Wilderness Society says proposed legislation ‘a recipe for conflict’

Wilderness Society campaign manager Tom Allen says the wording of the draft Major Projects Bill shows the Government had learnt nothing from failed projects such as the Bell Bay pulp mill and Ralphs Bay marina.

PROPOSED major projects legislation is “a recipe for conflict”, says the Wilderness Society.

Campaign manager Tom Allen said the wording of the draft Major Projects Bill showed the Government had learnt nothing from failed projects such as the Bell Bay pulp mill and Ralphs Bay marina.

Wilderness Society campaign manager Tom Allen. Picture: LUKE BOWDEN

“Businesses around the world are realising the importance of social licence, but looking at this legislation it’s as if that’s an alien concept,” Mr Allen said.

The draft laws would transfer the assessment of major projects away from local councils to an expert panel, providing what Planning Minister Roger Jaensch calls “an appropriate, streamlined process” for projects that are “of a scale, strategic significance or complexity beyond the normal capacity and resources of local planning authorities to assess”.

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Mr Jaensch has denied that would prevent Tasmanians from having a meaningful say on controversial projects and said the laws would form an important part of Tasmania’s COVID-19 recovery, helping to create jobs through major projects like wind farms, transmission networks, and major manufacturing plants.

Mr Allen said Tasmanians “should not be sucked in” by the recovery rhetoric.

“The Major Projects Bill has been on the books for three years and is fundamentally about helping one thing — developers,” Mr Allen said.

He said the experiences of Tasmania’s past clearly showed that a process that aimed to bypass local communities was destined to fail.

“Tasmania’s planning landscape is littered with the carcasses of failed projects that governments have sought and failed to impose upon communities that didn’t want them,” he said. “The record shows that unpopular proposals consistently fail.”