applications can still be approved at their usual pace and other planning regulations amended to deal with the twin health and economic crises.
“Amendments to our planning systems will ensure that governments and the development community can support the economic recovery effort.
“Ministers agreed to review the principles in June 2020 to ensure they are still fit-for-purpose to support the economic recovery phase,” he added.
“Ensuring building and construction activity, and other vital sectors of our economy, can continue to operate at as close to normal levels as possible while meeting public and workplace health and safety requirements will ensure our economic slow-down is not as severe, and we can more quickly bounce back,” Tudge said.
Recognising that every state, territory and local planning system is different, the changes will be made by individual jurisdictions, but they have agreed to the following principles:
- Decision making in the public interest is a paramount theme in all planning systems and this must continue as a guiding consideration.
- Transparency for stakeholders about changes to systems and particular decisions.
- Decisions made within jurisdictions are consistent, where possible.
- Consideration of the level of public interest in a particular planning change or development proposal.
- Balancing administrative and legal review rights with the need to address the pandemic emergency and to assist community and economic recovery.
- All reasonable effort is made to maintain the usual pace of planning approvals recognising, as far as practical, community consultation will continue through new forms of communication recognising social distancing requirements.
The minister said the governments are also considering lessons learned from this covid-19 period, particularly around the use of technology to facilitate community participation and other planning processes, response to future emergency events, sharing of information between jurisdictions.
Furthermore, they said these improvements to planning systems has the potential for ongoing implementation when we return to business as usual.
