Councillor Chris Harris cites UNSW for 'poor form'

From City of Sydney Councillor, Chris Harris...

Residents furious at CoFA backflip April 19th, 2010

It seemed like the battle of the CoFA development was over but the University of NSW has turned its back on the community once again. In my previous post on this topic I discussed how City of Sydney Council had reached a compromise agreement between Paddington residents and the University about the streets trucks would use during the contruction and when they would use them. What seemed like a victory for local residents and for good faith negotiations was, however, sadly short lived.

Much to the anger of the local community UNSW have now decided that they are unhappy with the agreed traffic management plan and are applying to the Department of Planning to have Council stripped of it’s power to make traffic management decisions about the site. This is poor form on the part of UNSW but also serves to highlight the broader issue of the pro-developer bias in the NSW planning system.

The notorious Part 3A powers of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, enacted by state parliament in 2005 when both the Labor and Liberal parties voted in favour of them, allow the planning Minister to usurp a Council’s powers to approve developments. The effect of Part 3A is that developments that are totally opposed by the communities most affected by them have a much greater chance of getting approved - especially if the proponent of the development is a donor to one of the major political parties.

I will be doing all I can to make sure the Department of Planning does not overturn the months of negotiations that went into developing the current traffic management plan. But this is only one battle in the ongoing war that my Greens collegues in state parliment have been fighting for many years against a highly flawed and unbalanced planning system.

COFA + UNSW indifferent to students and a bully says MP

NSW Parliament, 21 April 2010

Ms SYLVIA HALE [9.24 p.m.]: 
"Part 3A of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act is notorious. It allows the Minister for Planning to usurp a council's powers to determine developments in a council's area if the Minister decrees that the project is a major development or a development of State significance. Part 3A has allowed the Government to ruthlessly approve development applications that are totally opposed by the communities most affected by them. Needless to say, the chances of obtaining approval are infinitely greater if the applicant is a donor to the Australian Labor Party.

"The following are two examples of how part 3A is being used to ride roughshod over community concerns, environmental issues and the fundamentals of any democratic process. The first is the redevelopment of the College of Fine Arts site in Paddington by the University of New South Wales. No-one denies that existing conditions for staff and students are intolerable and that the site needs to be redeveloped. What is unacceptable, however, is the approval process. One of the main concerns voiced by local residents is that construction will take more than two years to complete.