Bush Summit: WA Planning Minister backs cuts to red tape

The exclusion of councils from WA’s planning ­regime is justified in part because of dysfunction in local government, the state’s Planning Minister has said.

WA Planning Minister John Carey at the Bush Summit in Port Hedland on Friday. Picture: Colin Murty

The exclusion of councils from Western Australia’s planning ­regime is justified in part because of dysfunction in local government, the state’s Planning Minister has said.

John Carey, a former suburban mayor, told the Bush Summit in Port Hedland on Friday that he did not resile from a radical streamlining of the state’s planning regime that earned the endorsement of the Institute of Public Affairs.

“A major focus of our government has been planning reform to drive those costs down for ­­de­velopment in Western Australia,” Mr Carey said. “If we don’t cut red tape, the cost to get developments up will see them fall over.”

Mr Carey has overseen a ­series of changes that allow ­developers and owner-occupiers to bypass councils in favour of government-appointed development assessment panels provided the planned works are valued at more than $2m.

Mr Carey, a former mayor of the inner-Perth City of Vincent, said some councils did great work in planning but others were “dysfunctional”.

The IPA’s annual Ease of Doing Business Report published on August 9 found the best performing states were Western Australian and South Australia. WA’s new planning laws were a key consideration. WA came first in construction costs, job ­vacancies, rental and fuel costs and development approval turnarounds.

Victoria was the worst state to do business in over the past year, according to the IPA report card.

Mr Carey was highly critical on Friday of the WA Nationals and Liberals opposition for what he claimed were their plans to wind back the reforms to preserve leafy suburbs in key electorates. He also dismissed the concerns of the state’s Corruption and Crime Commission, which has cautioned that cutting red tape meant cutting checks and balances.

A record 547,300 migrants ­arrived in Australia last year, ­according to ABS data. Based on official statistics of 2.5 people per household, 218,920 houses would have had to be built to ­accommodate the ­influx. This equates to 600 homes built every day or one every 2.4 minutes. This is before natural population growth is taken into account.

Housing Industry Association chief economist Tim Reardon has said 120,000 homes would have to be built to accommodate natural population growth and replacement of ageing stock before ­migration was even taken into account.