131998.981211.5 - APPLICATION FOR OTHER CHANGE TO DEVELOPMENT APPROVAL (12637DA) INTEGRATED PERMACULTURE DESIGNED ORGANIC ORCHARD AND GOLF COURSE COMPLEX (18 HOLES) TO INCLUDE GROUP FARM STAY ACCOMMODATION & ASSOCIATED SUPPORTING INFRASTRUCTURE AT 59 KABI ROAD, COOTHARABA (Referred from Planning and Environment Committee dated 12 September 2023 - Item 5.3).

Frank Wilkie0:50

I'm pleased to say I'm not speaking on behalf of an absentee multi-millionaire developer this afternoon. The owner of the subject property is my wife, Tegan, who has lived and worked as a primary school teacher in the Shire for just on 10 years. I provide her apologies today whether she, if she were in attendance at this time of day, a 2019 month old adult may experience a record new life before many Council meetings. The subject property 28 Saturday night drive is our home. I hope I can offer some relevant context to the application and to the planning report before you. At a summary level, we report that this is an unsuitable development site has significant and seemingly unsolvable limitations based on crucial Council assumptions. The report adopts these assumptions in place of the bushfire report completed by Adrian Hansen, a bushfire and biodiversity expert with decades experience and a volunteer firefighter to boot. I will speak as briefly as I am able this afternoon, as I do appreciate your time and pressure. Firstly, I wish to speak to how, despite the top-line conclusions of the report submitted, I consider it remains a reasonable decision to open Council to a report subject to conditions and application for subdivision of this law. Then I will speak briefly as to why I consider Council should grant such an approval. There are two paramount objections Council planning hold against the Tewantin subdivision this side. The first being performance outcome four, the reconfiguration of the lot code. This is said to be a growth management provision which was expanded in the 2020 town plan to now include Noosa parkland estate. PO4 represents the creation of any new lots within the estate. The second being the bushfire related VAR rating applicable to the site and the resulting effects of such a VAR rating would have on building envelopes once other planning provisions are complied with. The decision to expand performance outcome 4 in the 2020 plan was well before COVID and at that time the current pressures on housing stock throughout the South East Queensland had not materialised to the current extent. I can sympathise why a provision serving as a blanket limit on the addition of housing throughout the may have been appealing to the previous Council. I enjoy snagging apart from the surface of it as much as the next resident, but if the aim of the provision was to preserve amenity and character of the estate, the provision appears redundant, as there was already other existing and long-standing references to amenity and character throughout the old-town plan. Could have served that purpose. In fact, due to the subject lot being larger than the large majority of lots in the estate and 2.4 times larger than the minimum lot size zoning, a subdivision of just two lots would yield lots larger in size than at least ten existing sites already within Noosa parklands. Many, if not most, of the other cul-de-sacs in the estate already contain smaller lots. At the end of the cul-de-sac, or a density of driveways catering to battle-based blocks, you cannot get to this lot without viewing within the estate lots that are smaller than what is proposed, nor will you know the proposed development has occurred unless you travel to the end of Saturday drive to view it. To its benefit, there is already great a variety of lot sizes and construction types within the estate and the street. Saturday drive already contains multiple two-storey homes and of varied types of construction without having a consistent theme. Merely maintaining the minimum 600 square metre lot size zone for this part of the estate will prevent any slippery slope with consequential changes to the character and the name of the street as lots smaller than 1200 square metres are unable to follow suit. The lot has just one privately owned if neighbour, we see six cars pass our driveway it has been a busy day. There is capacity to support more with negligible impact on character. When this application was first submitted the information requested for its return indicated planning was not supported under the PO4 planning provision in large part due to flooding concerns. This was surprising as the lot sits 14 square metres, sorry, 14 metres above sea level and more than 90 metres from the nearest 500 year extreme flood. Exit from the lot via. Griffith Avenue to the sequoia road remains open even in the 500 year flood extent and this was noted, sorry, as this was noted the focus of opposition returned to character. Essentially PO4 appears to have been expanded by 2020 plans of broadbush. Tool for the restriction of housing supply in selected areas. While the purpose of the revision is now said as being one of character preservation in regards to park lands, character purpose would not be offended by a two lot subdivision of this law. Turning to bushfire. When this application was lodged, an information request was first issued for reports regarding stormwater drainage and driveway function which was complied with and returned to Council. Initial objections were concerned with character and lot shape only. Once those issues had been addressed bushfire concerns raised for the first time in the further advice issued in January this year. The further advice required particular inputs into the bushfire assessment model, most of which contained within the statewide bushfire resilient communities 2019 document. The inclusions provided for that document, sorry the inclusions are totally accepted without objection. However, the January further advice included atop those requirements an insistence that the bushfire analysis must be calculated using a 1200 degree celsius flame temperature in place of the Australian standard 1090. Rejection of Australian standard AS3 AS3959 is not 959 is not to my knowledge provided by the statewide bushfire resilient communities documentation and is instead a standard put forward in instances like this. Nevertheless, I acknowledge there are mature trees in the area and a high flame heat assessment may provide superior building outcomes over and above those which may be accepted in similar circumstances in other parts of the State or the country. Even at this best practice heat point, assessment level it is possible to design a two lot subdivision outcome for this site which provides for compliant building envelopes. Where the planning report diverges from the expert built bushfire report in this regard is planning having now in the most recent report introduced a basis of assessment which appears to assume that constant heat immediately above the normal boundary these all is mature forested the same intensity as the old growth state forest to its north this appears to be on the basis that the State may elect to simply stop performing its functions as it has performed to my knowledge throughout the existence of this state since the 1980s it further assumes that event the State will not permit any third party to maintain the firebreak and access right bounding the majority of the existing parkland's estate presumably the assessment then assumes the firebreak will still be abandoned long enough to regrow into old growth logging forest as it sits behind it putting this would put the entire use of parkland's estate at unprecedented increased risk is this is the critical assumption of my department in recommending the application be rejected the State does not appear to have given any advice to this effect in application however QPWS is said to have expressed the view that third parties should not be relied upon in reference to a different application when it is not concerned with a particularly long-standing and crucial fly break and access track in effect this assumption means assessing the against vegetation and risk that does not exist on the basis that it could come to exist if the State government abandons its current duties. This level of assumption could be amused to apply the maximum bushfire rating to every property in the Shire which borders any road, park, estate asset, trustee asset or otherwise. Indeed if this assumption is adopted the standard, every neighbouring lot boundary would require assessment at current timing on the basis the neighbour may in the future abandon their property allowing the forest to grow in place of their vegetation as it has in the past. Last 40 years. There are already improvements on other lots all the way along the main firebreak at the northern boundary of the estate in similar areas to where building was proposed and I would submit the expert report submitted is not flawed. It simply makes an expert analysis at the highly elevated flame that you requested based on the reality of the estate as it exists. If it cannot be committed to do so, an assessment must fundamentally change for every future development in the Shire. That now said, we remain completely open to working with council's seek acceptable alternatives. And if this envelope calculation had been raised to us prior to the report being put to Council, we would happily have removed our design to relocate the driveway to the opposite side of the lot and thereby move the proposed housing further from the fire risk and mitigate the proposed equivalent envelopes. Indeed, we offer to do that now and would ask that Council vote to approve subjective conditions requiring the best way and alternative for such mitigation to be implemented. This is how I submit Council can reasonably an approval of subjective I will now speak briefly as to why we can consider Council should support this application. We are all keenly aware of the change in housing pressures in our over recent years and a consequence of that change is the change of political rule in the State government to be seen to be taking big and supply issues. I cannot pretend one too much subdivision will materially Resolve these concerns, however as the Noosa Housing action plan stated in A5.2.1, the Shire should aim to meet the SEQ development targets as they were at the time of that action plan, by adding new housing capacity in defined urban boundaries with associated efficiencies in infrastructure and service provision. This location is a wonderful place to live. With walking proximity to parks and arterial bus routes, it is connected to all town services. And the fire hydrant is already installed at the street frontage. Prevailing wisdom expressed to us by experienced real estate agents is more money will be made by simply hoarding a larger piece of land in perpetuity and building a larger single house permissible upon the block for the use of one family. The fact that we are a young working family who are outgrowing the 40 year old structure on the site, parts of which are approaching end of life, means we are the exception to the normal owner of such a lot. We are willing to put forward this land for division and the future accommodation of two families. An opportunity for subdivision in such an area which creates resulting lots larger than others in the estate is a new form from council's perspective in my opinion, given the supply issues the Shire is facing. Our community's paradise problem may mean that we are head on towards a demographic cliff where million of our residents will require care and proportion to those who can live within a competitive distance to provide and other services required. Staffing businesses for the long term is likely going to become more and difficult due to the lack of available housing stock of the kind it is proposed to create here. These the estate is a hybrid working and gains of stock here bring benefits to the community which will not be replicated by the addition of luxury units or high density offerings elsewhere. In addition to the general outcome of the State election and the position taken by the next state government in relation to the new SEQ regional plan, the State is going to be pushing hard in our progress on the addition of housing stock. The application for full Council counselling is one of the lowest impact additions with a stock conceivable and undercuts our future negotiations with the State if we are, even at this level, still operating from a position of can we find a way not to accrue this rather than is there a viable alternative way three. As we're as we were all reminded during COVID, we are a nation of a federation of powerful state governments. If the State decides to override our relative self-determination in planning under the current framework, I think it can be safely predicted that the added dwelling of the Noosa office application we have offset will not come at as low an impact on the Shire, and is highly likely to involve some destruction of existing food and water. I fear allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good could lead us to receive minor. Tegan and I love living in this community, and in the Noosa Parklands Estate. We are willing to give up what is an excessive surplus surface of backyard in order to fund replacement of our alien under-dwelling, with a new home to be built to modern resilience and energy efficiency standards. I ask only the Council to send us down the path to achieve this by acquiring, planning and seeking conditions with us to facilitate a subdivision in a way that best meeting out its bushfire concerns. Thank you all for your time. Clifford brainwatt, our surveyor, has prepared a draft plan for relocation of the driveway in response to the new development stadium in fairport, if anyone would like to do that. To do it thank you Mr. Noosa, for your excellent submission. If possible, could you email that to us so we can consider it prior to, in case we want to review the application. Thank you. Very much. Okay, next item is referred from the committee. First up is an application for another change to development approval. Integrated permaculture designed organic orchard and golf course contracts, adding holes to include group farm stay accommodation and associated supporting infrastructure. The 59 cabriolet caparaba, preferred from referred from the Planning & Environment Committee dated 12 September. I think it was due to the significance of the matter and more information required. Tom, you have a conflict of interest, would you like to be clear? I've got just something to start with.