the Victorian Government cleaning up its own mess.
Planning reform in Victoria is long, long overdue. The system has been broken for years, bogged down with poor performance, skewed towards spurious objections, and good projects have been delayed unnecessarily.
⏳The new legislation brings measures proposed to speed up permits to • 10 days for single homes/subdivisions (with "deemed approvals" for this stream) • 30 days for low-rise • 60 days for high-rise apartments
Industry has advocated for changes for years, and in many ways, it simply brings Victoria back into line with many other jurisdictions.
I have yet to see the details, but I suspect projects that actually meet fast-track conditions will be limited to the "deemed to comply" designs previously announced. For the latter two streams, you'll still need a trip to VCAT if the Council doesn't issue timely approval.
But let's recall a few inconvenient truths that were conveniently missing from the glossy media release:
• Labor has been in power in Victoria for 22 of the past 26 years. This particular Government itself has held office for 11 years straight. If planning laws are “old-fashioned” and “broken,” who exactly has been responsible for maintaining them?
• So-called “common sense” reforms to undo appeal rights are undoing the expansions to said appeal rights introduced by the former Planning Minister. The same party that widened third-party rights now claims credit for narrowing them.
• The delays, red tape, and inefficiencies they decry are not inherited relics — they are the product of decades of the State Government's own policy choices and political compromises.
• The Government sat on recommendations to improve the planning system for four years before acting. Four years of delay while housing affordability worsened, supply stagnated, and communities lost confidence in the system
This is not reform born of foresight – it is repair born of abject failure.
⛔It also doesn't address the things that we actually need to make more developments #feasible : • high construction costs • high taxes & charges • dealing with post-permit approvals (authorities, etc.)
Victoria desperately needed a planning system that is efficient, transparent, and fit for purpose. But let’s be honest: the Government is not leading us into a new era — it is finally, grudgingly, cleaning up after itself.