So the Victorian Planning Minister, Matthew Guy, has established an Advisory Committee to “overhaul” the Victorian planning system. Talk about a mixture of feelings.
It’s worth reflecting on how many reviews there have been into the functioning of the Victorian system since the major overhaul in the 1990s that produced the VPPs. In terms of reviews or audits of either the overall operation of the system, or very substantial parts of it, we have the following:
- Better Decisions Faster: Opportunities to Improve the Planning System in Victoria (August 2003)
- Cutting Red Tape in Planning (August 2006)
- Making Local Policy Stronger – Report of the Ministerial Working Group on Local Planning Policy (June 2007)
- Melbourne 2030: Audit Expert Group Report (March 2008)
- Victoria’s Planning Framework for Land Use and Development (May 2008)
- Modernising Victoria’s Planning Act (various discussion papers throughout 2009)
It’s a bit shocking just putting the list together. That doesn’t include the various reports into particular bits of the system, such as the smaller system reviews still noted as active (as I write, this includes the controls for advertising signs, home based business, the residential zones, parking provisions, retail policy, and the State Planning Policy Framework) and a few others that seem to have gone AWOL (such as the review of the heritage overlays, or the functioning of Section 173 Agreements).
It is dispiriting seeing so many system reviews amount to so little. I work in local government and that is where I have spent most of my professional life. Every working day I see examples of the dysfunction of the system, with long-standing problems left unfixed year after year. And I should at this point declare my other interest in this, too, which is that I spent eighteen months at DPCD working in the systems reform area, including on some of the above projects. My local government experience has left me with a passion for the need for meaningful planning systems reform; my state government experience left me rather cynical about the prospects of achieving it.
So when I see a new Advisory Committee report is being prepared, part of me despairs that we are at the starting gate again. What did all the previous reviews achieve? Why has the progress on implementing them been so patchy? Can’t the Department act on the many recommendations it already has? For that matter, don’t the new Minister and incoming government bring anything to the table? Don’t they have some ideas of their own as to how to fix things? (We asked Matthew Guy in an interview for Planning News before the election, and didn’t get a great deal).
On the other hand, I don’t think any of those reviews really had the answer, and there is a depressing conformity to them. While some are feistier than others (the Melbourne 2030 audit being the obvious example) many of them have held to a party line that the system is basically okay and needs only minor tinkering. This view, I think, is too shaped by a respect for the basic monolithic advance of the VPPs, which were undoubtedly a major leap forward and a colossal achievement. But the evolution stopped dead at the end of the 1990s, and it is well past time to take an honest look at what doesn’t work about the system. In saying everything is basically okay, the previous reviews underestimated the fundamental structural problems at work in the VPPs. What’s more, we have tended to see the same proposed fixes pop up over and over again, with “code assessment” being the classic example. It is as if the VPPs came not just with a state government-approved set of tools for building planning schemes, but also a pre-approved template of reform initiatives. Hopefully the new review can break out of those confines.
I intend to be more specific and constructive about what I mean by this in future posts: at the very least, I expect to make a submission to the review and will post it here. I encourage others to also have their say when the public submission period begins.
Image by Philip Milne; used under Creative Commons Licence. Click the image for details.