Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – Honourable Speaker, what a shocker, but it is not surprising. This Liberal government has form for rushing through legislation before Christmas. We have seen it before with the anti-protest laws that Will Hodgman did indeed rush through, declaring that they were urgent before Christmas and then they never came on upstairs and they lapsed. It was all about making a big political statement to the community. This is all about not listening to councils and making sure that they cut the opportunity for a community voice in this.
It is not the role of parliament, it is not the role of ministers to reach into individual developments. That is a recipe for corruption, soft corruption, hard corruption. We have had evidence from other jurisdictions around the world that money passes hands when you have the opportunity for developers to influence ministers of the Crown to get their outcomes achieved. It is either through influence, it is through pressure or it is potentially through actual financial corruption that this bill, if passed, will enable. That is what it is opening the door for in Tasmania. It is legislative overreach like we have never seen before and it is a systematic assault on the planning system in Tasmania.
I note and will reference comments from a number of councils who have all universally talked about the fact it is an assault on the planning system that the Liberals set up – the Tasmanian planning system that was meant to be the end of all planning systems, the perfect one, cheaper, faster, simpler is none of the above. Anyone who has had anything to do with their local councils in their area would have heard repeatedly from councillors and constituents the costs of the Liberal’s planning scheme. The incredible, gargantuan red tape that it ties up people with and the incredibly long timeframes.
You could not have imagined things could have got worse, but I believe they have probably got twice as bad now than they ever were. And yes, there are very short timeframes that councils are required to respond on the development approvals process, but because they are able to seek more information, inevitably what happens is that those are the complexity of what planners are required to look at under the Liberals planning scheme means they have to keep stringing out the process. People who are just trying to do a simple development get strung out.
And here we are now. The Liberals are not only refusing to fix the problems with the planning scheme, which were all writ large, which the Tasmanian Planning Commission itself talked about in their report in 2016 to Peter Gutwein that he summarily dismissed their recommendations of the changes he needed to make to the Tasmanian planning scheme legislation. He just chucked it in the bin. He did nothing with everything that they recommended – gross things that were not even in the planning scheme, and there was no mapping or overlays for environmental planning. It was a shocker. And yet what we have now is instead of doing the work to fix it up, they are creating a pathway for developers – anything over $5000/$5 million(check 5.45) and they can go cap in hand to the minister and push for the outcome they want without going through the community. The minister will have the opportunity to decide that something that could be controversial, something that a council could have a conflict of interest with, unspecified, deliberately kept vague is reason enough to drag something out of an opportunity for the community and the council to have a say about their own local area and into a development assessment process which has been set up by the Liberals, by the minister, and it will not do the job of adhering to the Land Use Planning and Approvals Scheme that we have. It will not. The most egregious developments in Tasmania are controversial, because we are an island of people who deeply care about our place. We care about it.
Ms Burnet – It is a good thing. It is a fantastic thing.
Dr WOODRUFF – It is a great thing, Ms Burnet. If it were not for that, we would not have the beautiful place that we have. We would not have the beautiful coastlines if there were not people there to defend them. We would not have the bushland and the forest and the animals. We would not have the character and the difference. We would have the same bland suburban sprawl as you get when you go to the mainland. What do tourists say when they come to Tasmania? They say this is a beautiful place. This is like nowhere else in the country. This is special beyond belief. They want to come back. That is precious.
The Greens are fighting to protect it, because the Liberal and Labor Party together want to go and do the deals with any developer that comes their way. They want to be able to do that. That is why – let us not pretend about what is going on here – that is why the Labor Party are doing this. They want to have the opportunity, if they are in government to do the same deals too. They want to get the same donations and not declare them.
We had the Liberals, the Premier this morning refusing to declare whether the Stony Rise developer had made a donation to the Liberal Party. Why would he not have cleared that up before the debate, as we asked him to in Question Time? He could have rung the head of the Liberal Party in Tasmania and found that out. He chose not to because he probably did not want to reveal the truth. We say if you are not upfront about it, you have something to hide. We do not know how much he has to hide, but he has obviously got something to hide. Deals have been done. This is what this legislation will enable.
Let us talk about some of the controversial developments that the community have successfully, along with their council, knocked back. It was the Central Highlands Council that knocked back Daniel Hackett’s disgusting application to privatise the World Heritage area, to take a whole lake and an island, Lake Malbena and Halls Island, for himself, for his own personal gain. Disgusting. The community saw it for what it was. That is a jewel in the Tasmanian World Heritage Area. The community knocked her back. What did he do? He went, as any developer could do, to TASCAT. He won that case. Then the community took him on appeal to the Supreme Court and he dropped it. Then he went back to the Liberals, back to get more help.
This is how the law should work. We have appeals processes. They are pathetically inadequate under the Liberals, but there are processes for developers to appeal council decisions if they do not like it. The problem is too often the developers that get knocked back, the big egregious developments, the ones that will trample over the character, trample over the values of a community, trample over, for example, Charles Hand Park. Poof. The Liberals would have been happy to just bulldoze Charles Hand Park, that public open space, that jewel of Clarence, to put a high-performance centre there without talking to the community. That is effectively what they were going to do. If it was not for the community rising up and taking an elector poll, that is what would have happened. If they had consulted with the community they would have found out that Kingborough had their hand up and were happy to go with it. Why not have the conversation? Why not bring communities along?
Dr Broad – The elector poll won. They won the elector poll. The community were for it.
Dr WOODRUFF – The community were not.
Dr Broad – Who won the elector poll?
Dr WOODRUFF – The community of Clarence did not want the high performance centre. They did not want the high-performance centre. They spoke. They spoke very loudly. They did not want it there.
Dr Broad – No, they did, they voted yes.
Dr WOODRUFF – They won, and good on them for winning. Good on them for standing up.
The SPEAKER – If I could ask the House to come to order. If there is an allegation that the member is saying something that is untrue there are forms for the House to use.
Dr WOODRUFF – This is exactly what should happen, an opportunity for communities to speak up. The member for Braddon, Dr Broad, said that the Liberal Party – the Labor Party ‑ the Liberal‑Labor Party, apologies, it is hard, they both come to the mouth at the same time. He talked about the philosophical views of the Labor Party. The philosophical views of the Greens is a stated policy commitment for an independent planning process. We have a fantastic independent planning process in the resource management and planning system of Tasmania. A central plank of that is to encourage public involvement in resource management and planning. We do not call the process that the Liberals want in this development assessment panel – we do not call that engagement with the community. The Liberals have form for doing dodgy deals. It has been going for ten years now and let us just look at some of the examples that came to my mind.
Adrian Bold was a very close personal friend of Matthew Groom. We saw the Liberals, Matthew Groom and Adrian out on the campaign trail together. When they got into government they brought through some enabling legislation, first in opposition and then in government, to privatise the pinnacle of kunanyi.
Let us talk about James Groom’s interest in Bernacchi Lodge, where Matthew Groom, when he was Parks Minister, redrew the zoning of the boundaries of the World Heritage Area to facilitate James’s tourism accommodation business so that it could exist.
Then of course, there is rezoning of Lake Malbena that I was talking about, to facilitate a luxury helicopter tourism venture. The Liberals established the office of Coordinator-General, facilitating development behind closed doors. The first job of the, the office of Coordinator‑General was to go forth and look at all the Crown Land around the state and identify land that could be sold off.
Members interjecting.
The SPEAKER – Not meaing to interrupt your time, but I will remind all members that when you are talking about private citizens outside of this place that we are careful and respectful when we do so. They do have a right to make application if they have been misrepresented in this place. Whilst there are privileges that protect us in this place, I would argue that we need to be very careful when we are alleging things about individuals.
Dr WOODRUFF – Thank you, Honourable Speaker.
The SPEAKER – That applies to all members.
Dr WOODRUFF – All these things have been well aerated on the public record and here in Parliament. The Hansard is replete with these names. They have been discussed for the last decade. I am not saying anything new or something that has not been said before.
The SPEAKER – No, but we have had a conversation about all being a bit better. So let us be a bit better, if we can.
Dr WOODRUFF – The Liberals bought in major projects legislation that was so weak that it enabled the minister to call in almost any development, including Chamboard’s dirt pile in Kangaroo Bay, as being so‑called ‘strategic and significantly important for the entire Southern region’. What an absolute crock.
What it was was the minister stepping in, overriding the very strong views of the Clarence community, overriding the council while they are in Supreme Court, in a process to take back that land and put it back for the community to have an appropriate development there. This is all about overriding the community for the interests of developers. I want to talk about some of the comments that we have heard from councils in my electorate. The Huon Valley Council made a very strong submission. They made a number of comments in relation to parts of the bill, Section 40(B)(A), where the minister can review certain decisions. They say:
This is not supported or in any way justified. The proposed Section 40(B)(A) simply allows for political interference in the planning system in respect of a decision that an applicant does not like or accept. The proposed section could indeed become a nonsense as council may be required to prepare the draft amendment as directed, but there is absolutely no guarantee the amendment will then be accepted by the TPC. This may well be a waste of time and extremely embarrassing for the minister. The minister should NOT[sic] have this power. If this section remains, all costs should be borne by the minister.
They make the point that there is no evidence in the Huon Valley of social and affordable housing attracting anything like considerable opposition. That is actually a complete furphy argument. They talk about council opposing the right to override council as a referral authority. They ask:
Would this power be given to further information request made by TasWater, or another referral entity with important public assets?
The Clarence council themselves made a statement comprehensively against this bill. They said:
The bill is incompetent, both from a drafting and operative perspective, and is not founded on good planning principles.
The Clarence City Council considers it essential that local representation and consideration is maintained for all planning applications which have the potential to impact our local values.
They also found that the planning reform process, the one that the Liberals brought in and made a lot of noise over, has:
… spent significant time and resources over the last decade to redefine the state planning framework and to implement the Tasmanian Planning Scheme across the state (with all its flaws). This bill offers a loophole to circumvent the entirety of these processes and means that the credibility of planning in Tasmania is brought into question as it is in direct contradiction with the objectives of the Land Use Planning and Approval Scheme.
They also quote LGAT in their in their correspondence to the minister. I note again, as Ms Burnet did, that just today LGAT had a unanimous vote to reject the DAP legislation, to tell the minister they are extremely disappointed by the government’s approach, and to state that they remain open to professional consultation and collaboration with the sector.
They also said in relation to a release made by the minister that:
A number of the comments in the release were emotive, unhelpful, not accurate and frankly insulting to the local government sector.
These comments come despite your own development assessor panel position paper saying:
Despite the statistical evidence, there remains a perception that some councils are less supportive of new developments than others.
They said:
The Future of Local Government Review Board reported that it was only about 1 per cent of discretionary applications across the state that go to appeal, and importantly, the determinations made by elected representatives are no more likely to be appealed than those by council officers.
The Clarence City Council says:
The claim that the current system, and more particularly, councils, are holding up development is a fallacy without evidence.
That is a critical point. There is no evidence for bringing this in. There is no evidence of need. All the evidence points in the other direction: that between, as LGAT says, 85 per cent and 90 per cent of all applications are determined under delegation by council officers rather than coming before elected representatives.
What will happen to the development applications that are more than $2 million in our regional areas – indeed any area outside a city area? As Ms Badger said, that criteria applies to many development applications that would come before councils. They will all be able to be drawn into this process, thereby avoiding the normal land use planning and approvals processes.
On behalf of the Greens, I say that is a shame. It is a disgrace that communities will not get the chance to look at planning applications and to have the proper processes – the full processes – with their local representatives arguing the case, listening to people on the ground in the community, collecting their stories and hearing their views, and being in the space. It is not something that can be replicated by a development assessment panel. There is no way the person who lives down the road – that older person – is going to go and talk to a development assessment panel about what a development means for them. It is going to cut out all those voices of ordinary Tasmanians who are not literate, and who do not have the time, money, resources and ability to go and make an application to a development assessment panel.
It will not do anything good for Tasmania, but it will do something very excellent for the Liberals and for the developers they seek to enable. We reject this process, and the disrespect of rushing it through parliament at this time of year precisely to avoid having a conversation with all the mayors of Tasmania and the people that they represent.
Time expired.
