Estimates - Housing and Planning - Overhaul of Subdivision Legislation
Ms Burnet - Minister, the government announced a review and long-overdue overhaul of subdivision legislation under the Local Government (Building and Miscellaneous Provisions) Act at the beginning of last year. At the time, this was welcomed by key stakeholders in the development industry. When will work commence on this important reform?
Mr VINCENT - I will just seek some advice from Dr Reid because we had a brief discussion on this the other day. I will just read from the minutes here:
The SPO has completed an audit under all provisions of the act to identify potential options and the need for further advice on the operation of some parts. The complexity of the task in reviewing -
And this is the, how do you say that?, the LGBMP which does stand, just for the records, the Local Government (Building and Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1993.
Mr JAENSCH - There you go. I thought it was an obscure kayaking term.
Mr VINCENT - Yeah. And the range of stakeholders [inaudible 6.55.05] suggested that a staged approach will likely be the greatest success. I'm not sure whether, Sean, you'd like to add to that.
Mr McPHAIL - As you pointed out, we have undertaken an initial audit of the legislation just to look to see what the various components are, because there's various components to do with the approval of a permit for subdivision through to the sealing of plans which is, I guess, the post-approval part where it leads to the issuing of titles. But there's also other bits in there that step outside the Planning portfolio as well. There's bits to do with local government, superannuation and various other things, and a few archaic things that have probably been left over from previous planning regimes from more than 30 years ago.
So, in terms of reviewing it, as you pointed out, minister, it's a big project and there's been failed attempts over various points in the last 30 years. In terms of doing it, it needs to be broken up into stages and really looking at how you can incorporate those things that are needed into existing legislation, into existing planning scheme provisions as well, which we've started already doing through the work that we're doing on the Improving Residential Standards project, looking at how we incorporate more of the planning considerations from log bump into the subdivision component, particularly around residential, which is the most common types of subdivision. Obviously, that will help us be able to work out how we deal with the rest of it.
But there's very components in there that you either keep and improve, or it's no longer required, so it's a matter of sort of slotting into the various locations where it needs to go. And involvement of a few different portfolios and a few different departments as well, given the level of roles that that it has across various things.