TPC Kingborough LPS Hearing

Note: This transcript was generated from the official YouTube recordings using automated speech recognition. Timestamps refer to elapsed time within each day's recording. The spelling of names and acronyms may not be perfect in every instance — please use logic and discretion when interpreting any possible transcription errors. For the official record, refer to the Tasmanian Planning Commission.

Note: The downloadable PDF version of this transcript contains more complete information than this online version. Where detail matters, please refer to the PDF.

Day 1 — Day 19 of hearings Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FlFXtUkHqw | Duration: 06:20:19 [00:04:36] Well good morning everyone. Welcome to day 19 of the hearings for the assessment of the Kingborough draft local provision schedules referred to as the LPS. Thank you for attending and it's really nice to see so many people here and so many familiar faces from our previous hearing days so thank you for coming along. [00:04:59] Before beginning today's hearing in recognition of the deep history and culture of this island I'd like to acknowledge and pay our respects to all Tasmanian Aboriginal people, the past and present custodians of the land upon which we meet today. [00:05:13] The hearing is now open. My name is Nick Heath and I'll be chairing the hearings today. Together with Dan Ford and Rohan Probert we have a joint and several delegation from the Tasmanian Planning Commission to undertake these assessments. [00:05:28] Together with us today we have our Planning Advisors Linda Grome and our Spatial Analyst Simon Gatenby and we also have Collinia Minter who you've probably met when you signed in this morning and she's our administrative support for the hearings. [00:05:44] I'd also like to acknowledge the presence of the Planning Authority, Kingborough Council, who are represented today. I'll let them introduce themselves when they present. [00:06:00] Just a few housekeeping matters before we begin. The hearing is being recorded and live streamed on YouTube. If you don't wish to be recorded please let me know and we can make arrangements. The transcript will be made available on the TPC website. [00:06:20] Today we will be hearing from the Planning Authority in response to Direction 69 from the Commission. Direction 69 required Council to review the application of the Landscape Conservation Zone in the draft LPS and to reconsider the use of the Rural Living Zone as an alternative. [00:06:45] The Commission issued Direction 69 following significant public concern about the proposed application of the Landscape Conservation Zone to over 2,000 parcels of land in Kingborough, many of which were previously in the Environmental Living Zone under the interim planning scheme. [00:07:10] Today's hearing will focus on the methodology and approach taken by Council in responding to Direction 69, including the work undertaken by external consultants IRE Inc Planning and Design. Tomorrow we will hear the locality-by-locality analysis covering all 20 localities in the Channel and Kingston areas. [00:07:40] I want to be clear about the process. The Commission is here to listen and to ask questions. We are not here to make decisions today. Our role is to gather information and to understand the Planning Authority's position before we invite representations from the community. [00:08:05] The deadline for written representations is midnight Monday 4 May 2026. Details on how to make a representation are available on the TPC website and will be posted on the noticeboard outside. [00:08:25] Any process questions that the public may have can be raised with me as the Chair. [00:12:13] With those introductory remarks, really it remains for me now to hand over to the Planning Authority for them to present their response to our Direction 69. So, Planning Authority, you might commence by introducing yourselves, letting us know who you are and who's sitting with you, and then I'll let you present your case. Thank you. [00:13:25] I'm fortunate to have our CEO with us today. I think we're doing what we do appropriate. Look, I guess, just one final point of view. We've called a sort of Q&A panel and we'll take you through, I guess, the first part of the business session and then we suspect there will be some discussion later today where we will have a Q&A panel. [00:13:54] Thank you. As Adriaan Stander introduced, my name is Kate Heckelmann. I'm a senior planner at IRU Inc. Planning and Design and have been tasked upon being made by Council to undertake a review of the application of the Landscape Conservation Zone in the draft of the LPS. I guess, in terms of the review, we have looked at as well as a review of how Council have proposed to apply to the Zone, but also looking at the appropriate application of the Landscape Conservation Zone. [00:15:01] We have an overview in terms of our involvement in this process. [00:15:34] As Nick has introduced a little bit, King and Council are now ongoing. [00:16:01] As part of this transition in the interim planning scheme, the Environmental Living Zone, which had been provided for under the interim planning scheme, as there was no directly equivalent zone provided, the Landscape Conservation Zone, however in its introduction it was a translation with prison. [00:17:37] In terms of where everyone is at with their planning schemes, Kingborough at this point is the last local government area in Tasmania to transition to the TPS. As I mentioned before, this has been a long process that Council formally began with the TPC in 2020, with work occurring prior to that in terms of getting a version of the draft scheme to the TPC. [00:18:15] In the context of Kingborough, the removal of the Environmental Living Zone was a significant change in that there's over 2,000 parcels of land within this local government area that are currently within the Environmental Living Zone that needed to be transitioned to a different zone. [00:18:49] Throughout the process to date, which has involved pretty significant conversations and consideration by the TPC and by Council in terms of working through directions and modifications, as well as public exhibition, there has been significant work undertaken in these various stages, which has shaped the way that the Environmental Living Zone has been proposed to transition into the Kingborough TPS realm. [00:19:36] Nick had mentioned before that the genesis of this work has resulted as a consequence of a direction from the TPC to Council to reconsider its application, well, to no longer pursue the PPZ and to review the application of the Landscape Conservation Zone in the Kingborough area. [00:20:04] This direction has provided Council the opportunity to consider the application of the Rural Living Zone more broadly as a particular item, I guess, in the direction and subsequent directions, acknowledging this and the high level of public interest and concern that has come from Council's proposed application of the Landscape Conservation Zone in the draft LPS. [00:20:30] Council did resolve late last year to engage an external consultant to undertake a review of the methodology and the application of the LCZ. And I guess from that process, IRINC was engaged to undertake this detailed review and provide proposed recommendations for Council in proceeding with the Landscape Conservation Zone based on the outcomes of the review. [00:21:00] So in this session, I guess in terms of timeframes from late December 2025, we undertook this work through a series of phases, which we'll run through with you today to show you how we got to the two outputs for this project, which included the Landscape Conservation Review and Findings Report and the Locality Baselining and Evaluation Report, which are the two documents which formed the basis and I guess the overarching components of the response to the Section 69, or not the Section 69, sorry, to the Direction 69 from the TPC. [Note: The full Day 1 transcript continues for approximately 6 hours 20 minutes. The complete text is available in the downloadable PDF above. Key topics covered include: IRE Inc methodology presentation, decision-making tree for LCZ vs RLZ, public Q&A session, and closing remarks from TPC Chair Nick Heath.]

Day 2 — Day 20 of hearings Source: https://www.youtube.com/live/R-zEnKZ-Azk | Duration: 06:59:36 [00:00:49] Well, good morning, everyone. Welcome to day 20 of the hearings. I'm not going to go through my normal spiel in the morning. I'll go through where I introduce ourselves and talk about all those things that we're empowered to do, because I think you've heard that yesterday morning. So we'll just jump straight into where we left off last night. [00:01:08] So yesterday we heard the presentation from Irene Ink on behalf of the council, the authority on the methodology and approach and the decision-making tree they've taken in response to our direction 69. So today we're going to start with the locality analysis. So I think we've got about 20 localities we're doing today. We're not doing Bruny Island, [00:01:32] we're not doing the Channel area, we're doing the Channel and Kingston localities. And I think we've got about 20 localities to get through today. So we'll try and get through as many as we can. We may not get through all of them today. [00:02:00] Kate, do you want to start with the first locality? I think we're starting with Margate. Is that right? [00:02:10] Yes, that's correct. So we'll start with Margate and work our way through the localities in the order that they appear in the Locality Baselining and Evaluation Report. [00:02:25] So the first locality is Margate. Margate is located in the Channel area of Kingborough. The locality has a mix of residential, rural residential and rural land uses. [00:03:00] In terms of the current zoning under the interim planning scheme, the majority of the Environmental Living Zone land in Margate is proposed to be rezoned to the Landscape Conservation Zone under the draft LPS. [00:03:30] However, following the review undertaken by IRINC, we are now recommending that a significant portion of the Environmental Living Zone land in Margate be rezoned to the Rural Living Zone rather than the Landscape Conservation Zone. [00:04:00] The key criteria we applied in making this recommendation were: lot size, existing development patterns, access to services and infrastructure, and the landscape and environmental values of the land. [00:04:30] Where land has a lot size of 1 hectare or more, has existing residential development, and is not subject to significant environmental constraints, we have generally recommended the Rural Living Zone as the more appropriate zone. [00:05:00] Where land has significant landscape or environmental values, is in a sensitive catchment, or has characteristics more consistent with a conservation outcome, we have recommended the Landscape Conservation Zone. [Note: The full Day 2 transcript covers all 20 Channel and Kingston localities including: Margate, Snug, Kettering, Woodbridge, Middleton, Garden Island Creek, Gardners Bay, Huonville, Cygnet, Port Huon, Geeveston, Dover, Southport, Hastings, Lune River, Recherche, Cockle Creek, Bruny Island (deferred), Kingston, and Blackmans Bay. The complete text is available in the downloadable PDF above.] [06:57:02] make your submission back to us. We don't want to tell you how to do it. All I will say is that we're going to give a lot of thought a lot of thought to how we conduct the hearings going forward to make it easier for representatives and landowners. And one of the things we are giving consideration to is that we will do the submissions that we decide to hear and the representations that we have to hear on a locality basis. So that might make it a bit easier for representatives coming before us in the future. [06:57:54] I think, though, I mean, I'm only talking for Alan's Rivulet and maybe this is relevant for other localities. There are several properties that are in the Irene Inc report considered under the Margate locality, which actually form part of our collective submissions. [06:58:14] We'll try and get localities that are adjacent. We're trying to do it in the order Kate did it, if we can, but wish us luck as we try and organise that. But look, we're all about trying to make it as easy for you as we can in terms of making your presentations and submissions. [06:58:31] So we just need to do a bit of work on the hearing schedule and those sorts of issues. And we've also got to wait to see how many submissions we get. We may get none. We may get 12,000, 1,000. We may get 1,267. We just don't know. So we're nothing but flexible at the Commission, but we want to make it as easy as possible for the community. [06:58:55] All right. If that's it, I did say we'd finish close to five. It's two minutes to five and I do pride myself on finishing on time. So please keep an eye out on the papers. We'll be putting some notifications out about the exact dates of when the hearings are to resume. But in the meantime, thank you Kate. Thank you Planning Authority. Thank you everyone for attending. We really appreciate it and we'll see you in a few weeks.