Developers beat a path to Sartor's door as critics query powers

Up to eight developers a week appeal to Mr Sartor to "call in" their multimillion-dollar residential or commercial projects under controversial planning laws introduced last year.

The laws allow Mr Sartor to seize authority over the projects from councils, often slashing the time taken to approve them.

But critics say the shortcut undermines the accountability of decisions, does not adequately protect the environment and can ignore community concerns.

While the minister says he is becoming more selective about using his powers, he has declared about 230 developments "major projects" or "state-significant sites" in the 11 months since he was appointed.

About two-thirds of them - including mines, hospitals, major marinas or sporting facilities and developments in coastal zones or other areas such as Olympic Park - automatically become major projects under the law.

But Mr Sartor has angered councils and communities by using his discretion to seize control of dozens of expensive residential or commercial projects.

His decision to assume authority over the $800 million development at the Carlton and United Breweries site on Broadway last month was one of his most contentious.

He revealed that the site's owners, Foster's, had asked him to take control of the project last December, but he waited six months before wresting it from the City of Sydney Council.

"The only regret is that I didn't intervene sooner," Mr Sartor said at the time of his announcement.

The Urban Development Institute's NSW executive director, David Poole, said developers approached Mr Sartor only when they were fed up with council red tape.

"It [the council process] is full of obfuscation, obstacles, turf wars, costs, delays … the reality is we are so over-regulated now," Dr Poole said.

But he said developers were monitoring the Planning Department, concerned that it was not adequately staffed to deal quickly with all of the projects that were called in.

The Local Government Association's president, Genia McCaffery, who is the Mayor of North Sydney, said Mr Sartor's powers meant some planning decisions were no longer made at a local level.

"There is an expectation among the development industry that anything over $50 million, the minister will call it in," Councillor McCaffery said.

"There are still far too many applications being decided by the minister that are ordinary developments … they are just large. There's no justification for those developers not to have to go through the same processes that everybody else has to go through.

"What we are creating is a hierarchy of development in this state that I think is undermining the openness and transparency and accountability of the development process."

Jeff Angel, who heads the Total Environment Centre, is concerned that Mr Sartor can now override other agencies, such as the Department of Environment and Conservation. That meant developers no longer had to go through rigorous environmental assessments and could avoid laws that protect native vegetation, threatened species or heritage, he said.

But Mr Sartor said his powers allowed a more flexible and speedy approach instead of the "rigid, formulaic process" of councils. He said most of projects he chose to call in were complex - some at councils' behest, rather than developers' - and benefitted from his department's expertise.

But he disputed concerns that developers got what they wanted simply because projects came under his authority, saying more than 40 projects had been either rejected or withdrawn because they would fail.

"[These powers] give the Minister for Planning and the department a one-stop shop … the problem for local government is it has an appalling record in this area," Mr Sartor said.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/developers-beat-a-path-to-sartors-door-as-critics-query-powers/2006/07/04/1151778936619.html