Beyond good deeds

By Francesca Rush.

Key Points:

Welcome to the PCA Congress edition of our Real Estate Markets team's Insights.

At last year's Congress there was quite a buzz around "sustainability" and "sustainable development" and the theme of this year's Congress highlights the heightened interest within the industry in the subject.

In this edition of REM Insights, our Planning and Environment team has considered two different but related topics picking up on the "sustainability" theme:

• Brendan Bateman and Nick Thomas describe how "ecologically sustainable development" or ESD is no longer just a policy objective to be considered as part of the development process but a tangible tool influencing how development projects proceed and how considerations of ESD might be viewed by the courts.
• Peter Briggs and Claire Smith look at how the New South Wales biodiversity "banking and offsets" draft legislation could impact upon timing of existing and new "Greenfield" development projects and some of the uncertainties that currently exist in the draft legislation.

More generally from the owners', developers' and tenants' perspective, Brian Noble from our Property Team looks at how the "fitout" deal can often make or break a good relationship between a landlord and a tenant. Brian offers some practical advice as to how the tension can be minimised.

And in this edition we profile Peter McMahon from our Property Team in Sydney. Peter, who has been with us for 29 years, is well known to many Congress delegates through his long standing roles on numerous PCA Committees. His most recent role is Deputy Chairman of the Property Law Reform Alliance.

We'll also meet John McGuire and Michael Richardson.

Also this edition includes a link to the 2006 update of our state-by-state Retail Tenancies legislation analysis.

We hope that you enjoy reading these articles at your leisure over the next few days and we look forward to catching up with you at Congress.

For further information, please contact Francesca Rush.