Reforming Building & Planning Laws Submission to the West Australian Government Draft Perth and Peel Green Growth Plan for 3.5 Million 13 th May 2016
ABOUT THE HOUSING INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION... 3 1. PERTH AND PEEL GREEN GROWTH PLAN... 4 2. WHAT DOES THE PLAN PROPOSE?... 4 3. HIA S COMMENTS ON THE PLAN... 5 4. CONSERVATION PLAN... 7 4.1 2.0 KEY POLICY MEASURES (P13)... 7 4.1.4 2.1 Advanced Environmental Outcomes (p14)... 7 4.1.2 2.5 Streamlining Environmental Approvals (P22)... 8 4.1.3 5.0 Implementation Framework... 9 5. CONCLUSION... 9 Housing Industry Association contact: John Gelavis Executive Director 22 Parkland Road Osborne Park WA 6017 phone: 08 9492 9200 mobile: 0407 750 128 Email: j.gelavis@hia.com.au - i -
ABOUT THE HOUSING INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION The Housing Industry Association (HIA) is Australia s only national industry association representing the interests of the residential building industry, including new home builders, renovators, trade contractors, land developers, related building professionals, and suppliers and manufacturers of building products. As the voice of the industry, HIA represents some 40,000 member businesses throughout Australia. The residential building industry includes land development, detached home construction, home renovations, low/medium-density housing, high-rise apartment buildings and building product manufacturing. HIA members comprise a diversity of residential builders, including the Housing 100 volume builders, small to medium builders and renovators, residential developers, trade contractors, major building product manufacturers and suppliers and consultants to the industry. HIA members construct over 85 per cent of the nation s new building stock. HIA exists to service the businesses it represents, lobby for the best possible business environment for the building industry and to encourage a responsible and quality driven, affordable residential building development industry. HIA s mission is to: promote policies and provide services which enhance our members business practices, products and profitability, consistent with the highest standards of professional and commercial conduct. The residential building industry is one of Australia s most dynamic, innovative and efficient service industries and is a key driver of the Australian economy. The residential building industry has a wide reach into manufacturing, supply, and retail sectors. The aggregate residential industry contribution to the Australian economy is over $150 billion per annum, with over one million employees in building and construction, tens of thousands of small businesses, and over 200,000 sub-contractors reliant on the industry for their livelihood. HIA develops and advocates policy on behalf of members to further advance new home building and renovating, enabling members to provide affordable and appropriate housing to the growing Australian population. New policy is generated through a grassroots process that starts with local and regional committees before progressing to the National Policy Congress by which time it has passed through almost 1,000 sets of hands. Policy development is supported by an ongoing process of collecting and analysing data, forecasting, and providing industry data and insights for members, the general public and on a contract basis. The association operates offices in 23 centres around the nation providing a wide range of advocacy, business support including services and products to members, technical and compliance advice, training services, contracts and stationary, industry awards for excellence, and member only discounts on goods and services. Page 3 of 9 Draft Perth and Peel Green Growth Plan - May 2016
1. PERTH AND PEEL GREEN GROWTH PLAN The comments in this submission are provided in response to the draft Perth and Peel Green Growth Plan for 3.5 Million (Draft Plan). The Draft Plan was released in December 2015. It identifies future land in the Perth and Peel Region which will be retained and used for conservation purposes together with providing a streamlined Federal and State environmental approvals process for development across a number of sectors. The Draft Plan consists of: 1. A Strategic Conservation Plan; 2. Nine supporting Draft Action Plans; (Draft Action Plans A to I) and 3. Two Draft Strategic Assessment Reports. Together these documents, in conjunction with the overarching Perth and Peel @ 3.5 Million will set out the particular pattern of future urban development within the Perth region. The Strategic Conservation Plan sets the broad goals and aims to provide certainty around development, whilst the nine action plans provide implementation details covering individual sectors. There are also two Strategic Assessment Reports that underpin the Plan and processes. These appear to present the supporting data and justification for the action that is being proposed including information concerning all nominated environment values and species. It appears that these reports will be utilised to inform the State and Federal Governments of the proposal and assist with the decision to endorse a streamlined environmental assessment process. Due to the level of detail and volume of these specific environmental assessments, HIA is unable to provide any comment on this element of the documentation. 2. WHAT DOES THE PLAN PROPOSE? The Draft Plan, together with the recent Perth and Peel @ 3.5 million, aims to provide a strategic approach to the land use and development of Perth into the future, primarily based on environmental values. This is proposed through establishing areas where development can occur and provides for significant offsets in the form of an additional 170,000 hectares of new conservation reserves together with areas where activities are simply avoided. The avoidance of impacts is through identification and protection of native vegetation consisting of some 16,400 hectares (including over 15,700 hectares of Carnaby s cockatoo Swan Coastal Plain feeding habitat) and a system for further avoidance of approximately 4,115 hectares of environmental values will be implemented over the life of the Plan. It appears the new reserves will be created in areas which currently remain unused or are already allocated for conservation purposes, such as Bush Forever sites, together with the expansion of existing national parks and reserves. The Draft Plan also includes plans to cut nutrient run off into the Swan Canning and Peel Harvey estuaries. The Draft Plan will also seek to cut red tape from the environmental approvals process. It will do this by securing upfront Commonwealth environmental approvals and streamlining State environmental approvals for the development required to support growth in the Perth region to 3.5 million people. Page 4 of 9 Draft Perth and Peel Green Growth Plan - May 2016
Where a development proposal does not fall within one of the class of action outlined in the Draft Plan existing environmental approval processes under Part 9 of the Environment Protection Biodiversity & Conservation Act (EPBC Act) and Parts IV and V of the Environmental Protection Act (EP Act) will apply. 3. HIA S COMMENTS ON THE PLAN The overall concept of creating a strategic plan for the future of the region and stating which land is to be conserved and which land will be permitted to be developed is an appropriate manner to manage the protection of endangered habitats and species. Therefore HIA is generally supportive of the approach taken in the development and implementation of the Draft Plan. HIA has held a view for many years that the application of environmental constraints of any type needs to be managed in an open and transparent manner, and that land to be removed from the supply chain for urban purposes should occur at the earliest possible stage, providing the owners, current and future, with an degree of truth in zoning. That is, once land has been zoned for urban purposes, in particular residential use, that there will be no further affectation of that land by constraints like native vegetation, coastal protection and the like, which leads to a reduction in the land available for development. Whilst it is recognised that in the early stages of new constraints being identified, some level of retrospectivity may be unavoidable, issues such as environmental protection are now well known and have long been part of the zoning and planning process. Therefore this Plan should be able to offer land owners a high degree of certainty that when their land is permitted to be zoned for residential development, that no further studies, and no further limitations will be applied. The streamlining of the environmental approvals process outlined in the Plan is also supported. There will be efficiency gains for proponents if Federal and State environmental approvals can be undertaken at the state level. This should deliver reduced holding costs for proponents through lower administrative requirements and fewer regulatory delays. Land owners will also be able to work with a single approval body and apply for one approval rather than two. There are elements of the Plan, however, that fall short of industry s expectation. 1. The full set of documents is extremely lengthy and complex which makes them very difficult to circumnavigate and carries a significant risk of unintended consequences. This works against one of the stated purposes of the Draft Plan which is certainty. Setting out clear intentions in a succinct format would have assisted with interpretation of the requirements. 2. There is a large volume of environmental data on which the plan is premised. It is difficult for any person or body without specific environmental knowledge to question any of this data or the proposals on the basis of this information. Therefore the findings in regards to the location of species, habitats and future habitats as provided must largely be accepted. 3. The Draft Plan intends to shift assessment and management responsibility from the Commonwealth back to the State Government (which is increasingly shifting the responsibility to Local Government). The removal of the Commonwealth could potentially be replaced by a more onerous process that will capture significantly more projects than is currently the case, increasing the financial and reporting burden on the development industry. Much of this assessment and reporting will be undertaken by State and Local Government planning and environmental officers who were not involved, and are likely to be unfamiliar with, the details of the Plan. More detail of how this process will work is required. Page 5 of 9 Draft Perth and Peel Green Growth Plan - May 2016
4. There has been no cost benefit study undertaken to quantify the promised streamlined environmental approvals approach and verify that it will deliver a benefit to the community as intended. How will a streamlined process be properly measured and quantified? How will the gains be implemented how much improvement from the current process can be expected to be realised? 5. The process for the creation and assembly of the 170,000 hectares of conservation land requires further clarification. Any land which is currently zoned for housing should not be removed from the land supply pipeline decisions to unzone current residential land should not be entertained. 6. Any future land to be designated as conservation land should be delivered within the normal planning process and occur at the earliest stage possible in the land development process e.g. designation for urban development or rezoning. Decisions made at the rezoning stage should be binding on all future applications, thereby removing the need for new mapping, assessments or removal of land previously available for development. Also individual housing allotments should be exempt from the need to undertake site specific assessments of flora and fauna. It would appear this is the intention. 7. It is unclear as to how the conservation program will be implemented. Unlike conservation management undertaken elsewhere, there does not appear to be any levy allocated to contribute towards the purchase of offset or conservation land. It is therefore assumed that developers must contribute to the development of conservation land through the purchase of offsets as they develop their land. The Government must ensure that there are cost effective options available and that any offset management requirements are stated well in advance of the zoning of land for residential purposes. Developers need to have a choice of offsets to ensure that the outcomes of this process do not adversely affect housing affordability and that the species intended to be protected is effectively protected. 8. The Draft Plan locks in the Perth and Peel @3.5 Million Plan and associated sub-regional frameworks. Whilst this provides for certainty, there is an inherent risk of inflexibility such that there will be considerable reticence to amend boundaries in the future, particularly additional urban extensions, despite any assurances that there will be flexibility to amend the Matters of National Environmental Significance (MNES). Perth and Peel @ 3.5 million provides a reasonably fixed land use plan which relies on the allocation of existing land identified for urban use which is limited to a specified footprint, rather than providing flexibility for more land supply into the future when needed. It relies on an aggressive turn around in housing diversity to create the intended a 47:53 split between greenfield and infill areas. This represents a major change from the current build rates of around 30 per cent in infill areas. Infill areas are already struggling with development approvals. In addition, the population and housing projections in Perth and Peel @ 3.5 million appeared to be on the low side. The implication of this is that more land than currently envisaged may be required to meet Perth s housing needs into the future. If Perth and Peel @ 3.5 million does not eventuate as planned this could have dire consequences for land supply. A 5 year review is welcomed, but government must be willing to consider adjustments to the Draft Plan if required and based on demand for land and housing. 9. HIA is aware of developments which have been excluded from the Framework Plan due to the potential impacts on the Peel Harvey Estuary. Planning decisions for the future of Perth appear to be unequally weighted towards environmental concerns and conservation of land. The conservation principles in the Draft Plan will override other sound and valid planning principles for the Perth region including the economic growth, infrastructure development, provision of usable open space, neighbourhood design and most critically housing affordability. Priority appears to be given to reducing nutrient inflow into the Peel Page 6 of 9 Draft Perth and Peel Green Growth Plan - May 2016
Harvey Estuary without recognition that contemporary development improves water quality in the Estuary. 10. The mapping is inadequate and in some cases not particularly accurate. The identification of individual parcels of land has been quite difficult. Whilst the online maps appear to have been reissued, with a better level of information, and additional time allowed for comment, the Fact sheet with Frequently asked Questions about the maps creates some doubts about how much they can be relied upon. It states that: The mapping is based on the best available current data from environmental agencies but is not intended to be used to identify environmental values on specific sites. Feedback or additional environmental survey data is welcome. Known existing approvals have also been included as an overlay. It is likely that some existing approvals may not have been captured so users should refer to their approval documentation for any environmental conditions or requirements for clarity, where possible. Large areas of broad commitments and values are shown on the maps, which will require further refinement before the mapping is finalised. 11. Some habitats and specific and broad commitments such as CCWs and black cockatoo habitats are not individually delineated in the mapping. Several sites within the urban footprint are known to contain black cockatoo habitat but are not mapped as such and vice versa. Other sites are mapped as supporting habitat where no vegetation remains. The risks associated with the interpretation of inaccurate mapping are already evident with agencies forming positions based on the Draft Plan mapping and incorrectly requiring projects to conform. 12. Affected land owners should be entitled to accurate information on their land being affected, and how any proposed change of use or development on their property will be assessed. 13. Disputes will inevitably arise from the mapping process. A robust dispute resolution measure needs to be considered which is fair to all parties and a system of compensation to affected landowners must be part of any plan. Affected land owners include those whose land is devalued or compromised as part of this proposal. 14. As mentioned earlier, despite designating land for conservation purposes, it is not clear from the Draft Plan exactly how the conservation land will be assembled. It is assumed that this will come from the purchase of offsets by developers and government over time. HIA has been unable to establish a standard cost or levy that may potentially be applied to establish the conservation land. The Draft Plan must outline this process and if required address the need for potential compensation of land owners where development rights are withdrawn. 4. CONSERVATION PLAN 4.1 2.0 KEY POLICY MEASURES (P13) 4.1.4 2.1 Advanced Environmental Outcomes (p14) 15. The Draft Plan has outlined it will create and manage a conservation reserve system commitment to protect an additional 170,000 hectare of land with significant environmental values through the creation of new and expanded conservation gains. A high level map on page 7 shows the existing reserves and phase 1 and phase 2 purchases which will constitute the further 170,000 hectares for future preservation. 16. Using a simpler form of words would make interpretation of these matters easier. It is unclear how the avoidance of activity (including the avoidance of 16,400 hecatres of native vegetation removal) is part of Page 7 of 9 Draft Perth and Peel Green Growth Plan - May 2016
the 170,000 new hectares of conservation land or other separate land. Whilst the concepts appear to be sound, plain English would assist with a clearer interpretation. 17. The Plan also identifies that 12,700ha of Carnaby cockatoo foraging habitat exists within the assessment footprint of the Swan Coastal Plain. The Draft Plan provides for the clearing of 9,700ha which, if interpreted correctly, means 3,000ha is proposed to be retained presumably by setting aside land in urban and industrial developments. Without further detail of the location of the 3,000 ha this Plan creates uncertainty and undermines confidence for land owners. There needs to be a clear statement as to how the 3,000ha and additional conservation of black cockatoo habitat will be achieved. 18. The scale of the maps provided in the documents has meant that it is difficult to understand exactly what is being proposed on a given individual parcel of land. Critical to this process is the creation of a reliable mapping system with enough detail for land owners to understand the impacts. Online maps appear to address this to some extent now. 19. As mentioned, proponents and the community must have a clear understanding of the changes that will apply to their land and how this impacts both their development rights and land values. This is a vital part of the process. A varied environmental obligation impacts the value of a property and the price a proponent will pay for it. When housing companies are undertaking a feasibility study for the purchase of a potential site, calculating its value would include an assessment of the current constraints that apply to the land and obviously an estimate of the potential yield of a purchase. 20. If land has been purchased with particular development rights then changing its status and presenting avoidance requirements over that land represents a down zoning. The existing rights of those land owners needs to be considered as part of the Draft Plan. 21. There does not appear to be any mention around proposed state land acquisitions or any associated compensation funding where conservation sites are required to be purchased. Or as mentioned earlier of any levy system that contributes to the purchase of offset land. 22. It seems likely that of the land to be acquired some will be reserved (under Region or Local Planning Schemes) and also that future reserves may be currently privately owned. There may be opportunities for land owners to sell their land to the State or seek compensation from the State government for loss as a consequence of any reservation under Planning or Land Legislation. Again this appears to need further clarification. 4.1.2 2.5 Streamlining Environmental Approvals (P22) 23. This section of the Draft Plan outlines the plans to switch off Part 9 of the EPBC Act making the state responsible for the assessment of both state and Commonwealth approvals. This new process is essential in removing the current two step approach that residential developers have been required to navigate for many years now across all states and territories.. This should enable land owners to work with a single approval body and apply for one approval rather than two which is long overdue and a critical part of the reform package. The Draft Plan provides the framework for a more integrated approach when compared to a project by project assessment basis which is supported. 24. However the removal of the Commonwealth from the process must not lead to a potentially more onerous process where more projects are captured than is currently the case. Much of this assessment and reporting will be undertaken by State and Local Government planning and environmental officers who were not trained or experts in species protection and are likely to be unfamiliar with the details of the Draft Plan. Page 8 of 9 Draft Perth and Peel Green Growth Plan - May 2016
25. It is also critical that the application of the process does not apply retrospectively. It is vital that the plan accurately designates (through state planning mechanisms) land that has been included in the strategic environmental assessment and has therefore been identified as available for housing development without the need for further investigation, mapping, offsets, or assessments. This needs to be done at the earliest stage of the process so land is not sterilised from its development rights at a later stage. HIA is aware of cases where governments have attempted to alter the status of the land at a later stage - retrospectively applying controls. Any approach should be delivered within the normal planning processes and occur at the earliest stage possible in the land development process being the point of designation of land for urban development or rezoning for residential use. 26. Decisions made as part of a rezoning approval, particularly those that have already occurred prior to the introduction of this Plan, should be viewed as binding on all future applications, thereby removing the need for new mapping, assessments or removal of land previously available for development. 4.1.3 5.0 Implementation Framework 27. The governance arrangements and responsibility for the implementation of the Plan are outlined including the overarching Executive Body reporting to a select group of state government Ministers. Partnerships with local government are envisaged and a hierarchy and sequencing of the planning process is provided. 28. In regards to Urban, industrial and rural residential development, the statement on p61 With respect to already zoned but as yet undeveloped urban and industrial land, proponent will need to meet specific commitments articulated in the Strategic Conservation Plan (Action Plans F, G and H as well as implement any EP Act advice or conditions provided through existing planning and approvals processes. The plan needs to be much clearer in articulating that the rights of existing land will not alter. This plan should not be implemented retrospectively or take away existing use rights from current land owners. 5. CONCLUSION The Draft Plan and supporting documents and maps are extensive. Due to the level of detail and volume of specific environmental assessments, particularly contained in the State Strategy Impact Assessment Reports, HIA is unable to provide any comment on this element of the documentation. HIA has sought to review the principal concepts for the Draft Plan with a view to ensure that an appropriate process is established for the identification of areas for protection and preservation, for the approval of development on land where appropriate and to align the Commonwealth and State Legislation for environmental protection. It would appear the Draft Plan does work towards this outcome, however the complexity of the information released for comment makes it extremely difficult to have certainty that the final outcome will be a success. The comments set out above highlight areas that HIA believes could be improved with further consultation or clarification of intent. HIA would be pleased to continue working with the Government to ensure that endangered species and habitats are adequately protected for future generations. Page 9 of 9 Draft Perth and Peel Green Growth Plan - May 2016