Legislative Council, Wednesday 7 August 2024

Ms FORREST - question to MINISTER for PARKS and ENVIRONMMENT, Mr DUIGAN -

In your media release of 6 May 2024 titled Changes to the Tasmanian State Coastal Policy, you stated the government is looking to amend the Tasmanian State Coastal Policy to ensure that we - I think it is a typo there, but basically - can both protect our coastal environment and allow sensible and sustainable recreational and other infrastructure that is necessarily connected to our coast.

The heading of that is 'changes to the policy'. My question is: is the draft Validation (State Coastal Policy) Act 2024 the change that is referred to in your media release or are there other changes proposed to the State Coastal Policy?

ANSWER

Mr President, I thank the member for the question. The validation bill being tabled today in the other place, as I understand it and as part of our looking at and providing certainty for coastal developments, there will need to be, I suspect, a change made to the coastal policy itself. There is further work being done, as we speak, to look at what the appropriate change to State Coastal Policy might be to include a more contemporary planning control for actively mobile land on our coast. This is about updating the State Coastal Policy so it can appropriately deal with coastal values and hazards associated with actively mobile landforms. Noting there are some things, jetties among them, that by virtue of the fact they need to access the water, boat ramps, navigational infrastructure and so on, which need to be built in those actively mobile landforms, we do need a way to enable that to happen. The application of current coastal policy makes that very difficult.

A separate position paper will be released in coming weeks outlining the proposed changes. I understand the high level of public interest in this area and any changes to the coastal policy will follow the normal existing processes for updating state policies through the Tasmanian Planning Commission. That work is commencing and happening now and you will see things in the coming weeks.