Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Draft Land Use Planning and Approvals Amendment Bill 2022.

The Planning Matters Alliance Tasmania (PMAT) is a growing network of almost 70 community groups from across Tasmania advocating for a strategic, sustainable, transparent and integrated planning system which will serve to protect the values that make Tasmania a special place to live and visit.

PMAT raised many concerns when the Land Use Planning and Approvals Act 1993 was amended in 2020 to introduce a new major projects assessment process.

This new major projects planning process diminishes community involvement in the assessment of large and complex projects.

Community groups across Tasmania were clear in their opposition to the new major projects assessment process, highlighting their key concerns, including:

• a loss of community rights to appeal bad development decisions;
• limits on meaningful community input to major projects assessments;
• the sidelining of the trusted and independent Tasmanian Planning Commission;
• the side-stepping of parliamentary oversight for State significant projects;
• almost any project would be eligible to be declared a major project; and
• the Planning Minister has unchecked power to declare a development a ‘major project’ thereby removing it from the usual planning process.

These changes fundamentally undermine our democracy.

As per the Planning Reform website ‘Applying the new major projects assessment process to the new Bridgewater Bridge project identified where some improvements to the process could be made and the Government is now seeking to address these with the draft Land Use Planning and Approvals Amendment Bill 2022’.

PMAT endorses the attached submission drafted by the Environmental Defenders Office regarding the Draft Land Use Planning and Approvals Amendment Bill 2022.

We share the EDO’s concerns and endorse their ten recommendations relating to:

• Amendments relating to the non-publication of “sensitive” information;
• Amendments relating to the electronic disclosure of information;
• Amendments relating to granting permission for site investigations after a major project has been declared;
• Amendments to allow for additional land to be added to a major project declared area;
• Amendments clarifying that the process continues if a regulator does not provide a response when required to do so;
• Amendments to allow for the correcting of minor administrative errors before a final decision is made; and
• Amendments introducing an additional assessment process option for amending a major project permit.

The Draft Land Use Planning and Approvals Amendment Bill 2022 also adds greater complexity to already complex planning laws that make planning beyond the comprehension of most Tasmanians.

In November 2021, the Solicitor General cited changes to Tasmania’s planning laws as ‘complex and prescriptive’ which is disappointingly inconsistent with the Tasmanian Government’s pledge to make planning rules ‘simpler, cheaper and fairer’.

Yours sincerely,

Sophie