5B   Planning authorities to have regard to register of critical habitat

(1)  Each planning authority must have regard to the register of critical habitat kept by the Director-General of the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water under the Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995 when exercising its functions under this Act.

(2)  In this section, planning authority in relation to a function under this Act means:

(a)  in the case of a function relating to a development application—the consent authority (or a person or body taken to be a consent authority), and

(b)  in the case of any other function—the public authority or other person responsible for exercising the function.