The position of ACT Chief Planner and an independent statutory planning body will all but disappear under the ACT Government’s new model for planning put forward in response to the Stein report.
Save Our City Coalition spokesperson Jacqui Rees said yesterday that the coalition had documents showing the new structure without any position for Chief Planner. This was required by federal and ACT statutes.
The Government’s new structure is to put planning and land management together in the Department of Urban Services under an executive director of planning and land management with three subordinates in charge of planning and administration of the Territory Plan, land supply and sales, changes to lease purposes, design and siting and building approvals.
A spokesman for Planning Minister Gary Humphries said the Chief Planner’s position would not disappear, but that title and the title executive director would be held by the same person.
He was aware of the requirement of federal law to have a planning authority and Mr Humphries was looking at what amendments were necessary to ACT law to implement the Government’s response to the Stein report.
Ms Rees said the new arrangement broke the spirit of the federal legislation which required an independent statutory planning role.
“”There are no safeguards at all to make transparent and open the tensions between the commercial objectives of land management and the social and environmental objectives of planning,” she said. “”Rather than eradicate the rot detailed by Justice Stein, the new processes will entrench it and represent a profound corruption of the ideals of ACT planning and land management.”
Mr Humphries says a “”whole of government” approach is vital, rather than having planning solely in the hands of land planners and land managers.