Tasmanian Government decision is political, stakeholders claim

Premier Jeremy Rockliff announced on July 18 that the government planned to table the legislation in 2024 in a move he said would "take the politics out of planning".

President of the Local Government Association of Tasmania (LGAT) Mick Tucker and state director of the Planning Matters Alliance Tasmania (PMAT) Sophie Underwood have hit back at the claim.

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Cr Tucker said LGAT had been "blindsided" by the announcement, and there had been no consultation with councils on the issue.

"This has come completely out of left-field, we're gobsmacked," he said.

"The position of being open and transparent seems to be quite lacking in detail."

Mr Rockliff claimed "ideologically motivated, party-aligned councillors" were holding up "critical" development projects and the proposed legislation would provide a second avenue for developers to move forward.

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The LGAT president said unless these panels were operating under different rules to councils, they would encounter the same pitfalls and the move itself was a political one.

"The biggest problem the state government has is their legislation," Cr Tucker said.

"It's their red tape that local councils have to enforce.

"Any of the issues that we continually confront are not local government issues that we've designed, it's that we have to implement state government legislation and red tape."

The LGAT president said rather than the independent panels, the government needed to further invest in its own departments that handle planning-related issues like heritage and environmental approvals.

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The Local Government Review Board noted in a March 2023 report that about one per cent of planning matters rejected at council discretion were appealed.

Cr Tucker said rather than taking the politics out of planning, the decision was taking "the community" out of planning.

"It doesn't make any difference whether it's elected members who make those decisions or whether it's council staff the one per cent ratio remains the same," he said.

"We're talking about a real significant change in the way we operate and ... I think that's quite an embarrassment, to be quite honest, that we would be looking at this when you know the real facts."

Ms Underwood said giving developers the option of bypassing councils was at odds with an open and transparent decision-making process.

"This is about removing the community's say on developments," she said.

"What they're saying is they won't change that communities can still comment, but what they're not saying is they'll probably either remove altogether or make it really difficult to do planning appeals.

"If you can't do planning appeals, it's impossible to keep decision makers and developers to account."

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Ms Underwood said giving developers the option of going to the panels was likely to lead to projects that would not ordinarily be approved by councils going ahead.

This included projects akin to the Cataract Gorge skyway which was knocked back by the City of Launceston council in 2020, according to Ms Underwood.

The PMAT state director said the argument that the move would unlock housing supply was irrelevant, particularly as the state government had powers to create said supply through Housing Supply Orders.

Ms Underwood said planning was something that needed to be carefully considered in all cases.

"We don't think the provision of housing and good planning is mutually exclusive," she said.

"We should have good planning and housing which needs to be well-planned, especially for social housing as that needs additional services and support."

Ms Underwood repeated calls for all political parties to make their planning policies known ahead of a potential election, and urged all elected members to vote down the proposed legislation.

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