What should change?

The planning issues confronting residents of Ku-ring-gai, and residents of the Sydney basin generally, are many.  However, they all flow from the New South Wales Government’s unjustified policy of "urban consolidation".  Closely linked with that policy is the Government’s unhealthy relationship with the property development industry – particularly the extent to which it encourages and indeed relies upon political donations from this sector – leading to a range of decisions, policies and practices that lack justification, and offend both common sense and residents generally.

In a very real sense all these represent a failure of democracy.  Government’s decisions in these areas are based on assertion rather than evidence that the benefits claimed are flowing from the decisions, or have actually flowed from similar decisions made anywhere else in the world.  Evidence to the contrary is merely dismissed with scorn as being "wrong", without any attempt at proper debate, let alone any attempt to demonstrate why it is wrong.

Many of the decisions have been made by changes to regulation, allowing no public or proper parliamentary debate.  In a number of important areas reliance has been placed on decisions made at the Minister’s discretion, without any means by which such decisions can be challenged, whether or not the decisions were made reasonably, after due enquiry, or after following due process, let alone whether relevant political donations appear to have been made at or around the same time.

Another questionable area is the Minister’s ability to "call in" particular developments, styling them "State significant" despite them having no realistic State-wide relevance, and in many cases often having what is clearly only local significance, and having a total value as small as $30 million.

Theses, and all of the areas listed below, need fixing.  We call upon the major political parties to make clear where they stand on each item in the list, and to commit themselves to reform, well ahead of the next State election, so that concerned residents can know where they stand when casting their votes.

• Political donations
  • Should be limited to $1000.
  • Should be from natural persons only i.e. not corporations, trusts, unions and the like.
  • If not limited to $1000, any donations of greater amount should be publicly posted within a week of receipt on the recipient’s web site, reported to the Election Funding Authority within 30 days of receipt, which should in turn post that report on its web site for public inspection within one week.
  • If not posted or declared by the recipient as required, the amounts involved should be treated as bribes and be punished accordingly, noting that this would have the effect of causing any offending politician to risk losing office.  Then perhaps we could expect disclosure responsibilities to be taken seriously, rather than treated as something to be apologised for as a "mistake" or "oversight" after the event, if and when found out.
• Place power back in the hands of local councils
  • Amend Part 3A of the Environmental Planning & Assessment Act 1979, constraining its effect to proposals that are of genuine State-wide significance, involving major infrastructure projects and the like.
  • Revoke the appointment of Planning Panels (such as the Ku-ring-gai Planning Panel) and the power to appoint Regional Planning Panels.
  • Allow local councils to exhibit and gazette urban conservation areas (UCAs) – in particular, the 27 areas recommended by the National Trust in Ku-ring-gai, some of State and National significance, none of which the State Government has allowed to be exhibited, making Ku-ring-gai the only Sydney municipality having no gazetted UCAs, despite having arguably more heritage of significance than any other municipality in NSW.
  • Allow local councils to come to their own conclusions about how to meet the extra dwellings required of each municipality by the Metro Strategy, taking into account the local context (suburban character, heritage, terrain, bush fire risks, soil types, tree canopy, streetscape, etc) and the best interests of residents.  Thereby retaining suburbs that have individual character and fit their context, rather than a bland, grey city that will result from a ‘one size fits all’ approach imposed from Macquarie Street via ‘expert’ Planning Panels that don’t have to live with their mistakes and their voters.
  • Require councils to genuinely consult their residents in developing their strategies and plans.
• Require town etc plans to observe the definitions in the Metro Strategy of towns, villages and small villages.  In particular, building heights to be constrained to the number of stories mentioned – three or five, as appropriate – rather than up to 15 stories as proposed by the Ku-ring-gai Planning Panel!  No respect to context there!!
• Revoke the expanded ‘exempt and complying development’ rammed through the Parliament in 2008 with the assistance of a grubby deal with the Shooters Party.
  • Neighbours are currently being given no notice of adjoining developments, let alone opportunity to comment or object to proposals that affect solar access, privacy, nor any chance to assess whether proposals actually comply with the rules.
  • Billed by the Government as a win for ‘Mums and Dads’, the regime actually tramples the former rights of all the ‘Mums and Dads’ in the adjoining dwellings, who may now learn of a proposal only when the demolishers or builders arrive on site and start work! This must change!!
• Revise the regime applying to ‘private certifiers’
  • The current regime is an invitation to rorting.  In particular, the opportunity for private certifiers to make a request to a council for ‘advice’ as to whether a particular development complies, and having that development – no matter how complex or large – gain ‘deemed approval’ through the council not responding within a mere 21 days! How gross is that?!
  • The lack of rigour in granting and keeping private certifier status is also worrying.
  • These Sydney Morning Herald articles by Harvey Grennan and Elizabeth Farrelly provide further background to our concern.