Population pressure increases on the Bay

from the Bay Journal
It's not news: the population around Moreton Bay is growing fast. In this opinion piece, long time environmental activist and now Secretary to the Queensland Conservation Council questions the strong arm tactics of state governments to accelerate this growth. An academic paper with a long trail of references to back up what is Simon is saying, it is not easy to read. But the problem is real for the Bay as so many of the stories in the BayJournal attest. Growth has not been good: despite the best efforts, the condition of the water continues to deteriorate, the millions spent on reorganising the commercial fishing has been only partially successful, local Councils are complaining of unrealistic population targets and destruction of what made the Bay attractive in the first place. It is not a pretty picture. Simon words, even if you don't agree, are worth mulling--editor


Simon Baltais
The new urbanism being considered by the State Government appears dependent on an authoritarian undemocratic planning system.

The Australian government’s inability to stabilise human population means they are striving to move people into High-density settlements which will not only have disastrous social effects but undermine democracy. See attached - pg 28 – 34 and below notes.

We have seen increasing human population in South East Queensland fanning spot fires of angst into raging fires of resentment towards rampant urbanisation in both expansion (greenfield) and high rise forms.

While increasing numbers of communities are rising up to defend their patch they are and will continue to find it increasingly difficult to do so while State Governments continue to remove public rights from town planning processes.
In Queensland it started with the Integrated Planning Act 1997 (IPA) now Sustainability Planning Act 2009 (SPA) which introduced Code Assessment, which effectively removed community rights to question and challenge any development considered under this Planning assessment process.

The Queensland Government then in 2007 introduced the Urban Development Land Authority which removes the planning assessment process from Local Government and removes all community appeal rights to challenge development.

Initially five Urban Land Developments (ULD) were planned (Bowen Hills, Northshore Hamilton, Woolloongabba, Fitzgibbon and Mackay [1]) but with encouragement for more from the development industry have we seen the start of a new wave of ULDs? The Gladstone [2] ULD announced on the 31st March 2010 may perhaps be the first of many.

In 2010 NSW is rushing through legislation to create a development authority with powers to compulsorily acquire and re-zone privately owned land for re-sale to developers. Pragmatists say it’s necessary if one is to move residential products quickly to market, as one needs to find ways to circumnavigate the tedious and time consuming aspects associated with current legal and democratic rights of individuals and communities.

While on face value ULDs seem useful and Government spin doctors certainly make it seem that way, what are the facts? The Premier on the 26th March twittered that the Fitzgibbon ULD had delivered 40ha of greenspace. [3] What she failed to say is Fitzgibbon resulted in a loss of 135 hectares of publically owned open space and bushland; this represents a huge loss of publicly owned greenspace.[4] The ULDs may be good for new residents but what about the loss of amenity and greenspace for current residents?

While our politicians talk about the need for better community engagement, in reality they have since 1997 worked towards incrementally introducing a suite of legislation to sanitise community engagement to one of benevolent notification. The SEQ Regional Plan is a point in case as the community was only ever presented with one option, a pro growth option and nothing else.

By all means make a science based submission to a development application made under Code Assessment or the ULDA in Queensland but the decision will be anything but science based and is already made so really why bother?

The truth of the matter is Australian governments have simply picked the wrong problem and come up with wrong answers.

The problem is over population. A failure to address over population means democracy surrounding Town Planning will slowly but surely be dismantled to aid in the retro-fitting of humans into high rise towers or highly densified centres. This is a situation created by our politicians supported by developers and too often ignored by the media.