Land Use Planning & Approvals (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill 2026 (No 22)
Wednesday 9 September 2026
[3.09 p.m.]
Ms ARMITAGE (Launceston) - Thank you, Mr President, and I rise to make a few short comments on this bill.
As others have said, the Land Use Planning Approvals Act 1993 is a very large, complex and comprehensive piece of legislation. Given the nature of land use and planning in Tasmania, these laws necessarily need quite a lot of attention and amendments. No-one's disputing the need for ongoing updating and change and resultant technical amendments. It should not be a static piece of legislation, but one that is proactive and responsive. It needs to be fit for purpose and meet community expectations and needs. I have to agree with the member for Elwick, where's Elwick? Oh, there she is. I was making sure I had the right electorate. Realistically, we probably really need a whole revamp of the whole act, but we have to deal with what we have before us.
The Legislative Council, as we know, is the House of review and so often it falls to us to make changes and amendments that aren't apparent until after the other place has dealt with a piece of legislation. That approach really does stifle meaningful community consultation and means that where issues are discovered a bandaid solution is applied, rather than a policy that's been properly scrutinised. A number of concerns have been raised about this bill and I think we've all had numerous pieces of correspondence from so many in the community, including a very comprehensive submission from the Planning Matters Alliance of Tasmania regarding clauses 4 and 5. I'm sure these clauses will be discussed and debated more in the committee stage. More generally, however, concerns have been raised about the contents of this bill and the way in which it will work in practice. We cannot allow politicisation of our planning scheme to occur in the guise of technical changes to the principal act.
Concerns that have been raised include, first and foremost, the granting of additional excessive powers to the minister to unilaterally rezone land. As I understand it, up until now, the local provisions schedule means councils have decided where the 23 zones and 15 codes of the TPS are applied spatially, and the Tasmanian Planning Commission resolves disputes. Two, ensuring that community consultation occurs before rezoning, not during or after. I know that during my time on local government, community consultation was often more about telling people what they were doing rather than taking back the consultation and listening to it. Three, interim-planning directives by the minister are not a replacement for existing processes. It has always been the case that land-use planning is a collaboration between the state government, local councils and local communities with independent oversight and application of relevant planning laws and rules occurring through the Tasmanian Planning Commission. Four, pathways for the approval of important key developments through processes like major projects, projects of state significance and major infrastructure development approvals already exist and serve an important purpose. And five, the ability of ratepayers and members of the community to appeal these sorts of decisions is unclear with this bill in its current form.
We often find ourselves amending land-use planning laws and, given the complex nature of developments in Tasmania and the importance of our communities being able to have their say, it is necessary to ensure that as many avenues for meaningful consultation and appeal rights should exist as possible. That's not to say that we can't facilitate development for Tasmanian land that will have benefits, but it needs to be able to be properly scrutinised. Vesting too much power into the minister or the executive government, or even the risk of doing that, is not how good laws are made. There are many unanswered questions about this bill and the onus is on the government to defend it as it exists in its current form.
