12:00a.m. 10th July 2008

| By Bill Hoffman

The close relationship between the Property Council and the state government should be of concern to all Queenslanders according to Sunshine Coast Council business and entrepreneurship head Lew Brennan.

Mr Brennan said he had no problem with any industry group lobbying politicians, but the closeness of the relationship saw Anna Bligh’s government listening more to the Property Council than the wishes of the broader community.

Mr Brennan said the government’s so-called Queensland Housing Affordability Strategy was a farce and an insult to people’s intelligence.

“If the Bligh government wants to seriously address the housing affordability issue why doesn’t it talk to its fellow Labor states like Western Australia whose shared equity scheme is putting low-income owners into their own homes,’’ he said.

“Instead they talk to the Property Council and just force the release of more land.”

The attack comes as Local Government of Queensland president Paul Bell declared that local government across Australia was being driven out of the planning process by a concerted Property Council campaign that would deny communities a say in their futures.

Mr Bell said representatives of the property industry had been running a well-funded, national campaign over the past four years to remove councillors from the process of determining development applications with the intent of replacing them with so-called “independent assessment panels”.

Urban Development Institute of Australia state council director David Oliver said his organisation’s biggest concern with the growth debate was that council would unintentionally pull the wrong policy rein.

Mr Oliver said Paul Bell clearly knew something he didn’t in his claim that the property industry was running a well-funded campaign to move planning control away from local government.