How planning and environmental reforms are shaping Australia’s next wave of priority projects

Australia’s economic agenda is being pulled in multiple directions at once. Governments are under pressure to accelerate the energy transition, deliver housing at scale, reform federal environmental laws and attract investment in new industries such as AI and data-driven infrastructure. 

Each objective is treated as a priority, yet the regulatory systems tasked with delivering them must absorb all these demands simultaneously. The result is an intense period of planning and environmental reform, directed at facilitating ‘priority projects’, while still aiming to protect public values and participation rights. 

What these reforms increasingly reveal is not a simple shift towards deregulation or protection, but a structural recalibration of decision‑making. Across jurisdictions, authority is being centralised, assessment pathways selectively streamlined and participation rights reshaped to reduce friction and speed delivery. 

At the same time, environmental standards are tightening and expectations around social licence, infrastructure readiness and cumulative impacts are rising – exposing new tensions at the intersection of policy ambition, delivery and legitimacy.

Centralising decision‑making for priority projects

A common thread across recent planning and environmental reforms is the continued centralisation of decision‑making for priority projects, with States increasingly assuming responsibility for approvals previously determined at a local level. 

This shift is being achieved through a combination of sector specific reforms, ad hoc ‘call-in’ powers and reforms that permit particular developments to proceed ‘as of right’. In Queensland, for example, recent reforms have seen the planning controls applicable to battery projects follow the path of wind and solar, with decision-making responsibility shifted away from local government to the State level. A similar shift has occurred in Victoria, where priority projects commonly access the Development Facilitation Program, placing approval authority with the Minister for Planning rather than the local Council. In New South Wales, the establishment of the Investment Delivery Authority reflects the same trajectory, supporting approvals for major projects aligned with State government priorities including renewable energy and energy security projects, and data centres. 

This centralisation has been accompanied by a recalibration – rather than an elimination – of the role of local governments. While Councils are increasingly removed from formal decision-making, reforms have sought to recognise their continued importance in representing community interests and shaping local outcomes. In Queensland, recent planning reforms for renewable energy projects now require upfront assessment of social impacts and a community benefit agreement to be reached with the relevant local government before a development application is even lodged. In Victoria, local governments are grappling with how best to deploy their resources and advocate for their communities in circumstances where their experience and local knowledge is unparalleled, but increasingly they are not the decision-maker. In New South Wales, updated five-year housing completion targets assigned to Councils represent a further recalibration, with Councils now expected to plan for growth within parameters set at the State level.

Alongside these structural shifts, governments have introduced increasingly streamlined development and environmental assessment pathways, to varying extents, aimed at simplifying application requirements and reducing assessment timeframes. At the Commonwealth level, reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth) (EPBC Act) will shortly introduce a new 30-day ‘streamlined assessment’ pathway, together with new bioregional plans under which specified priority actions may proceed in specified development zones without referral or approval. These reforms have been earmarked to prioritise the facilitation of the renewable energy zones and greenfield housing projects across the country. Victoria and New South Wales have also passed reforms through the Planning Amendment (Better Decisions Made Faster) Act 2026 (Vic) and the Environmental Planning and Assessment Amendment (Planning System Reforms) Act 2025 (NSW), respectively, which introduced new streamlined fast-track approval pathways for lower risk and less complex proposals, designed to keep up with the demand for new housing projects. In New South Wales, these changes have been complemented by the establishment of a new Housing Delivery Authority and Investment Delivery Authority to fast-track priority developments and a new Development Coordination Authority to centralise State agency advice during the development assessment process.

At the same time, the rights of third parties to be publicly notified of development applications, lodge submissions and access appeal rights, remain in the spotlight and susceptible to change. In Victoria, reforms have restricted third-party appeal rights to those who receive direct notification of a planning permit application, while federal reforms have significantly limited the availability of reconsideration requests by third parties under the EPBC Act. In New South Wales, proposed changes under the draft statewide Community Participation Plan would further reduce public exhibition requirements for low-impact developments that meet relevant planning controls. 

Competing priorities in planning and environmental reform

There is an inherent complexity in, and often between, efforts to facilitate different categories of priority projects. Policy settings designed to accelerate delivery in one area can create friction or unintended consequences in another. 

Some of the strongest economic opportunities are those that have the potential to cause environmental harm or slow down the energy transition. At the same time, attracting investment in one State often means competing against other States and Territories, while short term economic measures can give rise to long-term structural challenges, as recent property tax settings in Victoria illustrate. These tensions extend to the State–Federal divide, highlighted by the Queensland Government’s recent direction to the Queensland Productivity Commission to undertake a public inquiry into the impacts of Federal Government’s environmental reforms, including their economic impacts and implications for major projects.

Compounding these pressures is the risk that facilitation of priority projects moves faster than the provision of essential services and trunk infrastructure, with development approvals potentially preceding the availability of roads, intersections, drainage and other foundational assets. 

These tensions are not new. Development facilitation reforms have always involved trade-offs between economic, social and environmental objectives. The ebb and flow of planning and environmental reform is symptomatic of this enduring tension. Equally, we might argue that what we are seeing is less a decisive shift in favour of any single objective, and more an ongoing recalibration as governments attempt to hold multiple, and sometimes conflicting, goals in tension at once.

Following reports of the declining state of the environment in recent years, there has been a re-focusing of policy and regulatory reforms towards environmental objectives. That agenda will now be tested further with heightened political and socio-economic uncertainty driving the critical need for new housing, economic investment and growth. 

AI provides a useful case study in how these emerging tensions are likely to play out in practice. From both a technology and property development perspective, AI represents one of the most significant economic opportunities currently facing governments. However, the data centres on which AI depends have substantial energy and water demands, raising difficult questions about how their rapid expansion can be reconciled with decarbonisation efforts and securing a social licence to operate. These issues play out at the practical as well as theoretical level – data centres are increasingly competing with and at times reliant on battery storage and renewable energy generators for access to prime grid-connected land.

The next phase of planning and environmental reform

Looking ahead, it is likely that planning and environmental reform will continue to evolve in response to the competing pressures outlined above.

In the context of AI and the energy transition, we can expect a growing emphasis on integration and co-location, with data centres increasingly paired with Battery Energy Storage Systems and renewable generation. At the same time, data centres are likely to become more fragmented as they become a more common feature of broader commercial developments rather than standalone assets.

For housing projects, facilitation pathways are likely to remain under sustained pressure to keep up with the urgent demand for new projects. Further adjustments to approval, assessment and certification processes can be expected. 

More broadly, planning and environment approval processes will remain a central focus of policy attention as governments attempt to strike a balance between protecting public values and attracting economic investment. While planning reforms across the board are seeking to streamline approval processes, environmental regulation is trending in the opposite direction, with stricter standards and stronger scrutiny. 

Taken together, this suggests that ongoing planning and environmental regulatory and policy reform will remain the norm – with the real test being whether delivery can be both accelerated and sustained without eroding confidence or legitimacy.