State Government Wastes No Time Playing with their New Christmas Toy

Andrew Carstairs
Director

The Queensland State Government has wasted no time putting the powers of their new Sustainable Planning Act to use, with the immediate declaration of a Master Planned Area for Coomera on the very first day of operation of the Act. As many readers of this newsletter would be aware, the Sustainable Planning Act commenced operation from today, replacing the Integrated Planning Act which was originally commenced back in 1997.

The Coomera Master Planned Area declaration follows decades of strategic planning works by successive local and state government agencies, in addition to the respective development groups that have controlled various parts of the Coomera town centre lands over this period. From memory, there have been numerous Strategic Plans, development control plans, structure plans, local area plans, planning studies and a few partridges in pear trees (to keep with the spirit of the season).

Although the intent of the Master Planning declaration is to provide certainty with respect to future planning on the site, the development community have almost run out of patience when it comes to structure planning this part of the City. How many times do roads need planning. How many times do open space areas need planning. How many times do we need to look at the future land use designations.

And for what. Despite this ‘death by planning’ approach, there have been many examples of late throughout South East Queensland where a development site’s certainty has been completely eroded through the introduction of prohibitionist legislation that retrospectively kills a project, notwithstanding the site’s apparent compliance with existing planning mechanisms.

This cannot be demonstrated any more clearly than in the list of State Government referral agencies and their jurisdictions under the Master Planned Area declaration for Coomera. Eight separate State Government Departments, presiding over at least 34 separate pieces of legislation or policies will need to be considered as a part of this master planning process. And this is before Gold Coast Council has any look at it at all.

This is a process that was essentially established to assist in the streamlining of the planning of major growth areas of the SEQ region – as recognised in the SEQ Regional Plan. What chance does the rest of SEQ have if this is the best a streamlined process could achieve?

For more information on the Coomera Master Planned Area Declaration, or the Sustainable Planning Act, please do not hesitate to contact THG on (07) 5574 0588 or (07) 3666 4700.