Biggest rollback of planning protections in NSW history
The Minns Labor Government has introduced the Environmental Planning and Assessment Amendment (Planning System Reforms) Bill 2025. The Bill represents one of the largest rollbacks of planning, environmental and community protections since the Planning Act was introduced in 1979.
The Bill removes health and safety from the objects of the Act, weakens the duty to consider environmental impacts, and creates new fast-track approval pathways where decision-makers are prohibited from weighing the environment, climate impacts or the broader public interest. It centralises power in a single senior executive, the Planning Secretary, at the expense of councils, independent agencies, and communities.
Greens MP, Spokesperson for planning Sue Higginson said:
“This Bill is the most dangerous change to our planning system we have ever seen. The Government is using the housing crisis as cover to ram through reforms that silence communities, weaken environmental protections and hand extraordinary power to one bureaucrat,”
“Protections for the environment are being stripped out across the Act. The duty to consider impacts on land, water, biodiversity and climate has been replaced with a proportionality test, allowing obligations to be watered down. At the same time, the Bill makes it possible that considering climate impacts under the public interest test could be deemed unlawful. These are not reforms for the future, they are a deliberate weakening of our ability to plan responsibly in a climate and extinction crisis,”
“The Bill also removes the requirement for bushfire hazard assessments, leaving communities more vulnerable at a time when fire risk is intensifying across NSW,”
“Community participation will be gutted. Local participation plans will be abolished and replaced with a single statewide plan controlled by the Planning Secretary. The result will be cookie-cutter consultation that ignores the specific needs and knowledge of local communities,”
“The Bill also undermines the protection of First Nations cultural heritage and Country. By funnelling approvals into the Development Coordination Authority, expert advice from Heritage NSW and the voices of Land Councils and Native Title holders will no longer be guaranteed a statutory role in decision-making,”
“This is not planning reform. It is a developer’s charter. It will open the door for damaging projects to be forced onto communities, strip out safeguards for biodiversity and climate, and put people at greater risk from fire and unsafe development,”
“All Members of Parliament who truly represent their communities should oppose this Bill. We need planning reform that tackles the housing crisis while strengthening, not dismantling, protections for communities, the environment and First Nations heritage,” Ms Higginson said.