“Scenic view across the Chudleigh Valley to the Great Western Tiers, Tasmania – Nov 2013.” (Photo © A. C. Ricketts)
The Election Sleeper: Local Government Land Use Planning Reforms and The Election
The Sleeper in this state election is Local Government, land-use planning reforms. Voters should look at the various party positions on this important land use matter, which affects all private land to some degree or another.
Significantly, most people do not have a very good understanding of the nuances of local government land use planning. Even though many people don’t directly use it or rarely use it, it is important.
The Tasmanian Liberals have capitalised on this lack of understanding by promising to have a single statewide planning scheme to cut red and green tape, suggesting that current regulation is unduly restrictive.
What the Liberals clearly say in their policy document “A fairer, faster, cheaper, simpler planning system” is that they intend to diminish your rights of appeal and thus your ability to protect your amenity in their new scheme. They intend to place any new and upcoming development project both big and small above your existing rights.
They do not actually say that a single statewide planning scheme would render the 29 local governments largely redundant. After all they have already lost water and sewerage.
Without planning perhaps a future state government will decide to do away with local councils, further eroding our democracy.
To pay for a whole new statewide planning process, the cost of planning applications and appeals would almost certainly skyrocket. If you doubt this claim just look what the statewide approach did to prices of water and sewerage. Under local government water rates were a small part of your overall rates in most municipalities – no longer.
It can be shown The Tasmanian Greens have performed poorly over local government planning, both when McKim ignored the State Template review in about 2009 and more recently when the Tas Forest Agreement (and of course the Greens) ignored private land issues completely. The Greens have basically avoided land use planning matters and obviously do not consider it to be an electorally attractive issue for them.
More recently The Greens were powerless to stop the Gunns Pulpmill project being shored up by Labor and Liberal in February 2014, aiming to nullify an existing valid appeal by a community association.
Interestingly the Palmer United Party (PUP) is advocating more local governance. However PUP is another party spruking the removal of the red and green tape; whatever that may be.
Recently the Planning Institute of Australia, Tasmanian division (PIA) put out a discussion document providing background on Tasmania’s planning performance. The PIA POLICY POSITION STATEMENT Draft for Discussion DECEMBER 2013 PIA Tasmanian Division seems to have received little press. It also seems the Liberals have not read it. You can find the PIA document here: http://www.planning.org.au/tas
The PIA urges the completion of the new interim schemes and more state policies – Tasmania sadly has very few of these. It criticises the creation of the Tasmanian Planning Commission and shows that planning in Tasmania is under-resourced.
Despite being under-resourced the PIA’s report shows in terms of planning timeframes and other performance the following:
• Mean approval time for all DAs (statutory days) = 28 days
• Mean approval time for all DAs (calendar days) = 49 days
• Median approval for all DAs (calendar days) = 35 days
• Applications approved within statutory period = 85%
• Percentage of DAs appealed = 3.2%
• Percentage of DAs appealed by 3rd Parties = 1%
• Percentage of appeals mediated = 83%
• Percentage of all DAs appealed by 3rd parties and not mediated = 0.2%
Note: DAs are Development Applications.
Tasmania has the second fastest planning approvals system next to South Australia and way better than most of the other states. Read the PIA report.
One can see with the PIA statistics “Percentage of DAs appealed = 3.2%”, meaning Councils appeals and private appeals (combined) and “Percentage of DAs appealed by 3rd Parties = 1%”, meaning private appellants only, that stopping appeals by removing our citizens’ rights is not justifiable but the Liberals are continuing anyway.
To their credit Labor has been steadily reforming local government planning since 2008. Some of those reforms have worked and some have not as the PIA suggests. It is not perfect. However there is no doubt that Regional Land Use Strategies are a good idea. Labor seems to remain committed to regional strategic planning and given the parochial nature of Tasmania it seems like a reasonable compromise.
Tasmania’s 29 local governments have for several years now been working hard creating new and consistent modern planning schemes which meet those three Regional Strategies.
This must already have cost a fortune. This process involved public consultation too. Why throw away years of work and all that community input for some ill-conceived election hype?
The Liberals want to throw most of that work away and start again. What the Liberals do not say is that their ditching of a vast amount of work would cost a fortune. What is the budget?
No doubt a statewide planning scheme would be incredibly unwieldy, given all the local detail that would be required. Indeed Labor claims it would not work and they may just be right.
Further it would be a breach of faith with the Tasmanian population and the 29 local governments who have been tirelessly involved in developing the new regionalised planning schemes, now for many years, with that process nearing completion.
The PIA report actually proves the planning system does not have too much red and green tape. It is not that there is none but it is clear that a statewide planning scheme will not solve the mantra of the red and green tape. What is probably intended by the Liberals is simply to obliterate genuine and reasonable rights of appeal.
Also: Do we want to get rid of the other assessments and codes, such as bushfire prone land, pollution performance, agricultural land protection, and coastal protection? Well? Are these the ubiquitous red and green tape?
I suppose Tasmania could get rid of the Protection of Agricultural Land (PAL) policy and free up rural land use for the best and highest use. After all isn’t it a form of anti-competitive backwards subsidy? Why cannot tourism exist on a level playing field with agriculture? Why is it discriminated against? After all the TFGA is one of those bleating there is too much red and green tape. What about no PAL policy? When it suits, such as down at Kingston for example, houses smother good agricultural land anyway.
Obviously the best and highest use of rural land is not MIS driven forestry plantations on Private Timber Reserves, which are in any case quarantined from the planning system but somehow new ones get caught under the PAL.
One of the main lobby groups long advocating a streamlined and dumbed down planning system is the Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. They have arguably influenced the Liberals but do they represent the public interest of the matter?
Lets put things into perspective over the red and green tape mantra:
• Already most planning schemes have forestry as Permitted as of a right, so there can be no appeals in that situation.
• The pulp mill permit has its own special enabling act, so it cannot be that one.
• Of course Tasmania has no proper landscape protection for tourism or our amenity, so that issue surely cannot be termed red and green tape.
• Tasmania does not stop land clearance of the endangered Tasmanian Devil habitat so that cannot be considered to be the blasted red and green tape. Do we want to further diminish threatened species protection, which is already deliberately impotent?
• Perhaps it is the listed Heritage buildings, which need a separate approval?
So what is going on? What is meant by the red and green tape? What is intended? Well, a simple gutting of all our rights, I maintain.
• Download, PIA Strategy, Libs’ Policy, Lara Letter …
Draft_Tas_policy_platform_December_2013.pdf
A_Fairer_Faster_Cheaper_Simpler_Planning_System.pdf
Liberal_Planning_Policy_is_a_Con.doc
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• Wayne Crawford, Mercury: Labor may be hung out to dry It is not that minority government — or, as we had for four years, “power-sharing” coalition government — does not work, or that it threatens the democratic process. Indeed, “creative tension” generated by no single party being able to dictate the political agenda has led to some of the best examples of reformist government in the state’s history. The Bethune Liberal-Centre Parties coalition government (1969-72) delivered more reforms in three years than consecutive Labor administrations had done in 35 years. There were long-overdue improvements to the Criminal Code, police training and the prison system; road safety was taken seriously for the first time; and tourism was recognised as an industry worth promoting. The written Accord between the Field Labor Government (1989-92) and five Greens ended in tears, but only after the Government had made some notable environmental reforms and great strides in getting Tasmania out of a financial hole that had been dug by the Liberals. And the minority Rundle Liberal Government (1996-98), which operated thanks to the unwritten and informal support of the Green cross-bench, was credited with numerous initiatives — gay law reform, and the tightening of lax gun controls in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre, to name just two of the more memorable ones. Liberal premier Tony Rundle described it as “the most dynamic period of government in recent political history”.
• Rodney Croome: More Tasmanian election candidates support marriage equality than ever before
• Tom Arup, SMH: ‘Green tape’ can prevent black days and red-faces But there is a broad suspicion that in the past few years Hazelwood’s owners have invested the bare minimum in capital works and maintenance to keep the mine and its associated power plant running, with an expectation of closure by decade’s end. With carbon pricing to be axed, and gas prices soaring, Hazelwood and other brown-coal generators and mines will now likely have a much longer life. Putting aside climate change concerns, that brings into question whether our laws are properly equipped to mitigate the risks of ageing mine and power infrastructure so close to towns. It should also focus our minds on how well existing environment laws are being enforced. In 2012 the Victorian Auditor-General found the state’s environment department did not have sufficient policies or systems in place to ensure business was complying with current law.
