The Planning Minister,Richard Wynne,now exercises extraordinary powers to designate state projects and exempt them from planning scheme requirements.
Wynne often intervenes to amend planning schemes,often overriding the need for permits and review while removing resident rights to object,appeal or be notified of proposals.
Major land use ventures are being,in effect,outsourced to bodies charged with delivering transport and other projects.Legislation gives the Suburban Rail Loop Authority control over all development along the 90-kilometre suburban loop.
This project is a critically important land-use project because it will reorient the city from the CBD to multiple centres.Yet councils and residents will be denied meaningful contributions to the type and scale of development in every activity centre and zone along this route.
The government also bypasses conventional planning processes for level crossing removals and other transport projects. Labor justifies this by claiming that resident involvement would be unlikely to lead to project changes.
Resident groups often contribute ideas to improve projects such as those proposed for Parkdale,Surrey Hills and Mont Albert at lower cost. But Labor dismisses opposition as irrelevant.