Over the past fortnight, PIA's Policy and Advocacy team has:
🏘️ Contributed to national conversations on housing reform and supply, including reviewing the latest progress report under the National Planning Reform Blueprint.
📄 Released a preliminary Data Centre Guidance Note, to support planners navigating this emerging land use.
🗣️ Influenced planning reform discussions in states and territories.
🎓 Highlighted positive workforce trends in Queensland, with planning student enrolments continuing to grow
.... just to name a few!
National
Supporting planners to respond to emerging infrastructure challenges
PIA has released a preliminary Data Centre Guidance Note to support planners and decision-makers as demand for data centres continues to grow across Australia.
Data centres are increasingly important to the nation's economic productivity, supporting cloud computing, artificial intelligence, communications and digital services. The guidance note provides practical advice on planning considerations including land use compatibility, infrastructure requirements, energy demand and environmental impacts.
By developing practical resources in emerging areas of practice, PIA continues to support planners in delivering informed, consistent and future-focused decision-making. Feedback is welcome on this preliminary version from planners working on data centres.
📄 For member access, refer to the June Member E-news received in first week of June.
Tracking progress on national planning reform
The Australian Government has released the fourth Progress Report and Metrics Report under the National Planning Reform Blueprint, dated September 2025.
The reports provide insight into how jurisdictions are progressing against reform commitments designed to improve planning efficiency, increase housing supply and support productivity growth. The publication of metrics and progress reporting remains an important accountability mechanism, helping governments and industry track whether reforms are delivering intended outcomes.
PIA continues to engage nationally on planning reform implementation and advocate for reforms that support both housing delivery and quality planning outcomes.
🔗 National Planning Reform Blueprint – Fourth progress and metrics reports
PIA Congress keynote continues the discussion on Auckland
Auckland is increasingly invoked as the definitive case for blanket upzoning in Australia. At the recent National Planning Congress in Canberra, Auckland Council’s general manager of planning gave a keynote presentation on what drove Auckland’s housing outcomes.
The article challenges the simplistic narratives around planning reform, demonstrating that improved housing outcomes were not driven by simple blanket upzoning, but started with a deliberative strategic planning process.
As governments across Australia seek to boost housing supply, this article reinforces PIA's longstanding advocacy for evidence-based planning reform that considers the broader system required to deliver homes and communities.
🔗 Auckland isn't a simple story of blanket upzoning | The Fifth Estate
New South Wales
Advocating for effective community participation
PIA NSW has lodged a submission on proposed changes to Community Participation Plans, supporting the NSW Government’s decision to replace separate Community Participation Plans with a single statewide framework. This is an important and overdue reform. It creates a genuine opportunity to modernise participation settings across NSW and to establish a more consistent, strategic and effective approach to community engagement.
However, the current draft moves to reduce notification at the development application stage without first ensuring that meaningful upstream engagement has occurred. That is a critical policy gap. Reduced DA stage notification should be the product of robust earlier participation, not a default setting applied irrespectively of where communities have had a real opportunity to influence the planning framework in the first place.
Through submissions such as this, PIA continues to provide practical, evidence-based advice to government on planning system improvements.
🔗 Read the submission on Community Participation Plan
Bringing planning expertise into mainstream media
PIA NSW President Sue Weatherley MPIA (Fellow) was last week interviewed by 7NEWS for an upcoming story, helping ensure planners expertise is represented in mainstream media on issues affecting communities across the state.
📺 Watch this space for the story when it airs.
Australian Capital Territory
Welcoming certainty for future housing delivery
PIA welcomes the ACT Government's 2026 –27 to 2030 –31 Housing Supply and Land Release Program as a positive step toward addressing Canberra's housing challenge, while noting concerns about the reduction in the affordable housing set -aside and the adequacy of infrastructure funding to support the greenfield program.
🔗 PIA welcomes the ACT housing pipeline
Queensland
Positive signs for the future planning workforce
Queensland has recorded an increase in planning student enrolments, providing encouraging signs for the future of the profession and PIA's Become A Planner campaign.
At a time when workforce capacity remains a challenge across the planning sector, growing enrolments demonstrate increasing interest in planning careers and help build the pipeline of future professionals needed to deliver housing, infrastructure and community outcomes.
🔗 Planning student numbers on the rise in Queensland
Victoria
Helping shape the implementation of planning reform
PIA Victoria continues to play a key role in the implementation of the state's planning reforms through formal participation in the Planning Reform Advisory Committee (PRAC).
Recent engagement has focused on providing practical feedback from the profession, identifying implementation challenges and ensuring reforms are workable for practitioners responsible for delivering planning outcomes on the ground.
Maintaining expert involvement throughout implementation helps ensure reforms achieve their objectives, while minimising unintended consequences and supporting effective delivery.
🔗 Read the latest PRAC update