From two newspaper reports:
1. An elderly couple, the husband 82 yo. and the wife 80 yo. are facing eviction from their home in Moorleah, South of Wynyard. The reason: Rural zoning rules.
2. A couple who have spent around $40.000 on legal fees to gain a permit to rebuild a home that was burned down, have had no success. The reason: Rural zoning rules. This involves one of our Northern Councils.
These are just two examples of a great deal of hardship caused by the statewide Rural Planning Scheme.
Approximately 30.000 titles could be similarly affected across Tasmania.
How can this be possible?
The P.A.L.(Protection of Agricultural Land Policy) which includes forestry as an agricultural pursuit passed through our Parliament on 2/7/2009 (Hansard).
Under theP.A.L. Model Provisions May 2008 the Stated Objective says: “To ensure that sensitive uses do not fetter agricultural use”.
“Sensitive use” means residential use or uses involving the presence of people for extended periods, such as childcare centres schools, hospitals and caravan parks, except in the course of their employment.
Sensitive uses must not unreasonably constrain the existing or potential use of any agricultural land through land use conflicts taking into consideration factors such as: The potential noise, light, odour, spray drift and the like from agriculture and the possible hour of operation.
The “acceptable solution” goes on to say: Sensitive will be separated from all existing or potential agricultural activities by at least 100m. measured from the boundary of the lot containing the sensitive use, or 200m from the curtilage of the sensitive use.
Hansard 19TH. June 2007 tells us that in the House of Assembly both the then Premier Lennon and the Deputy Premier Kons stated that the P.A.L. was never meant to stop people building on their own land.
We can only hope that the parts of the Bill giving rise to the onerous provisions that have so severely disadvantaged so many of our landholders were unintentional.
