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In Tasmania:

"The future is tough. Conflicts happen, fashions change, technologies appear, boundaries are re-drawn, permissions are withdrawn, waters rise and nations fall.  And people change their minds. That's just the easy stuff. The hard stuff is the stuff that happens that has never happened before. So, what's the point of planning? We plan to give coherence to a world riven by chaos. A good plan is a vision, a way of seeking and a source of inspiration when we lose our way. We should not follow a plan blindly, but neither should we transgress it without purpose. Because we can't predict the future we must create it."

"There is no discernible vision for Public Planning emanating from this government. To plan for our future we need to be thinking beyond election cycles and building a shared vision for where we are headed. Yet what we are seeing at the moment is the complete reverse of that. We must engage with all Tasmanians in a broad public consulting exercise to collectively agree the vision for our future. Then create policies and schemes based on that feedback - in that order."

In other states or places:

  • South Australia's Better Together community engagement program: The South Australia government is actively working to involve citizens in decisions that matter to them - click on following link to Better Together.  To see a video of the SA government department representative talking about the Better Together program, go to the International Association for Public Participation Australasia website at https://www.iap2.org.au/Resources/Search-Resources and check the box 'Conference Resources' then scroll down to 'VIDEO Better Together with Dan Popping...'

"There are strong connections between Victorian planning system changes and the national planning reform agenda being followed in most Australian states. Recent changes to state planning systems seek to reduce the strength of land use planning regulations, lessen the contributions of local communities, objectors and local councils to planning decisions and empower development companies. The Victorian system changes are also the result of decades of the politicisation of planning by locating responsibility for land use planning in the state planning agency under direct ministerial control, abolishing an independent state planning body, imposing deregulated standardised planning systems intended to facilitate development onto local government, and constant ministerial intervention in planning decisions. All these represent a paradigm shift in the Victorian land use planning system away from careful and considered strategy-led planning, towards market-driven ad hoc development facilitation."