Planning/Heritage
Liberal election promises over state policies gutted …
*Pic: of Glenorchy Mayor Kristie Johnston
Mayor and Councillors
Glenorchy City Council
Dear Mayor and Councillors
I have become aware of your 15th February 2016 meeting and in particular the agenda Item no 12. “Changes to Planning Legislation and Development of Draft Provisions for Tasmanian Planning Scheme”.
Firstly, The Environment Association Inc is a regional community based organisation located in the Meander Valley LG area with a long-term interest and participation in land use planning at the statewide level. Please note we are constitutionally required to be free of any association with any political party.
We believe Land Use Planning is the most important development portfolio area for Government; it affects all land in Tasmania, public and private, has 29 Councils operating at least 29 local schemes. It is not treated with the priority it deserves by any political party. We are concerned over the design and implementation of the so called statewide planning scheme and what it means for local land use planning.
Our understanding is that the December 2015 amended LUPAA legislation was not available for much of January 2016 and therefore it would have been virtually impossible for your planning and legal team to gain a full appreciation in depth of the new legislation. We eventually managed to prise a cobbled together copy out of the state’s legislation section in late January. Even the TPC was operating without a copy.
This vastly bloated legislation is sadly attempting to do the impossible. It was largely imported from interstate and in our view will not be as good as what you currently have which created your 2015 IPS. It was of course unfair that the legislation was not available to Glenorchy for a significant amount of the informal comment period to local governments for the State Provisions. Is the timeframe the State is providing adequate to enable Council to gain legal advice over the amended LUPAA?
The State Government made a number of promises over planning matters in seeking the power of Government but has reneged on what we regard as the most important. I will come to that aspect later, that is, how best to transparently gain consistency whilst preserving the local intent of Local Government land use planning.
In any case the Liberal/Property Council planning reform (The State Provisions which are erroneously dressed up as a Tasmanian Planning Scheme) has to meet the Schedule 1 objectives of LUPAA and the RMPS. Surely assessing such a new scheme requires more than a cursory consideration of all the issues, which clearly has not occurred in the Tasmanian Planning Reform Taskforce’s deliberations.
This is a big subject and Local Government is not being given adequate time. Indeed how would Glenorchy City Council comment on over 400 pages of State Provisions in 60 days, including your need to make Council based decisions over a vast minutia of material? Despite claims made by the state government, this proposed legislation will not be Fairer as promised.
Our view is that for all 29 Local Government Councils, this new legislation and the new scheme arrangements including the embedded Policy changes to Zone templates and the changes to various zones, as expressed in the State Provisions will require remapping (at least in the Northern Region).
The illusory Statewide Scheme concept exercise will cost Local Governments a substantial financial sum, which will have significant budget and resourcing allocation impacts. The Liberal promise was that it would be Cheaper.
Assessing and commenting on such voluminous documents as planning schemes requires significant resources and skill and is a daunting task, even for a Council with the resources of Glenorchy. Let alone the task of redrafting your scheme to meet the amended Act and concomitant State Provisions.
The issue of the current Scheme workload, which we understand is at the hearing stage for Glenorchy’s IPS is important for Glenorchy. Here in Meander Valley our Council’s new IPS is dated 2013. We note from your website, yours is 2015. We have already had our TPC hearings (termed meetings) from about June to September 2015 but are yet to see any decisions from the TPC over 4 months later. The LIPS decision, you may recall, took ages and was ostensibly the catalyst for the State Provisions. What we term the fright factor. So how can local government be asked to start a new process when the old one remains uncompleted but now in limbo? Was that fairer – no and certainly not Smarter. Was that in line with the LUPAA Schedule 1 objectives?
In any case the TPC claimed that after the last lot of LUPAA amendments of 1st January 2015, which got rid of hearings into the Interim Schemes that all that was occurring was that “Meetings” were being held, not Hearings. Our take on that aspect is that the TPC’s found the legislative amendment so unfair and unreasonable that it continued regardless. Perhaps it was simply their sense of justice; we may never know.
Because the draft State Provisions are a significant shift from the regionalised schemes we believe that there is in fact a massive amount of policy embedded (as we put it) in the new State Provisions. Is this Fairer or even in line with the intended design of the RMPS? We think not.
We note that the Southern Regional Land Use Strategy is quite different to our Northern one. Interim Planning Schemes have to meet and be consistent with Regional Land Use Strategies. We are very concerned about those Strategies which occurred with much input from the community.
Under the new legislation the Regional Land Use Strategies become limited to being relevant only to Local Provisions. Yet often the Local Provisions would only make sense in conjunction with the State Provisions. So now there will likely be an absence of Strategy oversight for the whole of Local Government planning schemes because of the inappropriate relegation of the Regional Strategies to Local Provisions. It is in fact an issue of bad faith given the Liberal commitments over the Regional Land Use Strategies.
There is no mandated hearing for the Statewide Provisions and in our view that is unacceptable. I believe the TPC will be constrained by The Minister (by way of the Taskforce and hence the Property Council), as to what subjects they can consider in their hearings. In other words, someone will be instructing the TPC on what it can and cannot do: we will see the demise of the independence of the TPC.
Have you seen any Statement of Expectation from the Minister to the Tasmanian Planning Commission since the Liberal Government came to power? It is in the legislation and rather overdue of course. We argue they do not know what they are doing but alarmingly are trying to tell you what to do.
By the way we think that the State Provisions will not meet the Schedule 1 objectives of LUPAA. These are of course the legal objectives.
The Government is failing to deliver on its promises, such as over State Policies but they are getting away with this aspect. We explain the relevance below.
State Policies and Strategies should be created and have a comment opportunity before statewide style planning schemes are introduced, were it to be done competently and fairly under the RMPS legislation. It would be Fairer because it would be far more transparent as to the particular Policy shifts and introductions that are otherwise embedded in the State Provisions.
Insisting on State Polices coming before the Statewide Provisions would be reasonable and fair and would save Glenorchy (and all other Councils funds).
The State Policies and projects Act though State Polices is the legal instrument by which statewide consistency is intended to be achieved. Simple as that. The Liberal Government is still trying to understand the fundamental concept of how the planning system should work under the various RMPS legislations.
In December 2015 Minister Gutwein started prattling on about State Policies and second level ones in the PIA Newsletter but the Minister who does Polices is meant to be Premier William Hodgeman not Minister Gutwein. Minister Gutwein was acting well and truly beyond his remit. The idea of the RMPS is that State Polices are there to provide consistency. There is, of course, no legislative mandate for second level policies. We argue it is a second rate idea. It is not consistent with the Liberal’s promise of State Policies.
The Liberals made promises to get elected. What did the Liberals promise before the election regarding Policies? Hear it is!
“A fairer, faster, cheaper, simpler planning system”
“A Majority Liberal Government has a plan to fix the Labor-Green planning mess:”
“State policies for consistency”
“Immediately after the election, a majority Liberal Government will provide the leadership and consistency that has been lacking under Labor and the Greens. We will commence drafting state policies to provide the necessary guidance to councils on how to implement the single state-wide planning scheme and plan for Tasmania’s future land use needs.”
“These policies will make clear the government’s intention to once again make Tasmania ‘Open for Business’ and provide certainty to both investors and the community about how the planning scheme will work.”
“State policies will include, for example, objectives such as:
– Planning and land use is to be geared toward facilitating economic growth and investment;
– Planning and land use is to take into account future needs of the community and potential growth; and
– Sustainable and sensible development is to be encouraged to assist in conserving and allowing access to Tasmania’s parks and reserves.
“All state policies will be drafted pursuant to relevant laws and regulations.”
Was there a “mess”? Is Glenorchy’s Interim Planning Scheme 2015 a “mess”? Is the Southern Regional Land Use Strategy a “mess”?
What does the word “Immediately” actually mean?
Has the “necessary guidance” to Councils been provided in advance of the Statewide Planning Scheme?
Has Glenorchy seen any evidence that Policy drafting has “commenced”?
NB. The use of the term “State Policies” in the above extract from the Liberal’s planning promise. What relevant laws for state policies would apply other than the State Policies and Projects Act?
We are left wondering when someone is going to call this state government to account over this deception.
We are left wondering how the PIA can be so weak over one of their core positions, being that of a suite of State Policies.
We hope that both Glenorchy City Council and indeed LGAT would realise how important a suite of State Policies could be in achieving a statewide consistency, if they were competently drafted under The State Polices and Projects Act.
The regionalised Interim Planning Scheme process was slow – we would agree. But it brought the community with it and now there is a vast reduction in the number of planning schemes and there is a vast improvement not only in overall cooperation between Local Government Councils but significant gains in consistency between schemes. Is it a mess? We do not think so.
Finally, I mention one particular zone issue, the loss of the Environmental Living Zone and its replacement with a zone, the Landscape Conservation Zone, which completely misunderstands the reasons for having an Environmental Living Zone and misunderstands the obligations under the RFA for private land covenants. Most of you may not want to live in such a zone but for those who do the strategic destruction of the zone is abhorrent and financially disadvantaging. Tasmania has a lot of private covenanted land some 800 reserves and linking some such areas into the planning system via such a Zone is meeting the LUPAA objectives.
We understand the new system intends to avoid important local character statements and desired future character statements, which would make the qualitative intent and standards of any particular zone less clear. This would lead to greater debate and greater appeal and greater potential for judicial review type challenges. It would be less fair and would involve Council in more disputes, not less.
We consider the issue of appeal rights to be vital and central to protecting what local communities cherish. It is the Government’s intention to debase and reduce appeal rights and that is against the RMPS and its Schedule 1 sustainability objectives which commit to encouraging involvement and we believe the foundation of this approach is already embedded in the State Provisions.
We believe that the democratic public interest issues at stake are more important than private property rights and that position is reflected in LUPAA’s Schedule 1.
We think this Tasmanian Planning Scheme is the end of local government planning. Indeed people who wish to enhance private property rights to develop are being given everything they want by this state-wide planning scheme legislation to the disadvantage of the community and the organisation whose role it is to protect the community – Local Government.
There will likely be an expression of community outrage over what will be a set of planning schemes with far more ‘as of a right’ land uses which will not be able to be modified and improved, where people’s ability to appeal is diminished unfairly.
We think you should notify your rate payers about the upcoming changes and your views of the consequences. Such an initiative is up to you of course.
The new Statewide Planning Legislation, which likely will not work and will not support the RMPS objectives, should be characterised as an upcoming failure!
It is not so much the state-wide consistency aspect, which as we have explained we already have in fact, but the watering down of planning controls, which is being done to enhance the open slather development at all cost. Already appeals are a very small proportion of applications, so why should the Property Council so strongly influence the Liberal Government to further reduce people’s rights?
Indeed it is obvious that the single state-wide Tasmanian Planning Scheme proposed will reduce Local Government planning to a shadow of its current operation.
Instead of Planning, local governments like Glenorchy will be reduced largely to a Permit processing function. The important local planning functions would likely fall away under the single state-wide proposal.
Whilst we are writing to you in Southern Tasmania, we cherish our local areas. We are sure you cherish yours too. Tasmania is a very locally proud place. Everybody does cherish their area or else they leave.
This Tasmanian Planning Scheme threatens the ability of all of us to defend and retain the cherished character of Tasmania’s local areas. Is that what Tasmanians want?
Our sceptical view is that the process has been designed by a hater of local government to limit its ability to have any influence and that the Tasmanian Planning Reform Taskforce has never been interested in respecting Local Government or the LUPAA objectives or indeed any community views, which may be expressed through the Regional Strategies or in any other manner. They do not even want to be honest and fair about State Polices.
We do not claim this to be an encyclopaedic assessment of the local government planning reform problem but rather we have sought to touch on some fundamental concerns, which at this stage we hope you may share.
I hope this email assists with your consideration of the problematic issue of the mandatory Statewide Planning Scheme debacle.
Yours sincerely,
Andrew Ricketts
Convenor
The Environment Association (TEA) Inc.
PO Box 261
Deloraine 7304
Tasmania