Mr PALLAS (Tarneit) — In rising to speak on  this bill, I feel challenged  by the  contribution  of the member for Essendon, which opened with  a  quote  from Albert Einstein.  I too would like to  draw on a quote  from Albert Einstein. He said, ‘If you can’t explain it  to  a  six-year-old,  you  don’t  understand  it yourself’.

We  have heard many contributions  to the second-reading debate  today that have strayed far from the reality of what the bill seeks to do. We have heard speaker after speaker on the  government side  talk to  us about the simplicity that the bill  will  bring to the planning permit  process.  People  should  be  wary  of governments offering simplicity  to  the community at the same time as they take away rights, because it means that  the community’s  rights — the rights of the people — to preserve what they value or believe to be theirs are ultimately put at risk.

What  is  at stake  is  our  built  history —  our  heritage  — and the  look, livability and feel of our  suburbs.  Simply taking away rights, however this is expressed and even if the objective is  claimed  to be simplification, will come at  a  cost to the community.  To  put it another  way,  every solution to every problem is simple; it is the distance between the two where the mystery lies.

It is that  distance,  that circumvention of common sense, that this bill stands accused of. What we  are looking at here is  a bill which provides that planning permits  are  required  for  everything  from  modest renovations or extensions, whether  it  be  fences or other smaller structures, to what could ultimately be major renovations and multistorey developments.

We know and have  heard  from a number of speakers on this  side  of the chamber that  there  are something like  55 000 permit applications  approved each year. That number should cause some level of concern if they are not dealt with fairly and  effectively,  and  it  is the transparency of the system that matters  most because you cannot preserve what  you cannot keep track of. The bill effectively provides for classes of permits that  can  be  created  via  a  planning  scheme amendment.

A planning scheme amendment can originate from a council or from a minister, and we know from the terms of the bill that there is no limit to or of  a  class  of permit anywhere in the legislation; it could  be limited to a 20-storey building in a residential street. As speaker after speaker  on this  side have  said, the silence of the legislation on giving an appreciation of what constitutes a class of permit is a matter of grave concern.

It has been  said  that  all politics is local, and this  is  an issue that will create confusion and concern,  all  at the altar of simplicity. When people say, ‘We are trying  to simplify  things by taking away your rights’, we know exactly what that means; it means they are saying, ‘We are trying to steamroll you as we proceed to implement our own agenda’. We are effectively seeing a

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department that is charged with responsibility of overseeing  the performance of local government and  the planning system  more  generally — the  Department of Planning and Community Development  — having its budget  cut by $29.6  million. You cannot get scrutiny if you do  not have  scrutineers. Essentially  we have a vague piece of legislation with a vague  explanation of what constitutes a class of  permit,  and  we have no capacity to  adequately  oversee  and  protect  the community in this regard.

Whilst Albert Einstein might have thought it is not simple if you cannot explain it to a six-year-old, I prefer to see this legislation as something Groucho Marx would have  seen  much  more value in.  He  would say, ‘A  child  of  five could understand this legislation; go fetch a child of five’.

That is what is wrong with  it: the simplicity is so simplistic that it has lost the  basic virtue  and value  of its  objective, and  that is the  protection of individual  rights  and  the  protection  of  communities  concerned about their amenity and ultimately where that amenity will best be protected.

In  my  local  government  area,  Wyndham, unlike in  that  of  the  member  for Mornington, we do not have over  3000  planning  applications on average a year. However, we have  a  community that is growing  at  an enormous rate; we  have a community that  is  growing by the population of Benalla every year. Believe me, when you have that  sort  of  concentration  of  people  moving  in  people  get concerned about  their amenity. They get  concerned about their rights and their right to express a view in the full knowledge of what is happening in and around their households. These rights are being taken away.

In taking them away what we are effectively doing is sacrificing at the altar of efficiency the  right to  transparency — the right for  people to  know, to  be concerned and to express their concerns.

When we silence that sort of criticism all we do is create an undercurrent of concern, opposition and frustration, and ultimately we undermine the very thing we are trying to facilitate, which is an open and inclusive community — one that is supportive of development in and around its area. While it might be irritating — and I can understand the frustration of developers about the fact that there are people who take exception to developments that developers see as being relatively simple — that is why we have tribunals. Their job is to assess those matters. Their job is to make a judgement call.

In my area,  while we have 12 500  people moving into the  community every year, there are only 1100 planning applications lodged — effectively about a third of the number lodged in the member for Mornington’s community.  What we are seeing, therefore, is a greater bulking up of those applications. We  are  talking about broadacre development, and  we are ultimately talking  about the nature  of  the community  that we are  creating. These are  not  little planning  applications; these are  planning applications commensurate with  what a suburb or a community or a  block  would look  like. People  should have  the right  to express  their concerns, because if they do  not have those rights,  ultimately our communities will be the  poorer  for it. They will  be poorer not just because  these people feel frustrated  about their right to express a view about what is happening  in and around  their households and what is impacting upon their quiet enjoyment of their asset but because these people have a right  to express their view because we live in a  democracy.  Possession of rights should not be simply extinguished at the altar of efficiency.

Sometimes  democracy is  not the most efficient system — I think it was Winston Churchill who said that — but of course it is the price we pay for our liberty. That is why small communities effectively have the  right  to  band  together to express their  views and  concerns. As the minister at the table has said,  ‘You have a right to express a concern  about a garage. If that garage builds over  a right  of way  and your  access to  your facility, you should have  that right’. However, we do not  know what the entire content  of the problem might  be,  and therein lies the problem. Because the minister has silenced people in a job lot, he has effectively done a job on the lot of them. That is essentially where this falls down,  because in a community where people have rights they also have  the right to express their concerns, and that is not what this bill  does. It alters at the  altar of efficiency what is  more important to people, and that is their right to stand up for themselves and be heard.

See Tim’s Speech in Hansard here.