Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to comment on the government’s amendments. I too am pleased that the government has noted the concerns of many senators—particularly of those on the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport as a result of its hearings—over what was a ridiculous process. You had the situation where the community’s feedback via submissions to any development were taken by the developer, summarised by the developer and then given to the federal minister for decision without the original comments going to the minister. As no developer was going to summarise the objections to their development in the manner of the person who put them forward, what you had was a distorted reflection going to the federal minister of the extent of public opposition to or concerns about any development. It is a big improvement that now not only the developer’s summary of the objections and submissions will go to the federal minister but also all of the submissions in their original form will go to the minister so he can make a judgement for himself or herself as to the adequacy of the assessment of those submissions.

While  I am really pleased that the government has done that, I am really disappointed that the government has not taken on board the recommendation of the non-government senators saying:

The non-government Senators consider that the public consultation process will be much improved if airport-lessee companies, as part of the public comment process, make available to the general public copies of assessments undertaken to assess the social, environment and economic impacts of the development.

This is particularly pertinent to the Hobart ‘big box’ development because we have a situation where a social and economic impact statement for that development was not made public. To this day it has still not been made public. As a result of pressure in the state parliament, a brief summary was eventually released which said it is not expected to lead to significant adverse economic impact on other retail centres in the surrounding area—and that came from the developer.

I simply cannot understand how that could be logical when they are proposing a retail development, 77,000 square metres of new shops, in a city with fewer than 250,000 people. How is this possible? Of course it is going to have an impact on other retail centres. In fact, many people are saying that it will effectively make the CBD the dead heart of Hobart because it is going to put so much pressure on local retail businesses and other retail businesses in other shopping centres around the city. How can such a huge development be seen as not having an adverse impact? We have not had the benefit of the impact assessment. That is wrong. People are invited to make submissions on a development, and a key document, the social and economic impact statement for that development, is kept secret. It is my view that it was kept secret because any proper analysis would determine that it is going to have an adverse economic impact. I think it is wrong.

I would be interested to know from the minister why the Commonwealth does not think it is appropriate that the community have access to that information at the time that they are making their public submissions in response to a development application. In my view it is not fair process, proper process, to keep those documents secret, especially in this case where it turns out that the developer is the Tasmanian government. Again, that is a deception that has gone on in Tasmania. A development application was put forward by a company which the public were unaware is one hundred per cent owned by the state government. We then had Tasmanian government ministers saying: ‘Oh, isn’t it terrible! The Commonwealth are going to make this decision; they are taking it out of our own planning laws.’ Yes—and the state government is the developer. Paul Lennon, the Premier of Tasmania, with one phone call could have had the social and economic impact statement released, but he chose not to do it. He chose to shut the public out just as he is currently doing with the pulp mill proposal.

I would like to know from the minister what justification the Commonwealth has for not requiring the public submissions to go to the minister through this formal process and why the Commonwealth will not require that these social, environmental and economic impact statements also be made available before the period for acceptance of public submissions closes. That is an absolutely critical point, particularly in relation to this Hobart development, because I think in years to come a great many people around the Hobart CBD and other shopping centres will not be able to compete with this megadevelopment, this direct factory outlet, at Hobart airport. The onus is then going to be on the Tasmanian and federal governments to explain why the economic analysis was never made public and why the public were not told about what was going on in relation to that. I would be interested to know what the minister has to say.

I am going to move my amendment a bit later and comment on that in relation to state government approvals, but I have to say I think it is pretty lame to say there will be confusion about what is an aviation purpose and what is a non-aviation purpose in terms of commercial development. It is pretty clear to me that a direct factory outlet has nothing to do with aviation activities, and, in the context of the letter the state premiers have written to the federal minister, that is obviously what they think. In fact, the state premiers support the intent of the amendment I intend to shortly move on restoring state, territory and local by-laws and planning laws in relation to these developments. I heard what the minister had to say about ex gratia rates payments, but the issue here becomes that those rates payments are made, in this case, to the state government and will bypass local government. But it is local government that has to provide many of the facilities—roads, water, amenities and so on—and deal with the environmental impacts in their local government area. So I am interested to know about that. I also asked last night, Minister, where the Hobart megastore development is up to in its planning process. Senator Scullion was representing the government last night. I would like an indication from the minister where that is up to.