Satterley’s Perth Hills housing estate granted federal environmental approval

Australia’s biggest private land developer has been granted federal environmental approval for its proposed offset plan amid its long-running battle to build a sprawling 1000-lot housing estate in the Perth Hills.

Labor Hasluck MP Tania Lawrence received written advice from federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek that the offset plan proposed by the Satterley Property Group had been approved under the Howard-era Federal Environmental Biodiversity Act.

Satterley Property Group founder and chief executive Nigel Satterley, federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek. Credit: WAtoday (composite)

The letter stated the department accepted that the clearing associated with the development – which would destroy habitat used by cockatoos and chuditches – could be managed by planting trees in another location.

But Lawrence said she was “gutted by the fact we have a development potentially putting 3000 people in harm’s way”, referring to fire risk concerns flagged in opposition to the project including by WA’s former fire commissioner Wayne Gregson.

“Satterley and the Anglican Church need to understand when you put back-to-back properties in the Hills, like you see in new suburbs like Brabham, you are creating an extremely heightened fire risk that cannot be defended,” she said.

But Plibersek said the federal government had no authority to intervene in local planning decisions when it came to bushfire risk.

The federal environmental approval now leaves the final decision on the housing estate in the hands of the State Administrative Tribunal.

Last month, Satterley Property Group was due to lodge legal papers to SAT appealing the WA Planning Commission’s December 2023 rejection of its proposed North Stoneville estate.

In rejecting the plans, the peak planning body determined they failed to address bushfire and traffic concerns. It was the second time the plans had been rejected.

Satterley’s lawyers called for a last-minute delay to lodging the paperwork, prompting a rapidly convened directions hearing in the State Administrative Tribunal, which gave the developer until October 4 to appeal.

Satterley’s lawyers argued that the planning appeal should wait for federal environment approval. They said refusal would likely have killed off the plan.

That decision was made public on Tuesday, despite the federal government sitting on the application since 2018.

Liberal WA Senator Linda Reynolds also condemned the decision, and said Plibersek had the “capacity and authority” to defer the decision under the Act.

“Recent bushfires in 2003, 2008, 2014, and 2021 all occurred within 5 kilometres of the proposed development site,” she said.

“The proposal includes dense residential properties, significantly increasing fire risk and endangering the entire estate with limited emergency evacuation measures, threatening lives of residents in the Perth Hills”.

Reynolds called for the State Administrative Tribunal to reject the proposed development at its forthcoming directions hearing.

The tribunal hearing for the planning appeal is scheduled for 2025 and was touted to be Satterley’s final chance.

Earlier this year, the property group’s lawyer Alex McGlue made it clear in the SAT that Satterley would not abandon its pursuit of a housing estate in North Stoneville.

Save Perth Hills chair Peter Brazier said it was an “environmentally irresponsible” decision that would seen urban sprawl destroy an area larger than Kings Park, and part of Australia’s last remaining rare biodiverse environments, home to federally listed endangered Black Cockatoos.

“This is a gobsmackingly disgraceful decision by the Albanese Government, that purports to put the Australian environment as a priority,” he said.

“This environmental approval, that strikes at the very heart of Perth’s Hills, demonstrates an appalling
indifference by the Federal Government of the bigger picture fallout around environmental sustainability.”

Satterley has been attempting to establish the estate on 535 hectares owned by the Anglican Church diocese since 2016, when the church recruited the company to develop a townsite for 2800 people, three schools and a 193-hectare conservation area.

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