Ms Mary Rose Burke:

Much of the detail is captured in the interim report of the accelerating infrastructure task force, which we have all fed into, so I will not repeat it. However, there are three key elements: the question of who can take a judicial review, the process itself, and the timelines around the judicial review. We have seen a huge increase in the number of judicial reviews over recent years. The Minister, Deputy O’Callaghan, is dealing with some of that, and we hope it will reduce the overall number and make the planning system robust enough such that recourse to judicial review will not be required in the first place. Where someone does exercise the right to a judicial review, it should be expedited and should not add years of complexity and cost. Those years of complexity and cost have bedevilled many of our infrastructure plans. The plans themselves have been good. We have been this far before, with metro north, but with a financial crisis the capital funding is pulled and the clock is started again. What is needed is political ambition to push through and accelerate the consent processes to make them concurrent rather than sequential, without diluting the intent of some of the protections. It is the design of the process, rather than the desired outcome, that seems to be the problem, and that is where we would like to see a reform agenda focus. We have no issue with environmental protections and the like, but the question is one of why it takes five years to explore an issue. Concurrent consenting processes, where appropriate and properly resourced, an examination of what needs to be stripped out, and the observation of statutory timelines on many of the stages where big projects are bedevilled should be considered.