Flawed process

Mike Bolan

And once again Tasmania’s project review processes, apparently designed in a long-gone era, punish the taxpayer and create conflict.
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The RPDC process, like Council development processes, sets developers against communities, governments against taxpayers, public servants against the public.
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Basically the process is in the wrong order. If the public were in on the deal from the beginning, then proponents could take public input into account before they committed to details and made substantive investments. By making proponents invest first, the stage is set for expensive appeals, conflict and public anger.
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Look at the proposed pulp mill, who in the public is going to read and understand the thousands of pages of IIS? And who pays the public for their efforts? No-one!

AS with the pulp mill proposal, the Ralph Bay proposal and the Penguin foreshore proposal, communities around Tasmania are once again forced to invest time reacting to a project in their area.

Major proposals in Tasmania invoke the RPDC and various tribunals as communities and individuals strive to get their views known and gain attention for project impacts that might concern them.

And once again Tasmania’s project review processes, apparently designed in a long-gone era, punish the taxpayer and create conflict. Lessons from process management tell us that such problems are created by the design of the processes that we use. Perhaps because they’ve been in place for so long, many people accept these processes as fixed, but they are not, they are created by legalistic approaches to development that are both expensive and time consuming.

The RPDC process, like Council development processes, set developers against communities, governments against taxpayers, public servants against the public. They achieve this by placing a high expectation and cost on proponents, who are first asked to provide significant detail to support their proposal. Such detail costs money which pushes proponents to defend their investment. The detail also creates a situation where the public must appeal the details, in other words interested parties must read documentation and then respond which requires a legalistic body to have ‘hearings’, all at great cost. The detail also signals to the public that decisions have been taken without consideration of public views.

Basically the process is in the wrong order. If the public were in on the deal from the beginning, then proponents could take public input into account before they committed to details and made substantive investments. By making proponents invest first, the stage is set for expensive appeals, conflict and public anger. And the appeals processes are both expensive and blatantly unfair.

Who is going to read thousands of pages?

Quasi-legal bodies paid by taxpayers create various rules and procedures that the taxpayer must follow in order to process an objection. Look at the proposed pulp mill, who in the public is going to read and understand the thousands of pages of IIS? And who pays the public for their efforts? No-one! The taxpayers have to pay to mount their own objections, they pay for the appeal tribunal and every other aspect of the process.

One Council member in Penguin has even said that the Council can’t afford to pay to support appeals for developments. Amen to that, except the taxpayer is also the ratepayer that pays the Council.

The system is blatantly unfair and serves to disadvantage taxpayers and approve projects which may do a lot better were they to have greater public support.
Trouble is, after decades of conflict stimulated by dysfunctional processes, developers and governments have learned to hide what they do from the public.

The Chief of Staff could take the initiative here and start measuring the total costs of these processes along with the costs currently absorbed by the community. Changing the processes to reduce their costs would also reduce conflict and cut community dissatisfaction with these decisions.

As it is, Tasmanians are paying a large hidden price to engage in cumbersome processes, money that could be much better spent elsewhere.

Notes

Process management studies the strengths, weaknesses, costs and impacts of different process structures and designs.

Process: a sequence of activities carried out for a purpose
Purpose: the fundamental reason for doing something