Investigating the motivations, rhetoric and controversy surrounding recent planning reforms in New South Wales Australia and Ontario Canada

In Australia and internationally, planning legislation which typically governs both plan-making and development assessment has become a target for reform as governments seek to achieve 'efficiency' and 'streamling,' often in the name of facilitating economic development. This has particularly been the case in the Australian state of New South Wales where existing laws have been demonized as 'the problem', and reforms are then presented as 'the solution.' In this paper, recent planning reforms in New South Wales and ONtario, Canada, will be compared and contrasted. In both jurisdictions, planning legislation has been the subject of successive rounds of reform, with a recent increase in the pace of that reform. The historical context for planning is explained as an introduction to a discussion of recent key reforms in both jurisdictions. Similarities and differences in the motivations, rhetoric and controvery surrounding these reforms are explained. At a time when the planning system in NSW is again being overhauled (and the state government is claiming it wishes to learn from international planning policy and practice), the paper draws some lessons and conclusions of relevance to both the jurisdictions under review.