The Planning Matters Alliance Tasmania (PMAT) thanks the State Planning Office for the opportunity to comment on the Draft LUPA Amendment (Development Assessment Panels) Bill 2024.

Public comment was invited between the 7 October and 12 November 2024.
The State Planning Office consulted on the draft Framework Development Assessment Panel Framework Position Paper for 6 weeks in 2023, which closed on the 30 November 2023.

All the issues raised in PMAT’s 2023 submission on the Position Paper on a proposed Development Assessment Panel (DAP) Framework still stand. The Tasmanian Government has failed to take into account any of the concerns raised by PMAT:

1. The framework will create an alternate planning approval pathway allowing property developers to bypass local councils and communities;
2. Makes it easier to approve large scale contentious developments;
3. Removes merit-based planning appeal rights (i.e. appeals based on planning related grounds of objection such as height, bulk, scale or appearance of buildings, impacts to streetscapes, and adjoining properties including privacy and overlooking and much more);
4. Developments will only be appealable to the Supreme Court based on a point of law or process which have a narrow focus and are prohibitively expensive;
5. Removing merits-based planning appeals has the potential to increase corruption;
6. Removing merits-based planning appeals removes the opportunity for mediation;
7. Mainland experience demonstrates removing merits-based planning appeals has the potential to reduce good planning outcomes – including both environmental and social;
8. Increased ministerial power over the planning system decreases transparency and increases the politicisation of planning and risk of corrupt decisions;
9. Flawed planning panel criteria;
10. Undermines local democracy and removes local decision making;
11. Mainland experience demonstrates planning panels favour developers and undermine  democratic accountability;
12. Poor justification for planning changes; and
13. Increasing complexity increases risk of corruption.