Taking Planning Seriously

Second in a series of specials on planning, under the Category, Bob Murfet

There is a direct link between land use planning and the economy of a region. Tasmania has not put sufficient resource into planning and has suffered as a result. With a population the size of four local government areas in Melbourne spread over small distances Tasmania could have an exemplary planning system. The state has a comparative advantage in a number of areas that could be taken up by investors if the planning system was taken more seriously to give certainty, low risk and timeliness to major projects.

Before launching into reform, some clear thinking has to be done about the nature of the Tasmanian land use planning environment.

Small number of people

The first issue is the number of people that live in Tasmania and the implications of that for planning. Lots of people refer to the fact that the state only has around half a million people. There are 507,626 people living in the state which makes up 2.27% of the Australian population and it is growing relatively slowly. Now I want to put that information into a clearer context. On the map in the left hand column it can be seen that the whole of the population of Tasmania is equivalent to that of 4 Local Government Areas up through the northern suburbs of Melbourne: namely Hume, Whittlesea, Moreland and Mooney Valley. That is a very small group of people to be dealt with by a state planning system. For that reason Tasmania has often been left off the map and left on the sidelines of major national planning strategies.

Small scale area.

Some commentators say that Tasmania has a very dispersed population. I find that rather odd given that some people spend longer on their journey to work each day in Sydney than it takes to drive from Hobart to Launceston. The Spatial perception of many Tasmanians is unique compared to people from the other states. In the 1960’s it was not unusual for Tasmanian families to go 50 km and camp next to the beach for their annual holidays. People exaggerate distance here where as in regional areas in other states people travel 100 km to do their shopping. So dispersed is not a term appropriate for Tasmania and there is a diseconomy of having so many Local Government Areas. However the land use planning system can be fixed without necessarily taking on that issue.

Implications for Planning

In my view I think many Tasmanian decision makers forget how small Tasmania is and do not realize that they do not need to prepare unique complex legislation on everything like the larger states. It should be much easier to have an exemplary system on a small scale as with Tasmania. Rather than invent new unique policies we should be looking more to what people are doing in other parts of Australia and borrowing ( nicking or pinching) the best ideas and adapting them to the Tasmanian circumstance. Many of the required planning policies have been in operation in the larger jurisdictions for many years.
NSW has 62 State Environmental Planning Policies (SEPPs) and Victoria has 24 Planning Codes that have been researched, tried and tested over the years. Tasmania only has three and one of those is problematic. We should look at these interstate models and develop the urgently required state planning policies required by Tasmania and get rid of the current policy vacuum. This in no way suggests that we should become part of Victoria. That is a silly idea and it will never happen.

Coastal Policy.

The idea of borrowing from the legislation of other states is not a new one. Indeed the review of the Draft Coastal Policy for Tasmania has said much the same thing following submissions on the matter. The states of NSW, Victoria and Queensland all have operational coastal policies written into their legislation. I am a bit biased as I have worked with the NSW policy but the best approach would be to use the best bits of the three policies. Using this approach a competent planner should be able to put together a good draft policy for Tasmania in two months.

What is Land Use Planning

Many Tasmanians, including some that work in the area, have a very unhelpful view about what land use planning is. They mistakenly think it is just the statuary planning that goes on in Council offices arguing the toss about setbacks, building heights and driveways among other things. I have heard barristers stand up in the planning Tribunal saying that is all planning is about. The Planning Institute of Australia (Tasmania) only has one chapter primarily concerned with statutory planning whereas in the bigger states like NSW there are a number of clearly identified planning chapters. They are:

• Economic Development Chapter
• Environmental Planning Chapter
• Planning Law Chapter
• Social Planning Chapter
• Transport Planning Chapter
• Urban and Regional Planning Chapter
• Urban Design Chapter

So you can see that planning in the other states is far more comprehensive. Tasmania has very few specialist planners in the fields of economic planning, transport planning or urban design. That is a major disadvantage to the state with consultants having to be brought in from elsewhere that do not understand the planning system, the Tasmanian economy or community.

Many planners working in Tasmania have a limited mind set about what planning involves. This leaves developers making ad hoc decisions that they would not make in other jurisdictions, particularly in the areas of land economics and urban design. This results in some of the worst examples of subdivision plans in Australia. The lack of a broader view of planning has caused major economic disasters in Tasmania. When a planner for a significant project starts onto a new project in the other states, the first things they consider are have we got the boundaries firmly established, is there any catastrophic soil contamination, is there any endangered flora and fauna and are there any heritage issues including aboriginal relics on the site. Problems in these areas can send a project broke unless they are clearly understood and the economics taken into consideration at the outset. The Brighton Bypass is a prime example of where an important planning ingredient was not considered sufficiently resulting in major cost implications.

The Tasmanian planning legislation primarily in LUPAA 1993 clearly intended to give planning a much broader base than just statutory planning. Schedule 1 attached to LUPAA 1993 spells out one of the objectives of the planning system at Part 2 (c):

(c) to ensure that the effects on the environment are considered and provide for explicit consideration of social and economic effects when decisions are made about the use and development of land;

However, planners and the Tribunal regularly ignore the importance of social and economic factors when coming to a decision. There are cases where this aversion to considering social and economic issues results in very perverse decisions being made at a significant cost to the community. I will say more about the importance of economic factors in the next article.

That leads to the next important issue and that is that legal practitioners have had too much influence on the land use planning system and its ongoing management in Tasmania. This has probably been the result of having too few qualified and experienced planners in the state. Barristers dealing with planning issues have given too much emphasis to the things that they understand and as a result have distracted the planning system. They have had too much influence insisting on practices and procedures that suit their purposes rather than good planning outcomes. “That’s how things are done around here” is a common response. Look at this quote from an address given to the Planning in Institute of Australia (Tasmania) in 2009 by the now present Chairman of the Tribunal (RMPAT) Simon Cooper where he says:

“What ever function you as a planner perform, whether it be in strategic planning or in development control, as a consultant in private practice or a statutory planner in local authority or State government employ, the fact remains that at every turn all activities that you carry out are legal in nature. Most, if not all, functions that you perform are legal.”

Now he is a barrister and not a planner and apparently has not had much to do with professional planning practices outside of Tasmania. On the other hand, having been involved in planning for the last 30 plus years I estimate that only 10% of my work would have involved the law. When developing a subdivision a large part of the work revolves around the economics of the project, the amenity that will eventuate and the excellence of the urban design shown by the outcome. Then strategic land use planning seldom involves recourse to the law, focusing rather on objectives, strategies and desired outcomes. Indeed I have hired some of the best legal QC’s (SC’s) in Melbourne on some very complex planning law but that only occurred on rare occasions. Of course you could contemplate the legal position every step of the way but think how that would slow up a project and lead it to being uneconomic. So in a good planning environment it is essential to have good lawyers involved but the outcome and the substance of good land use planning has to be the goal rather than simply meeting the law. I have also prepared drafting notes for Commonwealth Acts and again the substance is always more important than the legal wording.

In summary then, what the decision makers in regard to the land use planning system in Tasmania need to focus on are those key issues and objectives outlined above. Tasmania is small and compact in terms of planning and that should be used to its advantage. It does not have to reinvent the wheel in terms of planning but rather be wise in using some of policies and procedures developed elsewhere. It does not need to be independent in terms of planning from the rest of the world. It clearly needs more resources applied to planning so that planners here can be involved in the range of activities within the profession in other places. The benefits flowing from the additional costs involved could turn Tasmania into one of the best planning regimes in Australia and significantly boost its productivity. Tasmania needs to take land use planning seriously.