Ms BURNET - I just wanted to make a few comments about the process. Remember when we discussed this bill here on 11 August, and then it went upstairs to the Legislative Council, it was noted by some members in this House that the bill was rushed on in the House, ahead of schedule, catching some of us by surprise. You remember that?
Mr Shelton - Oh, I do.
Ms BURNET - Of course, then there were suggestions that amendments would occur in the upper House, which is a good thing, and we can see clauses 4 and 5 have been amended, clearly with some back-and-forth in the upper House. There was a little bit of criticism, too, I think, from the other place about how we didn't take this into committee down here, but I won't reflect on their ‑
Mr Winter - They reflected on us, though.
Ms BURNET - They might have reflected on us, but that would be very unparliamentary if we did that.
PMAT, who are obviously heavily invested in this, said:
Had this bill not been amended at the last moment, by the Legislative Council with critical advocacy by PMAT, it would have expanded and consolidated the Planning Minister's total control over the planning system. The minister would have had new powers to amend every component of the planning controls. The minister would have had the ultimate say over our planning system and our future. Nothing could have stopped him.
… And the bill as passed by the Legislative Council creates new powers for the minister to amend and apply/remove the state's 16 planning codes, and the minister needs to answer what he intends using these powers for, as it was not explained. [TBC]
That's from PMAT. I won't read the whole media release, but some of those claims stretch a long way, but I think they were right to raise concerns in relation to clause 4. The amendment moved by the Greens clarifies the limits of that amendment.
So, we have these amendments, and I have a couple of questions for the minister, Mr Ellis, who's speaking on behalf of Mr Vincent in a moment, but I think these amendments, with both the Greens and Ms Thomas introducing amendments, do put some checks in place, which I think is good.
When I received a briefing from the State Planning Office in relation to clause 4, they said it was not possible to rezone parcels of land under LUPA through a map. The State Planning Policies are a set of planning rules, but they are not spatial. We took that on face value, but the drafting creates some ambiguity, so I'll just ask a question around that - because it's highly likely that, had the bill not been amended and the government tried to use maps published in SPPs to rezone land, it could have been challenged as being beyond power.
The clear legislative intention of the Land Use Planning and Approvals Act is for rezoning to occur through the LPSs. This supports the claim of the government that it did not intend to use this amendment for rezoning purposes. I would like some clarity on whether this ambiguity of the planning rules becomes clearer with this amendment. In relation to clause 5, the member for Elwick has substantially changed section 30NB of the act to include two procedural safeguards, but otherwise includes the amendment the government was trying to include, which was to provide for the TPC to make a recommendation to the minister to order an interim SPP amendment. So there are additional safeguards, which I won't go into, but I just wanted to ask a couple of questions in relation to Clause 5. Firstly, can the minister clarify:
(a) The commission would not have jurisdiction to make a recommendation to the minister under section 30NB(4)(a) unless they considered it necessary to urgently address a particular matter, or
(b) the minister would only consider it necessary to make an interim amendment on the recommendation of the Council if it was urgently needed to address the particular issue identified.
Now, that may have been sorted out in the upper House, but I just wanted to clarify whether either the commission would not have the jurisdiction to make a recommendation to the minister, or the minister would only consider it necessary to make an interim amendment on the recommendation of the Council, if that makes sense.