Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure, in these two minutes I have, to share with the Senate a magnificent achievement of the Cook Labor government in Western Australia. They've introduced what they call the Planning and Development Amendment Bill 2023, which enables the delivery of priority planning reforms which are identified through significant community and industry consultation undertaken over the past six years. Key elements of the bill to facilitate the acceleration of housing delivery and cut unnecessary red tape include a new permanent significant development pathway for projects; clearer decision-making in local government for single houses; changes to development assessment panels; updates to existing planning processes to further cut red tape and duplication; and reform of the West Australian planning commission.

The new permanent significant development pathway will create—and this is what is magnificent—a streamlined, efficient and coordinated pathway for complex proposals of more than $20 million in the Perth and Peel regions and more than $5 million in regional Western Australia.

In a nutshell, to put it simply—and I'm prepared for the barrage of, 'We're going to defend some of these inefficiencies'—how many times has each of us heard about the frustration of waiting for developments from local councils? I don't care which local councils want to have the argument with me, because the majority or in fact all of the people I speak to, whether it's Comcar drivers here or people back in Western Australia, express the frustration of trying to get some common sense in planning and development within local councils. Well, thank goodness, in the grand state of Western Australia, with a grown-up government under Premier Cook, they've circumvented that, and we can now get things moving—especially now, when we have such a housing crisis.