The Minns Labor government has admitted its wide-ranging changes to planning laws, promoted as measures to speed up housing approvals, will also apply to mining and power projects, clearing the way for new mines and wind and solar farms to be fast-tracked.
The expansive nature of the changes has drawn widespread criticism from environmental groups and led to the Greens trying to amend it, causing the government to accuse the minor party of filibustering the reforms.
The New South Wales planning minister, Paul Scully, did not refer to mining in his second reading speech on the bill, and instead highlighted how it would assist getting more housing approvals.
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But the premier, Chris Minns, has been spruiking to business how the changes will facilitate investment in major projects in NSW.
“We are in the process of making NSW the quickest, the easiest, the most direct state to develop and realise big projects in,” Minns told an audience at Sydney Investment Summit on Thursday.
“This has been an overwhelming focus of our economic reform, particularly in the planning system,” he said.
The week before, he had told an international mining summit: “We’re looking at ways we can improve the planning system in NSW to get quicker approvals and quicker productive mines.
“I want to be absolutely upfront here, the planning system has been letting us down badly in NSW,” he said.
“It’s been frustrating how often the system is looking for excuses to say ‘no’, rather than ways of saying ‘yes’, and bringing on that investment.”
Minns said the government had “spent an enormous amount of time looking for ways to change this culture in our system”.
He said he did not want NSW to become “the wild west” but “we need to be ruthless in getting rid of any duplication that’s crept into the system”.
The premier told the mining summit that the planning laws, which Labor wanted to pass by the end of the year “will make a huge difference … when it comes to mineral exploration and the confidence that finance and capital need when investing in Australia”.
The government has established an Investment Delivery Authority, modelled on the Housing Delivery Authority, which will provide a one-stop shop through the state’s approvals system.
“This time not for housing, but to speed up large scale commercial projects through the planning system, so there’s certainty when you put investment down in our jurisdiction,” Minns told the summit.
Minns’s comments drew a furious response from the Greens MLC, Sue Higginson, who has been warning that the changes would apply to mines and would give the planning minister enormous powers to avoid considering environmental factors or the public interest.
“It’s shocking, but unsurprising that the premier has admitted that the government’s controversial planning reforms will be used to fast-track mining projects to a room full of miners and their lobbyists, despite the government saying they are about the housing crisis,” Higginson said.
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She accused Minns and Scully of launching “unscrupulous attacks” on the Greens for moving amendments to introduce anticorruption safeguards, environmental protections and community participation provisions into the laws.
“As soon as I looked at these laws I knew they weren’t just about housing,” Higginson said.
She claimed the Minns government had “misled” the community and parliament.
“Nowhere in the minister’s introduction of the bill did he mention fast tracking mining approvals, but here we have the premier admit this is the case,” she said.
The Guardian asked the premier whether mining and energy projects would still be subject to full environmental assessment under his planning changes.
“Yes,” Minns said. “They are still be subject to the existing environmental assessment.”
During another speech on Thursday, Minns thanked one of the leading developer lobby groups, the Urban Development Institute of Australia and its CEO, the former Liberal MP Stuart Ayres, for their advice on the planning changes.
“The UDIA were fundamental in advising both myself and the minister for planning about what a reform to the legislation would look like,” Minns said.
