Chris Penk: Minister for Land Information on the review of the Public Works Act to address costs, delays, and uncertainty

Reform lies ahead for the Public Works Act as the Government aims to bring its rules up to pace with the 21st century.  

The Government's appointed an independent panel to carry out an eight-week review and advise where the Act can address the unjustifiable costs, delays, and uncertainty of infrastructure projects.  

Minister for Land Information Chris Penk is hoping to speed up the process of buying and selling land for fair compensation. 

He told Mike Hosking that it's not in the interest of landowners to be caught in limbo with the Crown, meanwhile people are denied roads, schools, etcetera. 

Penk says everyone wins if we reduce some of the unnecessary process we have at the moment.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So changes coming to the Public Works Act, the idea
of being to make it easier to build stuff. There
is a review on how critical projects like you know, schools, roads,
water services can be built at pace. Minister for Land
Information Chris Pink is with us on this Chris morning.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Where does the Public Works Act fit into this jigsaw
you seem to be working through at the moment around
broadly rules about getting stuff done faster.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yeah, well, look that's a really good summary. Actually, so
we're talking about unjustifiable red tape that slows down projects
and infrastructure and housing and all those things aren't necessarily
so one of the bigger plan of rebuilding economies, of
course getting some of these infrastructure projects going, and of
course the Public Works Act is really important part of
that because that says when all the consenting that takes

(00:45):
place and then you need the land occasionally, you know,
property is required to complete the road or the school
or the subjection or whatever it may be. Then there's
a big delay oftentimes while that's haggled on an individual
basis of landowners. And you know, we respect the right
of people obviously to get fair compensation, but there's a
lot of process and delay that we think we're going

(01:05):
to be able to avoid if we have a close
look at it, is.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
That obvious process and delay you can avoid or is
it just you turning up with a bulldozer and saying, mate,
we'll have your house, thanks for coming.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
No, I don't think it's about bulldozens because at the moment,
it's already the case that people have their land taken
off them in compulsory fashion, and what we wanted to
actually is get to that process a bit more quickly, ideally,
you know, for people who are willing buyers, willing sellers
at a fair market based kind of compensation. So it's
already happening that this takes place. It just happens so long.

(01:36):
But actually it's not in the interest of the landowner
to be mucked around for years either. And if you
think about the other landowners who might come to an
arrangement with the crown and they're now sitting around for
a long period of time, people are in high that
road at school, et cetera. So actually everyone wants if
we can reduce some of the unnecessary process in there.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
At the moment, I wish you well, they're on the move.
You can't say they're not trying stuff, can you? Chris
Pink minutes to Foreland information, It is thirty minutes past seven.
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