NSWs Largest Residential Development set to be overturned by Court
Date: 15-Oct-09
Author: Chris Parker
The largest residential development in NSW is expected to ruled invalid in the Land and Environment Court after both the NSW Planning Minister and the developer have agreed to not defend a challenge by a local residents group.
If sealed by the Court on Monday the decision will torpedo one of the most controversial developments in NSW. The proposal threatened one of NSWs rarest plants ( the critically endangered persoonia pauciflors) with extinction and proposed to place 20,000 people in the middle of the Hunter Valley with poor public transport.
The agreement by the Minister and developer not to defend either the Concept Plan or the Rezoning of the land follows the recent judgement by Justice Lolyd regarding Catherine Hill Bay in the Land and Environment Court. Justice Lloyd found that the signing by the Planning Minister of a Memorandum of Understanding and a Deed of Agreement with the Developer prior to the development proposal being placed on public exhibition constituted apprehended bias and therefore the development was invalid.
The residents group (Sweetwater Action Group) challenged the Huntlee development on the basis of bias and failure to consider the impacts on the critically endangered plant. If sealed by the Court the result will be the first time the Minister has consented to a rezoning decision under Part 3A of the Environment Planning and Assessment Act being overturned. It goes further than the Catherine Hill Bay decision which overturned development approval but left the land zoned for development.
Huntlee New Town designated for 20,000 people in 7500 house site was almost ten times th size of the Catherine Hill Bay proposal.The site was in a controversial location in the middle of the Hunter Valley was lobbied for by Graham Richardson on behalf of Hardie Holdings. Ranked last on a list of 91 potential development sites in the Hunter Valley the proposal nevertheless was included in the Lower Hunter Regional Strategy and population growth targets were increased to justify the extra development area.
Documents made available in the NSW Parliament reveal that then Planning Minister Frank Sartor included the site after last minute lobbying by the developers at a time when community and environment groups could not get equal access to the Minister.
The site was a subject to the ABC Four Corners program Dirty Sexy Money which canvassed the role of donations to the ALP and identified $455,000 was given to the NSW ALP by Hardie Holdings between 2001 and 2007.
President of the Sweetwater Action Group (SWAG), which took the legal action, Chris Parker said "This is such good news for the local area. People live here for the nice environment and bushland atmosphere. Once the court formalities are finished we are going to have a big party.
Greens Councillor James Ryan who has campaigned against the Huntlee development for several years said the decision to approve Huntlee encapsulated everything that was wrong with the NSW Labor Governments approach to development. We saw clearly how the General Manager of Hardie Holdings told the Four Corners program that donations are paid for access to the Government. We saw how that access to the Minister allowed him to be convinced to approve the Huntlee development despite the overwhelming weight of evidence that the environment would be substantially harmed and the future residents housed in an isolated location without adequate public transport. The fact that neither the Minister or the Developer are prepared to stand up in court and defend this approval shows, in my opinion, just how bad the approval was.
While both Catherine Hill Bay and Huntlee have clear paper trails which show the apprehended bias by the Minister I believe the whole Lower Hunter Regional Strategies and other State Government Planning Strategies such as the Metro Strategy suffer from a bias in favour of
