Questions the State Planning Commission won’t answer

The State Planning Commission’s controversial proposals to slash South Australia’s heritage protections have raised great concern in the community. The Commission refuses to hold any public debate on the risks and costs of what it is proposing, saying it is not obliged to do so. However, it did offer to hold a Question and Answer session for the Community Alliance,  an umbrella organisation for local residents’ groups and invited them to submit questions in advance of that meeting on 6 June.

As requested, Community Alliance consulted its members and produced eleven questions, submitted, as requested by the Commission, three days in advance of the meeting.

At the meeting -where Planning Department staff and the Chair of the State Planning Commission Michael Lennon presented- questions were answered from the floor, but the submitted questions were not answered.

Community Alliance were told they would have answers to the questions the following week.

No answers were provided in a week’s time.  Or two weeks.
Three weeks after the questions were submitted, not a single answer has been provided.

Isn’t it rather unfair to ask a community organisation made up entirely of volunteers to meet a deadline to submit their questions, and then fail to answer them? Repeatedly? The Commission has a vast communication machine at its disposal which it uses to peddle misinformation at taxpayer expense about what it is proposing. But it won’t spend the time or show the courtesy to answer some simple but important questions from the community.

Does someone need to remind the State Planning Commission and the Planning Department who they work for?