Minister's planning reforms a thinly veiled attempt to centralise power and bypass local councils.

Tasmania cannot risk development at any cost, writes Brendan Blomeley.

Published in the Mercury on Wednesday, 13 October 2024 (see here).

This government has spent more than 10 years, and significant public funds, developing a statewide Planning Scheme, as well as planning policies and regional land use strategies, and seemingly overnight, they’ve initiated actions that will completely undermine thousands of hours of work by experts, all under the guise of “taking the politics out of planning”.?

The Minister for Housing and Planning Felix Ellis’s recent actions paired with the release of the draft Development Assessment Panel legislation indicates a clear intention to place planning power solely in the Minister’s hands and, when delegated, a few selected individuals appointed by the government. ?

This undermines the democratic processes that have underpinned planning decisions in Tasmania by limiting or removing community and stakeholder engagement on planning decisions in favour of developers who wish for their projects to not be subject to public scrutiny, accountability, and from what we've seen recently, the appeals process.??

Last year, Premier Jeremy Rockliff announced new legislation aimed at allowing certain types of development applications to be determined by independent assessment panels. At that time, Clarence City Council supported amendments that would allow social housing developments to proceed quickly, and for significant council development projects to be assessed by an independent body.?

The stated goal of the proposed Development Assessment Panels (DAPs) is to provide an alternate approval pathway outside of councils’ decision-making functions, ostensibly to "take the politics out of planning” for more complex or contentious development applications.

Clearly this now goes much further than the Premier’s initial proposal and Tasmanians should not accept this proposed change at face value.??

The reality is, this is a thinly veiled attempt to centralise power and bypass local councils, which are closer to the communities they serve than any other tier of government, and are more attuned to their specific needs, expectations, and concerns.?

Whether by accident or by design, the proposed DAPs are not subject to the planning scheme or any assessment guidelines. Importantly, nor do they include a mechanism for appeals.?

This fundamentally undermines the planning reform process that has been taking place in Tasmania over the last decade and even more concerning are the potential implications it will have for genuine community consultation.

The Minister’s ham-fisted approach flies in the face of all the valuable work local councils are doing to collaborate with their communities to build liveable, resilient, and sustainable cities, towns, and regions.??

Concerningly, Minister Ellis is disguising his blinkered opinion as ‘common sense’, in an effort to shut out community opposition, labelling anyone who opposes his view as a ‘NIMBY’ (Mercury, November 10, 2024).

To focus on a recent local example – in Clarence, the Minister for Planning recently decided to take Chambroad’s proposed hotel at Kangaroo Bay out of council’s hands, which is highly questionable, particularly as we’ve raised numerous concerns on behalf of the community.

The Minister ignored council’s concerns, instead relying on AI-generated assessments to justify his decision to award it Major Project status. In my view, this raises more questions than answers about the quality of the process and decision-making.?

The draft Bill exposes the state government’s bid to enshrine its interference broadly across Tasmania’s development sector, not just in respect to Major Projects.???

The limited consultation period, was not sufficient for thorough public scrutiny and debate, especially given the complexity and potential impact of the proposed changes.

If the Tasmanian Government was truly interested in the community’s views on this legislation, it would have engaged in genuine consultation rather than its current tokenistic approach. Some might recall the last time this happened – the proposed reform of the Fire Services Levy – which I believe did not progress largely on account of this Minister’s failure to properly consult.?

The true test will be whether the final legislation reflects the genuine concerns of Tasmanians, or if it merely serves the interests of a few at the expense of many.

The planning process in Tasmania needs continued genuine reform, not just another layer of bureaucracy that distances decision-making from the communities it affects.?

The bottom line is this – the government has taken too long to deliver the Tasmanian Planning Scheme, planning policies and land use strategy reviews. As a distraction, it now spends its time devising legislation to benefit a few.

If this legislation was focused on resolving genuine issues, like social housing delivery, it would have merit and be worthy of support. But it is not. It is trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist while undermining the decade-long work undertaken to improve planning outcomes in Tasmania.

The upshot of the draft DAP legislation, and with the low precedent now set for Major Projects Proposals in the state, it is clear that this Minister has well and truly put politics back into planning.

Brendan Blomeley is the Mayor of the City of Clarence?