Letter to CYC 05Dec2024

                                                                                              5 December 2024




        (d) maintains or enhances the protective function of landforms and vegetation that can mitigate risks
        associated with the natural hazard. (P.51)

        Assessment benchmarks – natural hazards, risk and resilience

        A development application for a material change of use, reconfiguration of a lot or operational works
        on premises in any of the following:

        (1)     bushfire prone areas …

        All of the following requirements are assessment benchmarks for the development:

        Bushfire, flood, landslide, storm tide inundation, and erosion prone areas outside the coastal
        management district:

        (3) Development other than that assessed against (1) above, avoids natural hazard areas, or where
        it is not possible to avoid the natural hazard area, development mitigates the risks to people and
        property to an acceptable or tolerable level. (underlining added)

State Interest Consideration

The state interest requires an evidence-based assessment which has been provided by North Coast
Environmental Services, which concludes at page 41:

        Overall, the development proposed for the site, in combination with recommendations referenced
        herein, is deemed suitable with respect to providing a reasonable level of protection for people and
        property within the site.

The State interest does not require that there be no risk but rather that the risk be to “an acceptable or
tolerable level”.

That assessment has been described as follows:

        [55] I do not accept that the Development Tribunal erred in its construction of the assessment
        benchmarks. The assessment benchmarks contain no quantitative indication of the level of risk that
        should be regarded as acceptable or tolerable when assessing whether the proposed development
        satisfactorily maintains the safety of people and minimises the potential damage from flooding to
        property. Rather, the question of compliance calls for the Development Tribunal to make a broad,
        evaluative judgment having regard to the facts and circumstances of the case.3

An assessment in regard to an acceptable or tolerable risk for bushfire hazard has been considered as follows:

        What do the bushfire experts recommend based on their assessment?

        [58] During their oral evidence, both bushfire experts explained that they regard the contemporary
        technical guidelines as providing appropriate criteria. They explain that the previous guidelines34
        adopted a “rule of thumb” approach based on a prescribed distance (1.5 times the tree canopy height)
        from prescribed bushfire hazard areas. Mr Friend says that one of the limitations with the earlier
        approach is that it did not take account of understorey, fuel loads and other such considerations that

3
 Southern Downs Regional Council v Homeworthy Inspection Services (as Agents for Robert and Cheryl Newman) [2020]
QPEC 61


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