Council

MEDIA RELEASE 22.5.08
SOS condemns State Government for removing Council Planning Powers

Removing Council planning powers - unnecessary, undemocratic and open to corruption!

Yesterday's announcement by Planning Minister Justin Madden to strip councils of planning power for major activity centre development again shows the State Government's contempt for the community.

It is yet another example of trying to make things easy for developers without regard to planning outcomes or the concerns of the whole community.

If the Planning Minister was really trying to streamline the planning process, he could simply make key planning guidelines mandatory (Rescode, Structure plans etc) which would vastly speed up the planning assessment process - any non-compliant applications would be rejected and the others would be easier to tick off. This would also greatly diminish the number of cases going to VCAT and provide what all parties want - greater certainty.

Local Government Minister Richard Wynne has sacked 3 councillors from the Colac Otway Shire, because they walked out of a council meeting.

This will be of interest to many SOS members, who have asked me why certain councillors aren't sacked, given the issues - including the possibility of corruption - they have with them.

I believe we should be very careful about sacking an elected representative, otherwise the majority can act against the minority - who may be the ones effectively representing local residents.

But if the Minister IS going to sack council members, it should

• be on the basis of a open and transparent policy
• be consistently applied
• be subject to appeal by the councillor

In a stunning move against residents, Planning Minister Justin Madden has confirmed he is considering removing Council planning powers to make decisions on permits for key development projects.

Read The Age article.

This would be disastrous, although some Councilors would welcome it because they'd no longer be responsible for making decisions on these contentious, unpopular and time-consuming projects.

This approach has been raised before - by the Development Assesment Forum. Read the summary of our 2004 submission to DAF (below).