Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Concerns about exposure to liability in respect of planning decisions with
future climate change implications are also affecting the willingness of local
governments to progress the adaptation agenda (McDonald 2007, 2010; City of
Melbourne 2009; Parliament of Australia 2009; Australian Government 2010).
When New South Wales introduced its Planning for Bush Fire Protection
Guidelines and associated statutory provisions in 2006, it resulted in local
authorities referring all development applications on bushfire-prone land to
the Rural Fire Service because they did not want to be responsible for having
approved a development that was ultimately affected by fire. The increased
workload of the RFS was immense - for example, there were 4,500 referrals
of new development applications just in the six months from July-December
2009. Legislative amendments have now clarified that local authorities, not
the RFS, are principally responsible for undertaking development assessments
in bushfire-prone areas. But in order to ensure the political acceptability of this
return to local government responsibility, an exemption from legal liability was
also enacted for acts and advice relating to bushfire-prone land done by planning
authorities in good faith (Local Government Act, 1993 NSW, s733; State of
NSW, 2010b). Judicial concern about the uncertainty of future impacts and
potential intergenerational legal liability has been one of the key bases for the
Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal overruling several coastal develop-
ments in recent years (VCAT, 2008; 2010).
Adaptation planning will involve trade-offs between interests: public values
relating to amenity, recreation and environmental goods may be inconsistent
with the protection of private property. Coastal planning authorities face choices
between measures that protect beachfront properties and those that ensure
the long term protection of the beach as a public recreational asset. Tensions
between bushfire mitigation and native vegetation protection influenced
planning decisions in areas affected by the 2009 Victorian bushfires. Differing
perceptions of fairness about the protection of private property over public assets
and the allocation of adaptation resources also hinder local planning responses
(Leitch and Robinson, 2011). When loss of life and property have already
occurred, these trade-offs seem far more obvious and straightforward than they
are before the fact, but this highlights an underlying tension in effective and
equitable adaptation: pressure decision-makers face enormous pressure to make
anticipatory decisions that cause only minimal disruption to the status quo,
but these 'softly-softly' decisions may deny communities the benefits of taking
decisive action in response to past events.
Conclusions
Many of the impacts of climate change will be felt severely in Australia's cities
and towns due to their high concentrations of people and complex, valuable
infrastructure. Reforms to land use planning in Australia have so far concen-
trated on the impacts of climate change on coastal hazards. While planning
regimes require consideration of bushfire-prone areas in development controls,
 
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