Planning for People not Profit

Our planning system has slowly become less democratic. The result is that communities are being cut out from decision-making, heritage places and green spaces are being destroyed, and agricultural land is under threat from encroaching development. Over the past decades, State Governments have reduced the role of Council Assessment Panels (CAPs) in development assessments and increased the powers of the State Commission Assessment Panel (SCAP). Meanwhile, the Minister for Planning has been granted sweeping ‘call in’ powers to wrest development assessment authority away from local councils and communities. Developers have been relying on the centralisation of power to avoid scrutiny and get their way, regardless of council or community opposition. We need to transform our planning system to put communities first – not developers and their profit margins.

SA's planning system is complex and bureaucratic, with limited avenues for communities to fight bad planning decisions. The Greens will restore third-party appeal rights in the planning system by reintroducing an affordable, tribunal-based appeals process and establish an independent planning advisory service, open to community members who need help and advice with development applications and other planning processes.

Our communities and their local elected representatives on council are best placed to develop plans about the shape of their neighbourhoods. We will increase the number of councillors in CAPs from 1 to 2 (with no reduction to the existing number of independent planning experts) to allow for more community input and local knowledge in planning assessment while still maintaining the independence of the assessment process. 

The Greens will tighten the circumstances where the Minister for Planning can exercise their ‘call in’ powers that wrest development assessment authority away from local councils and communities. We will legislate so that where a code amendment proposed by a council is not approved by the Minister for Planning or where the Minister proposes a code amendment and it is opposed by the council, the decision is put to State Parliament’s Environment, Resources, and Development (ERD) Committee to break the deadlock. We will also reform the ERD Committee so that it consists of two crossbenchers (one of whom must be the Chair), two opposition members, and two government members to ensure that the Committee is not dominated by the Government of the day.

The design of SA’s planning system as a ‘performance’ based system versus a ‘control’ based system has resulted in discretionary planning controls becoming the default type of planning rule used for most decisions. This means that developers are easily able to twist the rules to increase their yields and profits. Our system needs more mandatory controls across the entire scheme to increase certainty in the system and create sustainable, liveable neighbourhoods. 

The Greens want to make building height limits strict and binding, rather than negotiable and discretionary, and to restrict the declaration of major projects to those of real significance (e.g. projects more than $100m and in the public interest).

There’s more to do to ensure residential developments are as liveable as possible. The Greens want mandatory light-coloured roofs in metropolitan areas to help mitigate the urban heat island effect and require apartment buildings of five storeys and above to provide 50% of their roof space for either solar panels or a green roof. We also want to legislate minimum apartment sizes to ensure that they are high-quality, long-term homes for people and families.

As the impacts of climate change intensify our cities, suburbs, and towns are becoming hotter and more vulnerable to extreme climate events like floods and bush fires. Too many major projects and urban developments are being greenlit without enough consideration of whether they are resilient to climate change and adaptable to weather extremes. Our planning system must take the impacts of climate change into account.

The Greens want to introduce climate trigger assessments for new major projects and code amendments. This will mean that before undertaking a development project, developers must ensure that the project does not contribute unnecessarily to climate change through excess pollution, reduction in open space, or reduction in trees or green spaces. Projects that significantly exacerbate the climate crisis or put communities at risk because of more frequent climate disaster events would not be approved.

A planning system that serves the interests of developers rather than the community has put SA’s iconic places at risk. Over the last few years, Adelaide has seen the closure of historic pubs and venues like the Tivoli, the Producers and the Hotel Wright Street. 

Recently, the Crown & Anchor came under threat and was only saved from demolition by a massive community campaign that pressured the State Government to intervene. The loss of these venues threatens Adelaide’s cultural and community life. The Greens will strengthen existing state heritage protections for iconic buildings to ensure that they remain in public hands and establish a community right to buy land or buildings that are of social and cultural value. Under this scheme, local councils, community organisations and charities would be able to nominate land or buildings that are of community value for inclusion on a register of assets. If the owner of an asset decides to sell it, a 12-month moratorium would apply to give community groups which that an interest in purchasing the asset the opportunity to raise funds and purchase it. The owner of the asset could bypass the community right to buy process if they are selling a business as a ‘going concern’ (for instance they sell a pub to a buyer who will continue to operate the space as a pub).

Meanwhile, the Adelaide Park Lands are shrinking. Each successive generation loses a little bit more, and there is no mechanism to reclaim them.  The Greens will legislate to prevent the State Government from rezoning the Parklands without the approval of both Houses of Parliament and push to add the Park Lands to the State Heritage List in recognition of their cultural, historic, and environmental heritage. 

Community spaces are crucial for fostering creativity, diversity, and participation. The Greens will defend existing community spaces from being lost and advocate for creating more and better facilities for the community members to gather.

It’s time to reform our system to ensure SA’s cherished places receive the protections they deserve. If we lose them, we will never get them back.