The ACT government is conducting a Planning Review and Reform project whose ultimate goal is to move ACT planning instruments away from an allegedly “rules-based” system to an “outcomes-focussed” one. In an article I have recently written for the Canberra Planning Action Group, I examine whether the undoubted problems of the current instruments to which Chief Planner Ben Ponton points are really due to whatever character current planning instruments have as “rules-based.” In addition, it examines the concept of outcomes-focussed or, as it is sometimes called, performance-based planning. It also looks at how it has performed in one jurisdiction, Queensland, in which it has been introduced. Both analysis of the concept and examination of the history of outcomes-focussed planning show that the problems of Canberra’s planning instruments has nothing to do with its being “rules-based” as opposed to “outcomes-focussed.” In fact, a partial shift towards the latter had already been introduced in 2007! Moreover, the experience of Queensland shows that if anything the shift to outcomes-focussed planning has increased the kinds of difficulty which Ponton adduces as justifying a shift—more precisely, consummation of a shift already partially undertaken—towards outcomes-focussed planning. And the nett result of the proposed reforms will be to make current planning instruments even more developer-friendly than they are already.

An abstract for the paper can be found in the CPAG Newsletter for December, 2021.

The paper itself can be found at: The Significance of the Current ACT Government Planning Review

Another paper of mine, one co-authored with Geoffrey Pryor, can also be found at the CPAG website: Government-initiated Consultation re Planning in the ACT