Presenting at the QELA Intensive
It was a pleasure presenting with James Houston of Counsel and Philip Haines from BMT WBM at the QELA Regional Intensive Seminar over the weekend. The beautiful setting of Hamilton Island was a great backdrop to the range of relevant, interesting and high quality papers presented by those in the profession. I look forward to attending the next one!
A link to my paper "Management of Coastal Districts and Coastal Hazards in Queensland at the Local Level" can be found here.
As noted in the paper it appears that:
risk based approaches have enjoyed acceptance in Queensland in the past and thanks to their adoption in the State Planning Policy, will become a feature of planning schemes in relation to coastal hazards;
difficult decisions are confronting Councils in the near future in the coastal hazard adaptation strategies;
much will depend upon the approach ultimately adopted by each local government, their assessment of risk and willingness to accept mitigation measures in the future;
even with the benefit of a coast adaptation strategy integrated into the scheme, applications for otherwise complying development will remain vulnerable to arguments about failure to discharge the onus for rare hazards with significant consequences.