Dear Editor,

In 2025, the NT Planning Minister Josh Burgoyne claimed the planning system is robust and does not need independent scrutiny. The reality on the ground tells a very different story.

The recent approval of Stage 1 of PA2025/0441, a major commercial development on a 16 ha part of the Kulaluk lease known as the Ludmilla bush block, exposes a system where community scrutiny is invited, then quietly sidelined. Thirty five submissions were received. Thirty four opposed. The City of Darwin objected. Public scrutiny identified detailed technical gaps, including airport safeguarding concerns raised by the Airport Development Group.

Yet the Development Consent Authority approved the project anyway.

Key risks were not resolved before approval.

Hydrology modelling did not account for climate-adjusted rainfall or sea level rise. The proposed containment cell to manage contaminated material from Stage 1, including asbestos and PFAS, was treated as outside the application. Cultural heritage material relating to the broader Kulaluk landscape was also treated as not relevant to the application and outside the scope of the DCA.

The planning process relies on the public to identify deficiencies in development proposals. But when those deficiencies are raised, they can be deferred, excluded, or pushed into conditions that are never subject to further public scrutiny.

Staging makes this worse. By slicing developments into parts, decision makers avoid assessing the full impact of what is proposed. For example, submissions raised the absence of integrated, climate-adjusted modelling and whole-of-site stormwater design, but the DCA determined this was not required at this stage.

No reasonable person would describe that as robust.

This matters beyond the Kulaluk project. The same development pressure is now being extended into Bagot community,
where a commercial rezoning proposal on community land is being advanced without addressing cumulative traffic
impacts from the approved Kulaluk development less than a kilometre away.

If the government claims the system is robust, it should require key risks to be resolved before approval, not deferred through staging and conditions. It should also restore Planning Action Network funding to support independent scrutiny.

Anything less leaves the community locked out of decisions that directly affect their safety and their city.

Nick Kirlew, Planning Action Network convener

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