a response to Ingrid Jackson’s article
Families, societies and governments cannot operate without structure; without agreed rules about what is acceptable and what is not.
We have rules because without them it would be every person for themselves. We accept the law and the impositions it makes on our behaviour because it gives us order and allows us to operate as a community and a society. And so it is with a land use plan. It gives a structure to land use. It gives confidence that there is and will be some order in how things happen; that we would not buy into an industrial area only to find we are constrained by being surrounded by residential uses; that we would not wake up one morning in our townhouse and find someone has set up a 24 hours pie shop in the unit next door; that an area designated as a nature reserve will not be turned into a bus depot or an abattoir.
Is the Noosa Plan a law or a guideline? If it is only a guideline then we can have no confidence in it. That it can be defended in a court gives it gravitas and credibility. That deciding to defend the plan in most cases leads to a process of negotiation of an agreed outcome rather than a court hearing is, in my opinion, a good reason to enter the process of defending the plan rather than to discard it as useless.
Ms. Jackson has argued that councillors have a right to independent judgement, and that is so, but I don’t think it follows that we elect officials to overturn the land use plan with independent judgement. Generally if an elected member of any government doesn’t agree with the law or rule they must take the road of changing it, not ignoring it.
Ms Jackson argues: ‘There can be good reasons for not proceeding in total alignment with the Noosa Plan’. I agree, because as in all aspects of rules and law there are exceptions, but if exceptions become the rule then a plan means nothing. After an individual complex analysis (without the influence of what Ms. Jackson suggests may be a biased planning staff ) one councillor might be of the opinion that the 24 hour pie shop in your townhouse complex or the abattoir in a nature reserve would be in the interests of the economy or the environment and so should be allowed to operate. That other councillors may not agree does not mean (as Ms Jackson suggests) they are less capable of complex analysis, biased in favour of the staff ideology or have not done their own research or reading. It simply means they have done their own analysis and come up with a different answer. This happens.
That the previous council was not just a ‘rubber stamp’ of staff recommendations (as Ms. Jackson suggests) is amply demonstrated by the decision made on short term accommodation provisions in the New Noosa Plan. It’s a clear indication councillors other than herself were willing to do their own research and due diligence and make decisions other than those recommended by staff, but it should be remembered they did so in the process of changing rules, not ignoring them. That is the role of Council.
Given a few exceptional decisions based on the individual whims of councillors a land use plan would mean nothing. There would be chaos, and councillors would find themselves having to make decisions about everything and anything without recourse to any structure or rules, undertaking a complex, individual analysis to decide what they think is in ‘the community interest’ on every issue. I imagine they still would not all agree.
I don’t think we elect councillors to make ALL the decisions on a case by case basis. Most of the decisions on everyday matters are made by staff who are guided by the provisions of the Noosa plan, policy, local laws and such. Surely the primary role of a council is to set the structure, budget and policies to guide the operations of staff, not to oversee every decision. We expect that staff will work within the structure, budgets and policies set by council. We also expect that in making their decisions council will give due credence to the professionalism and expertise of staff and also, where possible, work within the structure of the planning instruments, the budgets, policies and laws they or previous councils have already agreed on.
Ms. Jackson is right, the existing Noosa plan is outdated with amendments cobbled together to meet changing circumstances, and that is why it is important to approve the New Noosa Plan, to bring the philosophies, policies and regulations up to date with what we expect in Noosa now and into the future. This is why supporting the new plan was rightly an issue for the whole community in the election and why candidates were questioned about their commitment. The community wants confidence and certainty not continued debate and division.
The new plan has been long in the making, with extensive professional input and community consultation. Noosa deserves to have a more up-to-date roadmap to guide decision making by both councillors and staff. Until that happens the 2006 plan is all we’ve got between us and the chaos and discontent that would come from having councillors ignore the land use plan and have each individual councillor decide what they believe is in the ‘community interest’.
My assessment of council town plans in Queensland is that they ‘have layers of rules and guidelines’.
Most agree on the need for rules and regulations but in a democracy there is an arbitration system; hence the need for State and Council approval whereby the first and final decisions of a town plan are approved by a majority councillor vote. Hence the need for each assessment to be duly considered and often approved with conditions.
The fact that Ms. Barrass considered Ms. Jackson a problem councillor is irrelevant; many residents thought she was diligently performing her duty and was sometimes unfairly harassed by aggressive councillors.
For the record I do not consider, nor have I said that Ingrid Jackson was a ‘problem councillor’.