COAG
At its meeting on 2 July 2009, COAG highlighted the continuing significance of development assessment reform as part of the Seamless National Economy agenda.
COAG acknowledged that the global economic crisis underscores the importance of regulatory reform to enhance Australia’s productivity and competitiveness, raising potential growth rates and living standards, and better enable Australia to deal with difficult international economic circumstances.
The Local Government Planning Ministers' Council (LGPMC) will report to COAG by the end of 2009 on proposals to expedite DA reform on the basis of work it is currently undertaking through its Development Assessment Subgroup.
In particular, COAG agreed to develop National Performance Measures for Development Assessment that will contain information on the number, type and length of assessment of development applications across Australia. COAG also agreed to work towards harmonising code-based development assessment standards between jurisdictions, increasing the proportion of code-assessed DAs, and developing stand alone assessment codes for houses, units and commercial developments. Code based DA systems mean that simple development proposals can be assessed more quickly and free up planning resources to assess more complex proposals.
COAG Communiqué