Wednesday, 1 November 2023

Planning and Environment Act 1987

Notices of approval of planning amendments

Samantha RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (17:35): I rise to speak tonight on VC242, which proposes significant changes to Victoria’s planning system. These changes were announced as part of the government’s recent housing statement, which purports to be their answer to the state’s worsening housing crisis. These changes were touted as part of the government’s story that the housing crisis was being exacerbated, if not caused, by slow planning permit approvals by local councils. It is a story they have been determined to convince the public of by blaming local councils, using anecdotal examples of planning permit approvals and of course scapegoating the Greens, but the truth about the housing crisis is a different story to the one that this Labor government has been trying to prosecute. Instead of addressing the severe lack of public housing, their privatisation and sell-off of public housing land, their outsourcing of their responsibility for making housing affordable, the tax breaks they support for wealthy property investors and their denial of the plight of renters facing unlimited rent increases – all of those drivers of the housing crisis – they have been for months trying to convince Victoria that the only solution to the crisis is the one proposed by the property industry to make it easier for developers to increase their development yields and therefore their profits without any meaningful requirement to build more affordable homes.

Labor’s housing policy will not work. These changes to Victoria’s planning scheme are only going to make the housing crisis worse, and here is why. The amendment creates two new provisions in the planning scheme, 53.22 and 53.23, and makes the Minister for Planning the responsible authority for those provisions. Provision 53.22 is for any project that will make a significant contribution to Victoria’s economy and provide substantial public benefit, including jobs for Victorians. Provision 53.23 is for any residential development, private or public, that includes affordable housing. To go to the details about what is actually going on here, 53.22 says the purpose is:

To prioritise and facilitate the planning, assessment and delivery of projects that will make a significant contribution to Victoria’s economy …

But if you look closely at the planning scheme requirements, there is a requirement that:

The responsible authority may waive or vary any building height or setback requirement.

An application is exempt from an application requirement in this planning scheme if in the opinion of the responsible authority the information is not relevant to the assessment of the application.

Along with property developers, guess who else will be able to access this fast-track system that bypasses property checks and balances – to name a couple, extractive industry, with an estimated minimum value of a project, and mining and mineral exploration. Gosh, they are not going to exploit this provision, are they?

Then we have got 53.23, which applies to any residential development, private or public, which includes affordable housing. While this is being sold as anything with 10 per cent affordable homes or more, that rate can be lowered, including to zero per cent, and uses the vague and weak definition of ‘affordable homes’. This special provision might not produce a single home suitable for low or very low income households, and that is why big alarm bells should be ringing for anyone who is reading the details of these changes. The purpose of 53.23 also is an enabling provision for the wholesale demolition of public housing in Victoria and facilitates the public–private partnership model for the development of these public housing sites that the government seems so wedded to.

The responsible authority may decide to reduce the percentage of the total number of dwellings in the development that must be affordable housing, or not require an agreement to be entered into under Section 173 of the Act.

Basically developers can access this fast-track system and not produce any affordable housing at all. Alongside this:

The responsible authority may waive or vary any of the following:

• A minimum garden area requirement.

• Any building height or setback requirement.

…

An application is exempt from an application requirement in this planning scheme if in the opinion of the responsible authority the requirement is not relevant to the assessment of the application.

Once again these give carte blanche powers to the responsible authority, which is the minister in this case.

Alongside these changes the government also gazetted VC243, which has broadscale changes to all planning schemes to codify residential development standards and make significant changes to ResCode. The broad call-in powers and ability to waive planning schemes requirements give the Minister for Planning extraordinary power to determine planning outcomes without proper checks and balances or accountability. The minister can waive even weak conditions of approval as they are outlined. The minister and the developer can weaken the percentage of affordable housing required to zero, and developers can buy off their obligation via section 173 agreements.

There has been really significant feedback from the industry, who think these changes are dire and in fact have labelled them criminal. They talk about the development industry, who are trying to create more affordable housing and who are aiming for 20 per cent affordable housing, and the government through these changes has essentially lowered the collective ambition of some parts of the industry who are actually trying to do the right thing. These changes will not work. We know that the government has just handed property developers a sweet deal for megaprofits, while Victorians will be left to suffer in the worst housing crisis they have experienced in decades for decades to come.