30/6/16 - NSW Planning Minister Rob Stokes MP, addresses the UDIA Annual Winter Luncheon at the NSW Parliament House
“It is all about people”. This is a quote from NSW Planning Minister, Rob Stokes who was the keynote speaker at the UDIA NSW annual winter luncheon today, which was attended by members of the NSW development industry. It was nice to hear him speaking about his philosophy, which, although obvious, is often overlooked. That is, we all need to think of development in terms of people rather than in terms of the physical nature of the development.
His key message was that the outcome of any development project has to improve the lives of the people who are ultimately going to live there and development is about outcomes that are better for community, better for the people and better for the State. Also, to all those developers and financiers out there, you can create great places for people and still make a profit!
It is also reassuring to hear the NSW Planning Minister speaking about the same issues that PeopleTrans thinks about with every project. PeopleTrans was established on the core value of “improving the quality of people’s lives through excellence in Transport Planning and Engineering” which also aligns with our coined phrase “Transport projects bring people to places. Places bring people alive”.
It is exciting to finally have a Minister and Government who gets it and is backed up by the credentials and passion to be able to enact the change required to continue the growth that will be needed to house the people that will come to live in Sydney over the long-term. Over the next 12 months, Minister Stokes talked about reworking the Environment Planning and Assessment Act and reducing the number of State Environmental Planning Policies with a focus on plain English and the challenges that the Government faces in bringing the new local government sector together after amalgamations.
On this basis there is no doubt that NSW will retain its status in the development sector as the No.1 State for the foreseeable future with all other States playing catch up….which as we all know was not always the case.
