The Calderwood development has been a running sore for the community of the Illawarra for the last four years.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
It seems that no matter how loudly the community speaks out about how this development will seriously impact the transport, industry and agricultural potential of the Illawarra, successive state governments use their planning powers to ignore the wishes of local people and their elected representatives.
Shellharbour and Wollongong Councils have been vocal in their concerns about Calderwood.
Shellharbour Council released a comprehensive 58-page assessment of the development in June, 2010. Within weeks, Wollongong Council released a similar report. Both were damning of the Calderwood plans.
You would have to wonder whether the reports were even read because in December 2010, the NSW Labor Government approved the concept plan for 4800 new homes; together with some land set aside for community facilities.
What made the blow more bitter for the community was the revelation in the Illawarra Mercury in early 2011 that the developer, Lend Lease, had donated more than $48,000 to the Labor Party - donations which were not made public in the planning process.
Under Part 3A, the then Labor State Government declared the project ‘‘state significant’’, and there was not a thing the community or the two councils could do about it - despite the look of decisions for donations.
Jump forward a few years and we have a Coalition government in NSW and Part 3A is said to be buried. But it’s not. In fact, when it comes to planning, the O’Farrell administration is a dead ringer for NSW Labor.
Here’s why. When the NSW government repealed Part 3A in 2011, it forgot to mention that almost every pending Part 3A development application would continue as though nothing had changed.
Calderwood was just one of those developments. It was this rules-free planning regime that allowed the state government’s Planning Assessment Commission to reverse its decision on Calderwood to give the project in-principle support in February of this year.
In April, the O’Farrell government then excluded the Calderwood development from the newly approved Shellharbour Local Environment Plan (LEP). Instead, Calderwood has whatever planning controls are determined by the State government under its Major Development scheme.
Why is that important? It’s important because it means that Calderwood is a state government-controlled land area. The state government, not the local council, gets to control what is what and not built on that land.
But for all its local impact, Calderwood is just a skirmish in what is looking to be a wholesale attack on local planning powers by the O’Farrell government.
The release of the government’s Planning White Paper in April 2013 has laid bare the government’s plan to further sideline local councils so that the government can deliver unpopular planning decisions through state and regional planning decisions.
Elected councillors will be sidelined from most development decisions. Key planning decisions on land use will be delegated to unelected regional bodies dominated by Ministerial appointees.
Calderwood is not only the bitter aftertaste of Labor’s failure on planning, it is an entree to the NSW Coalition’s proposed pro-developer, government-controlled planning regime.
David Shoebridge is a member of the Greens in the NSW Upper House.
