Chamber of Commerce said Waterfront hotel failure should prompt change
The decision by hotel developers to pull out of Darwin should be a “warning bell” for change. Read why the NT needs reform.
The Head of Australia’s peak business body said the federal government must move to simplify development approvals in the Territory in the wake of the collapse of plans to build a Darwin waterfront hotel.
The comments come days after Larrakia custodians at Stokes Hill appealed to the Commonwealth to stop the hotel development because of concerns hotel guests would overlook a sacred site for the tawny frogmouth bird.
While federal Labor minister Andrew Giles minimalised the impacts of Aboriginal heritage and cultural approvals on developments, Australian Chamber of Commerce chief executive Andrew McKellar said the withdrawal of developer SHG Australia Hotel Pty Ltd from the waterfront hotel project this week should serve as a “warning bell” to Canberra.
“What I see here is this has got to be a warning bell and government has to heed the lessons,” Mr McKellar said.
“You have to have a degree of certainty, a degree of predictability and you have to be able to deal with significant investors in a transparent way so that they know they can take you at face value and they know what they’re dealing with.
“Of course in any project there are going to be decision points and there’s going to be risks that have to be evaluated along the way, but the role of government is to be as clear and as transparent as possible, because if you don’t get the balance right.
“If you don’t get that the balance right, then you risk losing projects like this. It sends a very negative signal to investors elsewhere and whether it’s domestic or international they pick up on that.
“They see that and it just chops out opportunities for the future and you lose out on income and jobs and it has a multiplier effect. It’s not necessarily catastrophic, but I think it really sends a reverberating signal to other investors who are looking not just at the Northern Territory, but Australia for potential investment.”
Federal Skills and Training Minister Andrew Giles said reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act passed in federal parliament last week would streamline development approvals.
Asked to reflect on the impact of cultural and heritage restrictions in the NT, Mr Giles said the regulations were “appropriate”.
“Obviously there are appropriate regulations, whether they deal with cultural heritage, whether they deal with other aspects that we need to deal with,” he said.
“The last act of the federal parliament was to pass groundbreaking reforms which will make it quicker to get to yes or quicker to get to no.”
SHG Australia withdrew its application to build a $100m waterfront hotel because Larrakia Aboriginal custodians of the land objected because it overlooked a sacred site.
When the NT Government passed legislation to streamline development approvals, Larrakia custodians Helen Secretary and Bill Risk appealed to the Commonwealth to overturn the project under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984.
The project received development approval in July 2024, with developers sweating on the approval of an authority certificate to build near a sacred site, that was never approved.
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Originally published as Chamber of Commerce said Waterfront hotel failure should prompt change
