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It was never Emma Cole’s plan to become the head of WA’s Planning Commission, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I really liked geography, and perhaps that should have been a bit of a clue,” Cole tells this masthead as part of a series of sit-downs with the decision-makers guiding WA’s future.
Cole credits her time in local government for her success over the past 2½ years at the helm of the government board that has statewide responsibility for integrated urban and regional land use planning and development.
“What really got me interested in planning was joining local government because I’d been a public servant, I just had young children, I was working part-time, I was feeling like I needed something new,” she said.
“There was a development on my laneway, and it was really interesting that all of my neighbours hadn’t been consulted, even though we were really close to it.
“It was an apartment building, and it was quite a new departure for our suburb. I didn’t have a problem with that, but I thought, ‘This is really odd that we haven’t been consulted’.
“So, that got me quite interested in local government, and somehow, I found myself in that space, and I thought, ‘Oh, maybe I’ll have a go’ and ended up running for council and being elected to the City of Vincent.”
Cole remained on the council for a decade, and for 6½ years stood at the forefront of the local government as mayor before stepping down in 2023.
“I had the opportunity to apply to the WAPC while I was the mayor of the City of Vincent, and the passion for planning just grew and grew,” she said.
“I ended up finding myself back at uni as a mature-age student, I did a Masters of Urban and Regional Planning, which I absolutely loved.”
From local mayor to state authority
Cole joined the WAPC in 2020 as the metropolitan representative for local government before being reappointed as former chairperson David Caddy’s deputy.
“Then six months later he announced pretty quickly he was retiring, which was a bit of a shock, and then I was appointed to the role in January 2024 as chairperson.”
While many people think of the WA Planning Commission as the people who approve development applications, Cole says it goes far deeper than that.
“I think some of the things that people think about when they think ‘What does a planning commission do?’ They think of us approving development applications. But that’s at the pointy end and almost like the last stage of planning,” she said.
“A lot of people don’t quite understand that there’s the WA Planning Commission and then there’s the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage.”
Cole describes the Planning Commission as a board of nine members and a number of committees who make the strategic decisions and provide the guidance and advice on land use.
“We provide advice to the minister, we review local government planning instruments, and we have statutory decision-making, and that’s often through our statutory planning committee where we’re making decisions on structure plans and subdivision and development applications,” she said.
“Then the department is like the arms and legs of the operation because we don’t actually employ staff. We’re a statutory authority, and the department undertakes the work on behalf of the commission.”
“We are very conscious that planning is all about people. It’s all about communities.”
Emma Cole
Building for the future
The WAPC often faces criticism for approving developments local residents aren’t often in favor of, but Cole says public opinion does have a sway in the final decision.
“We run transparent meetings where people can come in and provide deputations. We read all of the submissions, and we’re very much about opening up the meetings and including the community so that they can have their view,” she said.
“That is one informing factor, but we also have to take into consideration all of these other competing elements that we’re forming a balanced view on.”
“We have to think about that person and their sense of their local community and its character, and we’re really mindful of things like character and heritage and not wanting to have homogenous development everywhere.
“But we’re also thinking about the kids and the grandkids of the future? Where are they going to live? Where are they going to work and how do we cater for this growing population?”
One thing Cole says WA does well, as far as planning goes, is being responsive to changes in context.
“If I think about some of the reforms that have been underway, like even since COVID, and we introduced a significant development pathway, we’ve been very flexible in terms of the way we’ve approached the way the planning system works,” she said.
“I think that our responsiveness to change, our ability to look to the future and not just plan for today, but actually forecast where we’re heading into the future [is what we do well].”
She says WA is also doing a lot of work to create more transit-oriented developments, but would like to see more developers seize the opportunity to build in the near future.
“It’s been written into our Perth and Peel framework since 2018 and even before that in previous iterations of our metropolitan blueprint,” she said.
“Of course, we have some complexities facing us in terms of construction. We understand that getting apartments built at the moment is tricky in terms of who’s available in terms of tier-one builders.”
Ultimately, her message to people is that the WAPC is focused on the quality of life and the next iteration of where the state is headed.
“We are very conscious that planning is all about people. It’s all about communities,” she said.
“We are not a dispassionate entity.
“We really care about that, and we actually want to deliver really good outcomes for our community.”
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