“The Tasmanian Government announcement that it will introduce ‘enabling legislation’ to pave way for Macquarie Point Stadium is another example of setting aside a legislated robust planning process to increase the likelihood of gaining planning approval,” says Sophie Underwood, State Director of the Planning Matters Alliance Tasmania.

“This is a powerful demonstration of how the Tasmanian Government, including the Labor opposition, will disregard any advice from the Tasmanian Planning Commission that is not to its liking. What hope does the community have that so-called independent Development Assessment Panels (DAPs) will give true scrutiny to controversial applications?

“The prize the Government and property sector want more than anything is to weaken the community’s voice by removing planning appeal rights, helping ensure they are more likely to get their developments approved.

“Far from taking the politics out of planning as claimed, DAPs give enormous power to the Government of the day to approve developments that align with their personal priorities.”

DAP decisions made by the Tasmanian Planning Commission will be final, says Ms Underwood, noting that there will be no right for the community to appeal the final decision to the planning tribunal. Developments would only be appealable to the Supreme Court on an error in law.

‘PMAT welcomes the continued opposition announced last week by Local Government Association of Tasmania where Tasmanian councils were united in rejecting the DAP Bill.’

“The state government has made only minor and cosmetic changes to the DAPs legislation and the key flaws remain”, said Tasmanian Conservation Trust CEO Peter McGlone.

“Critically, the revised DAPs legislation will still remove the community’s right to take planning appeals against development approvals and remove our elected councillors from having a say over controversial developments in our local communities.’

“The most cynical attempt to fool people is the proposal for guidelines to assist the minister in making the key decision about project eligibility. The government has sneakily drafted the legislation to only require the minister to ‘consider’ the guidelines, meaning he only has to read them and can ignore them. They put no limit on the minister’s arbitrary power which can result in any development being sent to a DAP.”

PMAT calls on the community to make a submission again via their submission guide to scrap the anti-democratic 2025 DAPs Bill as they say it is no different to last time.

“The Tasmanian Government’s renewed push for DAPs is another demonstration they don’t care about the community or Local Government,” says Ms Underwood, “In 2024, we saw huge opposition against the DAPs Bill with 92% of submissions (444/482) against, every local Council opposed, and the Legislative Council voted it down. This Bill is not significantly different to last time.”

See PMAT’s further information about DAPs here.