Increasingly unsustainable Increasingly centralised
The vain attempt to make codification do what only process and performance review can do in planning will fail again soon. Planning now costs too much and is not credible as a result of blinkered quick fix approaches involving books and tables decisionmaking .

Sound planning is about focusing on performance and process ---not prescriptions

Planning in Australia is moving down below the bottom line because the move to elemental codes ( water, waste, vegetation management ) isn't an effective screen for dealing with these complex matters - lawyers and pedants just love to make their way through them.
If the issues weren't inherently complex we wouldn't require planners ! No wonder we can't keep planners in Regional Australia - we treat them like they can't make good decisions themselves .
Planning decisions driven by codes cost more than ever and make even less big picture sense because the outcome is based on interpreting a few words , not an integration of the dynamic ecosystem imperatives in an area - the unique local things that should drive top classhigh performance resolutions that will keep those unique environmental elements functioning well together into the future.
Need someone who knows, not someone who throws (the book at them).