The Greens’ Caroline Le Couteur is pointing out that that new Planning and Building Legislation Amendment Bill 2011 introduced by the Government will change the word “consultation” to “notification”.
“People are often frustrated that ACTPLA has not done sufficient consultation on particular developments. Unfortunately, what hadn’t been clear to anyone, is that ACTPLA only have to ‘notify’ and this is not really consultation.
Minister Barr stated during his tabling speech that this will make “modern, accessible planning laws”, and ironically noted that “most important is the community”.The Bill states that the clauses will “clarify the nature of ‘notification’ (vis-à-vis) ‘consultation’) for development applications”.
“Just this week the ACT Government Architect, Alastair Swayne, said that the development process should be less adversarial, and that if developers made more effort to meet informally with various community stakeholders, then planning outcomes would be greatly improved.
“The consultation processes, especially the early stages, need improvement in a number of ways. This Planning Bill exposes just how inadequate the current requirements are,” Ms Le Couteur said.
At least they’re not pretending any more!
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