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Your views: on SA’s planning regime

Today, readers comment on state planning and development policy and practice.

Aug 08, 2022, updated Aug 08, 2022

Commenting on the story: Expert panel to review SA’s planning system

I’m stunned that this review once again has planners and developers reviewing themselves and that this government, like its predecessors, has locked the community out just as they did when the planning “reforms” were introduced. – Chris Shakes

Perhaps the new planning review panel could examine how the State Commission Assessment Panel (SCAP) approved the destruction of 85 significant and regulated trees for the Springwood development, without being provided with an arborist report in its 1300 pages tree removing application? Particularly when experts estimated that many of those trees were likely to be in excess of 1000 years old.

Is it appropriate that SCAP panellists and Planning Commission members can also hold positions in private companies which submit development and rezoning applications? The eastern states have banned developers, development consultants and realtors from holding positions on development assessment panels.

How many of our Planning Commission members and SCAP panellists would still hold their positions, if SA adopted similar laws? – Yuri Poetzl

Commenting on the opinion piece: Rethinking South Australia’s planning system

This announcement is welcome, but has been a long time coming.

The imperative for a review of the unsatisfactory 2016 Act and the controversial Planning and Design Code was initiated by a 14,000 signature Protect our Heritage Alliance petition to parliament in April 2020. The consequent report of the parliamentary Legislative Review Committee was tabled in November 2021 and made public  last month.

This report made 14 strong recommendations for legislative and regulatory changes and reforms in the flawed planning system. Some, but not all, of these have been addressed in remit of the new ‘expert panel’.

Notable omissions are a statutory enquiry into the governance and operation of the State Planning Commission and the State Commission Assessment Panel, and the restoration of individual and community rights in planning policy and processes.

It was also curious to read that the new review will be rediscovering climate change, which was almost completely ignored in the Code, the evolution and implementation of which was inordinately influenced by, and skewed to the interests of, the development and construction industry.

It is to be hoped that the panel will take a broad view encompassing the escalating problems of urban over-development, crowded infill, loss of tree canopy (the worst in the country)and the erosion of heritage.

There is widespread ‘submission fatigue’ in the community after many fruitless oral and written representations on planning issues to successive Government agencies over the past few years.

It is to be hoped that this latest Review will respond to the extensive community response to the Code already on record, and will promote and welcome further public input. – Warren Jones

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Labor planning minister Nick Champion’s waffly, rambling  article about a looming review of the planning system read like a poke in the eye to the thousands of objectors to the last mess Labor created.

It is such a mess that Nick is announcing another ‘expert panel’, apparently to fix problems left for us by Labor’s first ‘expert panel’. It delivered the trashing of 72 unique and community crafted development plans across the state, and replaced them with one Planning and Design Code in March 2021.

The first test was a massive rezoning of ‘Riverbank’, delivering government infrastructure projects across 35ha of Adelaide’s park lands. Public resistance was swept aside.

Minister Champion praises former Labor planning minister, John Rau, because he “protected our food bowl and prevented urban sprawl”, but his advisors have clearly not mentioned the Mt Barker disaster, major arable land rezoning and which since has encouraged rampant urban sprawl since in that region.

Minister Champion’s advisors need to show him the findings of the Legislative Council’s 17 November 2021 inquiry into Planning Reform. Its evidence is damning of Labor’s planning history. It is his ‘expert panel’ findings already. How will the minister respond to its 232 pages? – John Bridgland

Commenting on the story: Developer resubmits Parade tower plans

The State Commission Assessment Panel has a record of approving excessively huge, high and bulky developments which pay scant regard to their surroundings.

It is a great pity that developers have captured the State Planning Commission. No wonder public confidence in our planning system is at an all-time low. – Evonne Moore

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