Parliament of Victoria | Legislative Council | Second Reading
9 December 2025
David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan Region):
Could I firstly thank Minister Shing and Mr Tarlamis for holding over the remaining second-reading speeches. I think after Thursday of last week we were all pretty shot, so it is much appreciated.
Harriet Shing: Speak for yourself. I was ready to go for hours.
I do not doubt it. Could I also ask at this point that the amendments in my name be circulated.
When this bill was announced on 28 October the government said that it was ‘delivering the biggest overhaul of Victoria’s planning laws in decades’. That much is certainly true. So how should one go about the process of overhauling a planning system, one might ask? You could take the New South Wales route.
You could talk to the opposition, talk to the Planning Institute of Australia and maybe even talk to the crossbench and try and reach a broad consensus about how the planning system should be reformed.
You could then take the bill through Parliament, improve it through amendments and end up with a bill that enjoys broad support and sets the planning system up for success for another generation.
Or you could take the Victorian route. You could write the bill behind closed doors, not talk to other legislators, definitely not talk to the 79 councils that will have to implement the reformed planning system and drop a 238-page bill into the Parliament.
You could also perhaps not, amazingly, as Ms Purcell referred to, take the Municipal Association of Victoria, which is legislated as the peak body on behalf of those 79 councils, and subject it to an NDA that is so comprehensive it even denies the existence of the NDA. This of course only came to earth as a result of the Planning and Environment Committee inquiry into consultation, and I think that sort of gagging is disgraceful.
But of course the government now rushes this bill through the Assembly and then demands that all stages of the bill go through the Legislative Council on the final scheduled sitting day of the year. As a cherry on top, you can pretend that the bill only does one thing, that it magically builds more houses, so that any criticism of the bill can be dismissed in advance as blocking housing supply.
Again, I commend Ms Purcell’s speech in terms of identifying the really regrettable way in which this debate has been framed into NIMBY versus YIMBY, with no meaningful discussion of how we build sustainable and amenable communities – and that is the missing centre here in this debate.
I am not in the habit of quoting myself, mainly because I am often wrong.
Harriet Shing: But you are about to do so.
That is exactly right. But I want to remind members of what I said in May after a select committee I chaired made unanimous recommendations about how the government could improve the way it does planning reform:
So there is still a lot of work to do. I imagine there will be plenty more Victoria Planning Provisions amendments coming down the line. I imagine there will also be some reforms to the act. Whether those reforms are designed to smash through or whether they are done in a way that generates public confidence is entirely up to the government. So far we have seen a lot of the former, and I hope we start seeing some of the latter.
When I made that statement Mrs McArthur insisted that I was, I think, ‘naive in the extreme’ – her words – to think that the government would heed my thoughts. I have to say, Mrs McArthur, you were right. That select committee was an eye-opening experience. It showed that we really do have a problem in this state with the way we go about reforming the planning system.
Well-intentioned codes and changes to the Victoria Planning Provisions (VPP) get drafted in a rush without consulting those who actually have to administer them, independent experts or the affected communities. And while these new codes and planning provisions might solve a few problems, too often they create new ones.
The removal of the ability of decision-makers to consider environmental risks like flood, fire and contaminated land under the Townhouse and Low-rise Code remains I think perhaps the best example of just that.
The select committee was also conducted in the context of a potential use of the powers of this chamber to disallow planning scheme amendments. If we did not have that power, we probably would not have had a select committee, and if we had not had the select committee, we would not have been able to discover just how rushed and inadequate some of these planning reforms have been.
That select committee made serious recommendations about how to go about planning reform in a way that achieves broad political and public support for urban densification and housing supply.
At the end of the day, every one of those recommendations was in the government’s own interests, because they all had the aim of building public support for reforms that lead to more efficient decisions and better outcomes.
Not only have the government not responded to the select committee’s recommendations, so upset were they at the slightest bit of public scrutiny that they have chosen the nuclear option, the bill repeals the Parliament’s power to disallow planning scheme amendments. This is the only real democratic check and balance on the government to ensure that its planning reforms are consistent with the act, and the government says, ‘Get rid of that.’
It goes without saying that Legalise Cannabis will be voting to remove that clause from the bill. It is an affront to the principles of democratic and representative government, and the government should be embarrassed for including it in the first place. If, after the committee stage, the disallowance powers are not back in the bill, we will have no hesitation in voting against the bill at third reading.
There are too many untested and underconsulted elements in this bill for us to be confident that it will do what it aims to do, so we will support any referral of the bill to an inquiry so that this once-in-a-generation opportunity is not squandered. We want to get these reforms right and we want to see these reforms succeed.
There is a lot of good in this bill, and the rushed and flawed parts can potentially be improved by amendment and detailed consideration. Let me mention a few of the good points. Firstly, repeal of the disallowance powers aside, the bill’s reforms to the planning scheme amendment process are welcome, and we support them.
The new performance measurement scheme for planning scheme amendments is especially welcome. Too many planning scheme amendments are stuck on the minister’s desk or waiting for a gap in the planning panel calendar, and we need to flush them out. That performance measurement scheme should also include planning scheme amendments proposed by the minister, not just those proposed by councils, and I will move an amendment to that effect.
The proposed 30-day warning before major VPP amendments are made was a specific recommendation of the select committee, so that is welcome too. There is no reason that the provisions should wait until 27 October to be implemented. They should commence immediately, and we will be moving an amendment to that effect.
The changes to the objectives of planning in Victoria are mostly supported, but some important concepts have been lost along the way. These include fairness, efficiency and ecological processes and the protection of human life. These are not frivolous concerns. They go to the reason we have planning laws in the first place. No decent justification has been given for their removal, so I will be moving amendments to reinstate them.
The planning permit process reforms are more challenging. The idea of streaming permits into three speed sequences based on the risk and complexity of applications is a good one. If matters are genuinely simple and uncontroversial, they should not be delayed. But councils have told us that they will struggle to facilitate the mechanisms that allocate applications to streams.
Given the government chose not to consult any of them, I am happy to take up their suggestion of amendments that provide some safeguards to ensure that all applications are assessed under the correct stream and do not force a high-risk application down a 10-day pathway.
Allocating applications to the correct stream is especially important because the bill introduces a series of new automatic approvals and they click in if the deadlines are not met. If, for example, a referral authority like Melbourne Water or the CFA does not respond to a type 3 application quickly enough, they are simply deemed not to object.
If a responsible authority does not approve a type 1 application within 10 days, the applicant automatically gets a permit. If a responsible authority does not respond quickly enough to an extension-of-time request, the extension is automatically granted. And if a responsible authority does not approve plans required under permit conditions within the prescribed time, the plans are automatically approved.
Automatic approvals are not necessarily bad, but if they are going to be introduced into the act, they need to be introduced with caution. Government should have a very high level of confidence that they are not creating unacceptable risks. I will be looking for that confidence in the bill inquiry or the committee stage.
Given the government failed to consult any councils and councils make up the majority of the Victorian planning system, I put the government on notice now that they have a lot of work to do to convince me that they have thought this proposal through. Many of my constituents live near the Maribyrnong River, which flooded in October 2022.
The Ombudsman found that the reasons the Rivervue Retirement Village flooded included that the original flood modelling was rushed, the development plans used the wrong set of flood levels and the assessment of the planning application cut just too many corners.
So when the government introduces a bill that literally has ‘faster decisions’ in the title, okay, we all agree in principle that fast approvals are important, but I also want to know: will Melbourne Water’s resources be up to the job? Will the council have enough time to check everything without cutting corners? And will my constituents be safe?
A second troubling element of part 5 of the bill is the general reduction of public notice of applications. I am not talking about third-party appeals here, though that is being reduced too; I am talking about public notice to neighbours, locals and interested parties.
To my mind this is the part of the planning process that gives all the other parts legitimacy, because it is the part of the planning process that allows for some scrutiny and transparency over decisions. If you cut that out, there is not much chance that Victorians will believe that the right decisions are being made.
The act currently requires all planning applications to undergo public notification unless the planning scheme switches it off. This bill reverses this for type 2 applications, like applications to build new townhouses and low- and medium-rise apartments. Public notification will be off unless the minister switches it on again later.
The government is playing with fire here. If applications for new homes are not going to be the subject of public notice, then there is less chance of mistakes being picked up, there is less chance the local community will welcome the proposal and there is less pressure on applicants to make high-quality applications in the first place. I will save my other thoughts for the committee stage when we get to amendments, but I reiterate that this bill is not acceptable in its current form but it can be made acceptable.
I will close by discussing what this bill does not do. Firstly, it does not do what it says it does in the title – faster decisions, yes, but there is no evidence that the decisions will be better decisions.
Unless the government switches back on the general discretion of decision-makers to identify and manage known environmental risks under the new residential codes, including existential risks like major floods in areas that do not have a flood overlay yet, there is no evidence that faster decisions will indeed be better decisions. Secondly, it does not do what the government says it does. It does not magically produce more homes.
Planning might influence yield, but it does not alone dictate development costs or the market. A piece of paper granting planning permission does not come with a shovel attached. By focusing only on housing supply and pretending that planning is the panacea, the government overlooks the many other financial barriers to building more homes, and by pretending that the market can deliver more affordable housing if only 30 days can be shaved off a planning approval, well, the government is starting to believe its own spin.
Yes, housing supply is a problem, and the lack of affordable housing is the most acute part of this problem. New public and private affordable housing has to be part of the solution, and it has to be done in a timely and appropriate manner. This bill could do some good – quite a lot of good – but it needs significant amendment.
[Council divided on Bill]
Voted for: Ryan Batchelor, John Berger, Lizzie Blandthorn, Katherine Copsey, Enver Erdogan, Jacinta Ermacora, Michael Galea, Anasina Gray-Barberio, Shaun Leane, David Limbrick, Sarah Mansfield, Tom McIntosh, Aiv Puglielli, Georgie Purcell, Harriet Shing, Ingrid Stitt, Jaclyn Symes, Lee Tarlamis, Sonja Terpstra, Gayle Tierney
Voted against: Melina Bath, Jeff Bourman, Gaelle Broad, Georgie Crozier, David Davis, David Ettershank, Renee Heath, Ann-Marie Hermans, Wendy Lovell, Trung Luu, Bev McArthur, Joe McCracken, Nick McGowan, Evan Mulholland, Rachel Payne, Richard Welch
[Bill passed 20 votes to 16]
