We’ve featured the Minister for Planning’s response(s) on the question he was asked in parliament last week concerning the publication of submissions on the Zoning Reforms. His answer was that it is all in the hands of the Advisory Committee who must first perform a ‘peer review’ of the submissions. As the opposition member pointed out, the real reason is probably that the vast majority of the submissions were totally negative!
Just to clarify the issue further we quote from the Minister’s terms of reference for this Advisory Committee – “Any documents provided to the Committee must be available for public inspection until submission of its report, unless the Committee specifically directs that the material is to remain confidential”. More buck passing it appears, since the Minister in his response does not seem to understand the terms that he or his department set down. He stated: “It would not be appropriate that they would be peer reviewing a public document, because obviously there would be influence on them to do that. The documents will be made public when the process is concluded. That is the appropriate way to do business, and that is how it will be done.”
We got pretty tired of waiting, so doing a simple Google search, revealed the following submissions. No real surprises in that the Building and Planning industries are all gung-ho about the proposed changes. Readers may access the documents simply by clicking on the desired ones.
Planning Institute of Australia, Victorian Division
Victorian Local Governance Association (VLGA)
Glen Eira Debates 