Media release – City of Hobart, 27 July 2021
Non-compliant cable car application refused
Hobart City Council has voted to refuse the Mt Wellington Cableway Company’s planning application, proposing construction of a cable car and associated infrastructure on kunanyi/Mt Wellington.
The Council, acting as the Planning Authority, heard from 15 deputation groups – including the development proponent – prior to entering an extensive debate.
A report produced by a team of planning professionals with extensive experience dealing with large and complex projects had recommended refusal, based on 21 key points of non-compliance with the planning scheme.
Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds said the Council had acted responsibly in reaching its decision.
“The assessment undertaken by independent planning experts clearly demonstrates that this proposal does not comply with the provisions of the Hobart Interim Planning Scheme 2015 or the Wellington Park Management Plan 2013,” she said.
“A number of threshold challenges were identified in the proposal and the planning application. The Council acted professionally, as a Planning Authority, to acknowledge these non-compliant aspects of the proposal.”
“This is a sensible decision for the mountain that reflects the need for the very best planning and development for public land. The community expects the Council to protect our public parks and natural assets from proposals that create irreversible negative impacts.”
Cr Reynolds thanked everyone who had contributed to the assessment and discussion.
“The assessment team had a huge task and has acted with professionalism and diligence throughout the process,” she said.
“We also thank everyone who submitted one of the 16,589 representations – that sort of response is unprecedented in Tasmania and is evidence of the passion that exists within our community.”
See video of the meeting at the bottom of this page.
Media release – Residents Opposed to the Cable Car (ROCC), 28 July 2021
CABLE CAR FAILURE SHOULD BE THE END
Residents Opposed to the Cable Car (ROCC) welcome the decision of the Hobart City Council to refuse a permit for the cable car development on kunanyi/Mt Wellington and its associated road, base station, towers and massive commercial complex on the summit.
This should spell the end and the proponent, its investors and the Gutwein government should cut their collective losses and drop their pursuit of this project.
“This decision rightly condemns the cable car proposal and it should be the end of the attempt to privatise publicly owned, reserved land and bring mass tourism to the mountain,” said Vica Bayley, spokesperson for ROCC.
“We call on the proponent to drop this destructive development and ask Premier Gutwein to unequivocally rule out any form of assistance that would resurrect this toxic proposal.
“This development has failed on 21 points of planning and is equally flawed on moral and social-license grounds.
The proponent has long-claimed the development application is a ‘testament’ to the design of the project, but after two years of refinement following requests for additional information, expert planners identified deep and detailed reasons why the development was non-compliant with planning and management requirements.
“The developer has had a crack, it produced its best effort and it has been found wanting. It is time the Mount Wellington Cableway Company and its investors stop flogging a dead horse.
“As residents of Hobart we want an end to the angst, division and disruption that comes with a cable car proposal on a much-loved mountain and the threat of negative impacts on the very values the place was protected to preserve.
“The proponent and its investors have dragged Tasmanian residents through a drawn out, divisive debate over the future of kunanyi and it’s time it ended.
“Appealing this decision will throw good money after bad and prolong division the community can do without.
“Special legislation to approve this proposal is its only real hope and Premier Gutwein should rule out any form for support, simply ruling out the Major Projects process is not enough.”
Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds and cable car CEO Chris Oldfield speak after the cable car decision
After a late night vote not to accept the Mount Wellington Cable Car development application hear Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds and MWCC CEO Chris Oldfield’s quite different takes on the meeting outcome.
Listen here. Transcript below.
Ryk Goddard
It was a pretty heated meeting at Hobart City Council as they considered the Mount Wellington cablecar development application. Nine councillors voted to refuse it, three voted to defer it so that the proponents could address some of the concerns that were there and the decision wasn’t delivered until 1030 pm. You have had so much to say this morning about this debate; Anne says ‘is it just distracting us from other important issues?’ Chris Harris says ‘it’s a great decision, the development application was flawed and amateurish’. Michael says ‘I would have respected the decision if six of the aldermen including the mayor hadn’t indicated they’d reject it at the last council election. They’re biased from the start, bring on the appeal’. Anna Reynolds is the Lord Mayor, join the conversation any time. 0438922936. Chris Oldfield joins us too shortly from the Mount Wellington Cableway Company. Mayor Anna Reynolds good morning.
Anna Reynolds
Good morning, Rick.
Ryk Goddard
A pretty late vote, how many deputations did you receive?
Anna Reynolds
We received 15 deputations. That included mountain user groups, rock climbers, mountain bikers, etc. and neighbourhood organisations close to the cable car. Support groups were in attendance and gave a deputation and professional bodies like the Landscape Architects. And then also obviously the developer themselves had a good time to provide a deputation and to answer questions. So that went for four hours, lots of listening by the elected members. And I think that was really important because this is a complex issue. It’s not as simple as you know, just build it. There is, there’s many, many things that we need to consider as the planning authority, and as the park managers, but last night, we were thinking about things from a planning law perspective. So those deputations were really important.
Ryk Goddard
What do you say to someone like Michael, who says six of you already said before the meeting, at an election, that you wouldn’t vote for a cable car?
Anna Reynolds
Well, I think the council took its role very seriously. We did commission an external planning firm to assess the application. Now if the planning firm had said, ‘you know, this is fine, go ahead with it’ and then you’d had a large number of councillors saying, y’ou know, regardless of the advice we’re rejecting this’, then it might be a different story.
But the independent planning assessment – and I would encourage people are really interested in this issue to actually look at the design and look at some of the challenges with the design that were raised by the independent planning experts – they made it very clear that there was some fundamental problems with this project. And after, you know, nearly a decade of speculation and debate, people wanted us to make a decision. That is our role. We certainly took the external planning advice incredibly seriously. We read a huge amount of material and we weighed up all the advice. But ultimately, we had to make a decision on whether this project, this design, the elements of this design, were appropriate for the park.
Ryk Goddard
0438922936 join the conversation. Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds after meeting to decide the fate of the Mount Wellington cableway. Chris Oldfield said he’d speak with us today and we’re putting calls in for him, he’s not picking his phone up at the moment. I think we’ve just got him. That’s good, marvellous stuff. During the meeting, Zelinda Sherlock was concerned that he was messaging councillors … are there rules about being able to message people like that during a meeting?
Anna Reynolds
Well, there’s no rules, definite rules against it, I guess. For councillors, our job is to keep an open mind and listen to all of the information that’s being presented to us during a meeting. So if you’re, you know, if you’re busy on your phone, talking with one particular person that would not be indicative of keeping an open mind and listening to all of all the views. But other than that, there’s no particular rules. I guess it’s just whether that’s perceived as a good look for the councillor or councillors that were involved.
Ryk Goddard
Will the program now go to appeal? Do you expect … what’s the council’s role if there is an appeal? Do you think that this project needs to be taken out of council hands and given to state government?
Anna Reynolds
Look, it’s my hope that the that the council’s decision is accepted and that it is respected, in the same way that decisions made by other local governments about iconic Tasmanian places are respected. And Ryk, I can’t help but compare this to a recent proposal to build a cableway around the Launceston Gorge which is also a very much loved Tasmanian landscape. And it was considered by that council earlier this year. And, you know, there was no state legislation introduced to undermine that council’s decision, to remove its ability to make a decision, there were no calls for a state referendum. And that council’s decision was made, it was a unanimous decision not to accept a cablecar in the gorge and, and that was accepted by the company and by other levels of government. And I think the same thing needs to happen here in Hobart. It was very thoroughly assessed by a planning panel.
And the important thing to be aware of is there are many things that we couldn’t consider that people were quite upset about. We couldn’t consider the Aboriginal heritage impacts. We couldn’t consider bushfire risk. We couldn’t consider the the noise impacts of the base station on neighbouring properties. We couldn’t consider the impact of traffic in South Hobart. So there were many things that did not come under this under planning law. So what we’ve considered as a very, very narrow, but very significant set of reasons that I think would stand up in a court of law. But do we really need to go through that process? I would call for the company to accept this decision.
Ryk Goddard
We’ll hear from the head of the company in one second, one more question for you, Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds. 16 past seven, Luke at Claremont says ‘Why was there no willingness to work through the issues and the rejections?’
Anna Reynolds
Well, you know, this process has been going for many years, and there’s been lots of opportunities for the company to work with the community, with the council, with its own planners, to come up with a design that was not as insensitive. I mean, the choices made by the developer very early on about the location of the project running across the Organ Pipes, the size of the pinnacle centre at 3000 square metres, which is about the size of a small supermarket, putting a new 2.3 kilometre road through high biodiversity habitat. They are fundamental, they’re the core reason for the failure of this project. This project didn’t meet planning rules, and you can’t condition into an approval something that completely changes those major features of the project.
Ryk Goddard
Lord Mayor, thanks for your time this morning. It was a late night last night. That’s Anna Reynolds. Lord Mayor.
Chris Oldfield is the CEO of the Mount Wellington Cableway Company, Chris. Good morning.
Chris Oldfield
Good morning, Rick, how are you?
Ryk Goddard
Good. How are you this morning? What’s your reflection on the meeting last night?
Chris Oldfield
Well, first of all, can I just express thanks to our supporters, it’s we’ve been inundated overnight with people who do support our project and understand the benefits. So first of all, I’d like to thank them. I guess my first emotions at the moment are a little bit confused, in that it’s a mixture of a bit of sorrow, a bit of anger. But it’s really predictable. I mean, we’ve known for over two years, this will probably be the outcome. And but we’ve stuck by the planning process. We we know, the council has been largely opposed to this project for a period of time. But we said we would stick by a planning process. And and that’s what we’ve got.
Ryk Goddard
If you’ve known that, why did you not make changes to the design that would have a better chance of passing?
Chris Oldfield
Well, that’s two different things. One, saying there is a process to go through for planning, which we did, and we put up what we believe is the best possible project. And that’s the way the process works. So we go through, we developed what we think is the ultimate solution, and we still stand by that. And we took it to council, which is the correct system. And it was predictable, but you have to go through these processes.
I do find that a bit rich though that some of the things that have been said, you know, really do go beyond the pale and we’ve really are I think restrained ourselves from making a lot of comments on some of these outrageous claims. But yeah, with the mayor saying that the road, the access road, you know, we go through a high biodiversity area. There’s a small area but most of it goes alongside the Hobart tip. And when I first met them –
Ryk Goddard
There’s nothing more biodiverse than the Hobart tip Chris Oldfield, it’s teeming with life.
Chris Oldfield
I enjoy it. But the point is, when I first met the mayor, when I returned to Australia two years ago, she suggested we might want to move that road, because perhaps it was a better it’s a better vista to give tourists instead of going alongside the tip. So yeah, I find it a bit annoying now that we get accused of going through a high biodiversity area there.
But yeah, last night, the council threw the kitchen sink at us. There was personal abuse. There were claims and a whole range of things. We can we can cop that. And we will just now consider our position.
Ryk Goddard
What’s the next? What are the options then?
Chris Oldfield
Well, we think counsel had an opportunity last night to work with us to see how we could come up with a project that may close more closely align with what they saw. They chose not to take that opportunity. Even their own planning report, talks about those opportunities and again, they chose not to. So you’d have to assume that the starting position was we don’t want this cable car and how do we set about knocking it off.
The problem is they’re out of step with the community. The vast bulk of people in Hobart and Tasmanians want a sustainable solution to going up Mount Wellington. And the cable car that runs on renewable energy that gets cars off the road that provides a safer and better amenity really has to be a solution. And it’s a solution that has been already foreshadowed by planning legislation, there is an ability to (inaudible) the cable car. And that’s what we’ve done.
Ryk Goddard
And I think everyone would agree that we do need sustainable transport up and down kunanyi Mount Wellington and what’s happening there is not really great for residents, or for the top of the mountain at the moment. Chris, I mean, other people have suggested out the back of the Huon or up from (inaudible), did it have to go across the Organ Pipes. Is that partly what’s shot this project in the foot?
Chris Oldfield
Look, what we wanted to do was to come up with a project that had minimum impact and the route we’ve chosen to go up Mount Wellington requires only one major tower on the mountain, all the other routes will require multiple towers. And we’ve simply thought, one of our aims is to minimise visual impact. And that’s what we’ve done. And we thought that, we still believe that’s the optimum route, if you want to minimise the impact. What we want to do is take off the existing shelter up there at the moment put our building below the skyline, and, in fact reduce some of the impact.
Ryk Goddard
Chris, were you messaging councillors during the meeting to encourage them to defer a decision, as Zelinda Sherlock was suggesting?
Chris Oldfield
No I was not and that’s the sort of thing you know. I said, I did text a councillor. Yes, I did. I wasn’t asking for a deferral. There was one particular galling point that came in during the night when Ms Sally Rimmer from the Aboriginal Heritage Council said that there’d been no engagement with the Aboriginal community. I’d been invited to appear before the Aboriginal Heritage Council last year in March and two days before they withdrew the invitation. And we have tried to meet with that council on a number of times and we’ve been rejected by the council. And I found that particularly galling insulting. That’s the text I sent, it was nothing about deferrals. And, again, want to attack me on that feel free but that’s I did.
Ryk Goddard
23 past seven, Loz says ‘the Hobart City Council’s happy to litter the streets of Hobart with electric scooters without consultation but a well (inaudible) development, well, they’ve let it go’. Chris Oldfield is the head of the Mount Wellington Cableway Company. Will you appeal?
Chris Oldfield
We’ll have a look at the opinion, at that the final result we get from council. They have to formally notify us and we’ll have a look at that and take legal advice. The fact is we have very strong support from this project for this project from a wide range of people who do want to see a sustainable solution. Whether we build a cable car or not, by the Lord Mayor’s own figures there is going to be 700,000 people a year going up that mountain on a bad road. This cable car won’t create tourism. What we’ll do is offer a better experience and something Tasmanians can be proud of. So we will consider our legal position over the next two weeks.
