Corrupt influence backdrop ought stall overly generous NSW strata and planning initiatives

The current NSW ICAC hearings which appears to link clandestine property developer payments to the NSW Liberal Party ought trigger the strategic delay, though not the death knell, of key NSW state government's planning reform initiatives.

Can the freshly installed Baird government ministry now be seen to handsomely reward the property development industry with long-desired legislation against the backdrop of alleged corrupt influence over their parliamentary colleagues and hangers on? Ditto the NSW opposition.

The controversial planning and strata legislation were already looking like courageous endeavours with an apprehensive public, but with the ICAC hearings to resume again in August and the March 28, 2015 election looming, both the NSW planning and strata reforms may possibly not deserve to be high on the agenda before the state Parliament rises in late November this year.

It's not to deny that the majority are cleanskins in the government, opposition and property development industry, but the pall over them all just doesn't sit well.

The new Planning Minister Pru Goward certainly doesn't shy away from doing the tough policy implementation - as her public housing housing tenant reforms showed - but already she has acknowledged her planning bill quandary. She understands the community concern over the derailed planning legislation going too far, even without the troubling backdrop that it now sits within.

''She understands there is community concern about getting the planning reforms right and she'll be very keen to listen to the views of everyone involved and work towards getting the balance right,'' her spokesman said on her appointment last month.

Then a few days later after assuming the ministry Pru Goward acknowledged the public perception.

"Development is a very expensive and highly-invested sector, and there will be plenty of people who want me to do what they want to make money for them, and every community in NSW will want me to listen to them," she told News Ltd papers.

Touted as the biggest shake-up in urban planning for three decades, the overhaul has effectively been in limbo since late 2013 when the Labor opposition and the minor upper house parties forced major changes, with 51 amendments. The government's plan to fast track the approval process for code-complying developments in high growth areas within a 25 day period was struck out in the upper house along with the intention to have the economic significance of mining projects deemed a principal consideration in the approval process.

The other key reform, and gift to urban renewal property developers, is the so-called "collective sales and renewals" initiative which will allow developers to evict strata home owners from their apartments. The renewals policy will actually force elderly owner occupiers out of their homes by developers. 

Currently 100% of strata lot owners have to agree to any replacement and redevelopment.

The property development industry has successfully lobbied the state government to reduce that to a 75% threshold with conciliation and mediation to encourage consensus.

The 75% threshold is a very generous threshold especially as each lot will have one vote, the decision will not be based on the more worthy unit entitlement. It is extraordinary that on such an important issue the lawmakers would seek to have the penthouse owner's voting entitlement the same as the viewless studio down near the laundry in the basement.

Yes it will start slowly with select blocks mostly with water views, but I think there will be an outcry once the electorate understands the disruptive compulsory eviction outcome, let alone The Castle movie-like denial of rights to ownership.

Of course the government has done the talk to the stakeholders routine, but once it filters down to the property ownership constituency there will be no tolerance of the 'Making NSW No.1 Again: Shaping Future Communities' spin. 

Hardly an initiative I'd suggest that reflects the moniker of the NSW Fair Trading department, but rather a scheme that developers have won from lobbying Macquarie Street.

One legislative clause apparently gives all lot owners and mortgagees just 60 days to consider the proposal and to seek independent advice. Hardly fair if you've been resident for many decades, and betcha the wishful stay-put strata owners get their letters early December, just before the lengthy Christmas summer holidays.

Compulsory acquisition by local council and state and national governments has been around in some form for ever for development purposes when they consider this to be in the best interest of the community - and leaves a sour aftermath, but this legislation is handing private nest eggs over to a ambitious private developer. It will involve resumptions eventually on a scale perhaps not seen since farmers lost land for the 1940s postwar soldiers settlements. Milder metropolitan dispossessions subsequently took place on the Macquarie University construction at North Ryde, the Eastern Suburbs railway line, and the Gore Hill freeway, all for the community benefit by government.

This time the supposed net public benefit is going to be harder to cop, especially in the face of big profits for developers. The proposed legislation is really just making life easier, and cheaper, for the developer who view the task of getting 100% as taking too much time and profit.

I don't see why the legislation can't have a graded threshold of say 95% where the building is less than 15 years old and 85% if the building is more than 15 years old. As we already occasionally see amalgamations can happen, and did so recently along the Cronulla beachfront when the Sunland Group consolidated a 2,398 square metre Prince Street site - from nine separate sellers - and then got approval for 12 luxury apartments.

There have now been three Fair Trading ministers with carriage of the task over the past seven months.

Anthony Roberts, the then Fair Trading Minister, told the Strata Community Australia (NSW) last November that the government’s commitment to change has been responding to the community’s calls to modernise the state’s strata laws.

NSW was the first jurisdiction in the world to introduce strata title laws, back in 1961, so there is no doubting they need modernisation, and the economic boost that will come from infill housing, rather than greenfields development. Some 30% of residential strata schemes in the Sydney metropolitan area were registered more than 30 years ago.

Only 826 strata schemes have been terminated since 1961, out of over 72,000 schemes in New South Wales.

Almost all of these terminations have been made following an application to the Registrar General unanimously signed by the lot owners, with only five schemes being terminated by Supreme Court orders.

It is estimated that more than 30% of the State’s population live or work in strata and within two decades around half of NSW’s population will be living or working in strata.

Roberts said the government was undertaking a landmark reconsideration of the strata and community schemes legislation, which will lead to important reforms in the sector in 2014. Termination of a strata scheme without the unanimous support of all apartment owners occurs in countries including Singapore, New Zealand and the United States.

It was Robert's aim of the bill being introduced to Parliament early this year and to commence the new laws by the middle of this year.

Then Fair Trading Minister Stuart Ayres drafted legislation for cabinet approval this month, with hopes to table it in Parliament this month too.

Yesterday MLC Matthew Mason-Cox was appointed the latest Fair Trading minister.

He might reconsider the specifics of the drafts.

It's not just the Liberals who've found the going tough.

Previous Labor governments have averted the emotional legislative debate about property rights with developers expressing their frustrations since the days of the NSW premier Bob Carr.

Then in 2007 the Planning Minister, Frank Sartor, had plans for the Morris Iemma cabinet to drop the threshold to less than 100%, but a decision was made at the last minute to retain the status quo.

The Keneally government envisaged similar legislation in 2010. 

Stand by to watch the potential evictees heading off to the High Court with the Magna Carta of 1215 and the more recent Mabo judgment.

The drama of dozens of Daryl Kerrigans, mimicking the lines from the film The Castle, will be a news feast since compulsory acquisition is almost un-Australian.