I suppose town planning has been my lifelong interest, albeit my university town planning training was based on old post war British ideas that neatly defined different building uses in different areas, where year by year, cars became the only viable means of connecting all the different uses, giving us town planning as we see it today. The main debate when I arrived at the DSC surrounded the final drafts of the current Integrated Planning Act (IPA) compliant version of the town plan. I, like any other citizen, made submissions to improve the plan. With an architectural background I was interested in shifting building designs towards more livable, less energy consuming outcomes. I was the shire’s single biggest contributor to the public debate, raising some 150 separate suggestions to improve the IPA plan, many if not most of which were adopted.
Back in 2004/05, much of the focus on the IPA revisions was on undoing the density excesses of the mid nineties, ex of the Brannock and Humphrey’s scheme, by, for example, removing the zones that mixed town houses and units in with mum and dad homes, south along 4 Mile Beach from Treetops.
The most controversial reduction in density we pursued was in stopping and then compensating owners of roughly 300 properties located in biologically sensitive parts of the Daintree. It was extremely controversial, biologically important and very painful for those aspiring to build and remains controversial to this day. My vote remained solidly with the green view but in negotiating the final ‘Alternative Planning Strategy’ I spent considerable time in shuttle diplomacy, listening to the aggrieved views of those whose aspirations were dashed, to arrive at a scheme that everyone could live with being that the State, under the then Minister Desley Boyle, had just stepped in to fund the compensation and secure the bans.

The whole exercise was littered with political skirmishes that took off a lot of skin, not the least of which occurred one fateful day, in the heat before the 2004 federal election, when national press descended on the Council as Mayor Mike Berwick laid recovering from his electrocution, as the State was on the edge of weighing in with green support, whilst Federal MP Warren Entsch was on a ferocious anti-green counter attack and I was the guy in the middle wearing the red spot from Warren’s laser finder. It was a very sporting day. The big pro-green rally in Port Douglas shifted the debate onto the Federal Parliamentary floor in the heated weeks before the ‘04 election. 3 of 4 councilors supported the ban with one councilor changing sides and salting wounds on both sides but eventually, with some compulsion brought on by Desley Boyle’s steadfast politics, the halt to Daintree development came in the final freefall days of the Queensland Government in caretaker mode, before last election. Whilst the community consultation showed overwhelming green support for the development ban, had the same exercise been done today, I would have pushed that more polling and surveys be undertaken to give complete clarity on the community’s views on the tough bans that were imposed. Many millions of years of botanical heritage were at stake and dozens of scientific reports littered the cupboards and the hard drives supporting the need for the ban that was imposed. It was tough governance but there was a lot at stake. It was not a game for political “green wash” candidates nor was its game for those whose political PR was more important than their political values.
To my mind, the world you walk into when you walk out your front door is the world that is to a big degree, the product of local town planning. Almost the most important political function of local government is in town planning. It is very much my focus of interest. I bring an interesting perspective to the planning table, having worked on both sides of the public and private argument about planning - where my head is fully conversant with private sector views, my heart is with constraint and clarity in the communal view. For example, in the area of defining issues like GFA (Gross Floor Area) and height, I regularly find myself identifying the devils advocate position and when drafting the new planning editions, its was my ability to spot and define potential planning loop holes that surprised many of those participating and allowed us as a community to rewrite the plan, in particular, the technical definitions, in ways that give the developer clarity and more importantly, gave the community the constraints it needed to stop excesses.
Building height is to me an important community issue. But in buildings where we have already promoted but cannot enforce pitched roofing, the main impact of a building’s height on its neighbor is in the height of the wall nearest to your fence.
So in Douglas, the new version of the plan limits the height of walls to the eave, such that if you deployed a flat roof with an unconstrained side wall, (just across your backyard fence) and you could be badly overshadowed , until the new laws I have introduced, put limits on these elevationary wall heights. Previously, laws simply focused on building height at the peak of the gable roof. Similarly, a whole series of new definitions were introduced at my urging to redefine how height is measured when a building is on a slope, to constrain 3 storey buildings looking like 4 storey buildings when car parking adds to elevation height, as we are seeing at Port Douglas’ Coconut Grove, approved, I recall, under the older scheme. Problems of a similar nature are occurring at Clifton Road now, near the highway.
By far the most innovative new aspect of the Douglas IPA plan is the sustainability clauses currently seeing consultation, where its is my aspiration that the new CRC will take a look at this code, consider what we have to do as local regulators to reduce energy use in buildings (currently making up 40% of the CO2 problem the world is facing) and bite the bullet by adopting the code I’ve introduced.
At the core of this sustainability plan is an aim to reduce heat loads getting into buildings in the first place, rather than trying to improve air conditioner performance. So it addresses the need for shading and insulating heat transferring walls. The next section called Building Design for Livability and Climate Change within this site takes a deeper look at the issue.
Douglas had commenced but not advanced a study deemed ‘ The Rural Land Use Study”, initially floated when cane land was waning as lifestylers bought out cane farms at around $10,000 per acre, when $3000-$5000 was about the limit that could be paid for sugar fields simply for agricultural purposes. Much of the rural beauty of Douglas is based on the life of the cane industry and if its once viable cane land became a series of lifestyle or hobby farms, as occurred in Byron with the collapse of the diary industry 25 years ago, the Rural Land Use Study was planned to address and mitigate these issues. It is a shame the study was not undertaken, derailed by amalgamation, and interestingly the lifestylers outbidding the farmers is a problem up and down the east coast, including Noosa. In the CRC, I will pursue this incomplete task.
Douglas Shire Council, which was for years very close to the Mossman Mill and Canegrowers, has long history of defending rural land for agricultural purposes.
With the Mill crush now closer to a half million tonnes rather than over a million tonne capacity of a few years back, its viability is more difficult and so too is the need to maintain its supply base. The tradition of keeping the agricultural sector prosperous is one I support for a number of reasons and town planning protection and support for the cane growing industry is important and needs to be kept in better shape than the once green, now subdivided lands north of the Kuranda Range turnoff.

In the recent development boom, now waning, where for example one sitting Douglas approved some 1000 titles and similar demand occurred in Cairns, the residents of areas like Clifton Beach, Palm Cove and Port Douglas were inundated by building sites and hoardings. Literally billions of dollars in new leisure orientated buildings have been built in Division 10 over the last few years.

It has brought with it some considerable angst and organizations like DSSG and the Combined Beaches Community Association have been at the forefront of the identifying the problems. Noise and traffic issue arose at Clifton Village shopping centre raising disputes over CCC height, buffer zone and GFA dispensations. The Hedley Development next to Treetops and the Coconut Grove development brought dispute and alarm over tree clearing. As the local councillor, I was attending tree felling issues like an ambulance driver on a wet day. The closing of Andreasen Road, blocking traditional access to the Mowbray River needs resolution for both the developer and community to afford river access for locals and freedom from trespass dramas for the developer.

Clifton Cottages faced criticisms over driveway access, sewerage discharge legalities and disturbances from earthworks.  Argentea faced criticisms over the change of Upolu Esplanade from public road to erosion prone zone to provide absolute beachfront access. Old unchecked planning parameters for Buchan’s Point and Ellis Beach have left the zone with residents unhappy and developers on unsure ground. The September revisions of the Cairns IPA scheme seemingly fail to better define the ground rules for this headland and beach and a long term solution needs comprehensive involvement of the community and the stakeholders so these planning issues are resolved in the CRC and not in the Queensland Parliament or the courts. The Ellis and Buchan’s planning rules residual of the Douglas scheme have seen little change since the Joh Bjelke-Peterson era and I am sure all parties would agree it needs sorting.

One of the great shames of the Australian system of town planning allows Councillors to avoid real focus on planning policy, as all councillors know that they ‘can make it up as it goes along’ by approving or disapproving plans on an individual basis, with complete disregard for the separation of powers between a legislature and an executive, forcing councillors to get involved in the dealings with developers, in ways that would put a parliamentarian in jail. Should councillors only be allowed to make law and not administer law, there would be a rude awakening of the need for councillors to focus on policy, not projects and if developers proposals create problems for the community, then it is not always the developers that are to blame, but sometimes the loopholes in the law.

My interest in town planning is in developing policy, not doing deals. I am sick of forever resolving disputes, where clearer policy would have prevented the dispute in the first place and I am one of a minority of Queensland councillors who think councillors fingerprints should not be able to be found on the deal making in granting dispensations. I have also been active trying to mitigate against wasted court costs, where the community foots the bills and where often, simple communication can resolve the dispute in the public interest. To this end I have pushed to insure trigger happy expenditure on pointless planning litigation is curtailed, which, I might add, means going right to the core of the dispute, talking about it and not just giving in to the developer in a winner takes all, confrontational car crash. If a dispensation is warranted, then the terms and conditions should be embodied in policy and not just made up to appease the lobbyists. In the current system, where I have been involved in voting on dispensation issues, I try where possible, to make sure policy development follows the debate, such as the call for a review of camping grounds, shire wide, following controversy over campers ever diminishing sites vs. arguments over where replacement sites should be located (not that the Ove Arup report was much help).
Poor mapping provided by State Government fueled a badly ill-informed debate about a ‘scenic and biodiversity overlay’ in Douglas a few years back. Farmers seeing what they thought were conservation ‘no go zones’ applied to what was (and had been) cane for over 20 years, were incensed. Green sympathetic councillors such as myself had a few rough months apologising that the State’s maps were badly wrong and the intention of the “scenic overlay” was a concept brought on by new IPA rules, where the scenic overlays were about triggers for approval needs, not ‘green no go’ zones, residual of older planning habits. Clear felling of hillsides is a thing of the past, yet the sensitivity around the hillslopes issues remain tense, albeit Douglas has managed to deal with the issues ahead of Cairns and the union of Douglas in the new CRC can only lift the debate within Cairns in protecting the green backdrops (assuming the elected candidate does care about hillslope protection).

Douglas has good expertise in its professional planning staff and is urging the new CRC to maintain a decentralized planning office in Mossman. Douglas Shire devotes greater resources to over the counter planning advice than Cairns and it would be unfair to local planning staff and Douglas residents, if CRC planning is all moved to Cairns, if for no other reason because of the driving dangers and times.
With the availability of cheap bandwidth, there is no reason that greater use of video conferencing should be established between Mossman and Cairns so meetings can be attended by all, without the 2.5 hour round trip drive. Douglas also seeks that planning applications be largely handled apolitically, as is happening now, but with added applications handled by staff. It would be fairly demanding of 9 new Cairns councillors to know all the ins and outs of planning issues 100ks from their homes and to simply be practical, the use of locally empowered town planners with video conferencing abilities, should not prejudice the merged residents of Douglas and as a prospective councillor for CRC, I will be pushing for a good degree of local autonomy in the administration of the award winning Douglas Town Plan. Having been personally very instrumental in shaping the current Douglas Town Plan, I was pretty chuffed when it scooped the State’s planning awards this year up against  some heavy weight government and private sector competition. Not bad, I privately mused, for a first term stint.

CONTACT ROD DAVIS: vote@roddavis.org

MOBILE: 0418 235561 or HOME: 0740 994434

MAIL PO BOX 714, Port Douglas, 4877.