Paper

Infrastructure agreements, as they are now called, have a long history in planning and development law in Queensland. They have been variously described as rezoning agreements or development agreements. Under the Local Government Act 1936 (repealed) they were referred to as an “agreement as to works”. The term “infrastructure agreement” appears to have been given legislative recognition for the first time under the Local Government (Planning and Environment) Act 1990 (repealed).

Superseded legislation contained restrictions on the use of agreements by local governments to extract “consideration” which could not lawfully be obtained by way of a development condition. These restrictions, which were found in the sections of the repealed legislation dealing with unlawful conditions, have not been replicated in the Integrated Planning Act 1990 (“IPA”).