Gardeners aren’t usually the angry type. But I’ve met a few lately – in particular, a friend living high overlooking the Huon is concerned about the suburbanization of where she lives. Her anger is at odds with the peaceful nature of a dedicated plantswoman.
Another, who’s 80 something, is practising the burning of “bureaucratic bullshit” she encounters in her everyday life. She does so on bonfires and is seeking to broaden her cause, inviting the igniting of what she calls “bullshit bonfires” across the state.
Why do our elected representatives insist they are getting planning decisions right when instead they seem to enrage quiet women who nurture beauty? When gardeners get angry, government should listen.
Take the gutters in Bagdad. What’s behind this obsession with fitting urban street furniture into rural towns? What’s wrong with pulling over on the gravel strip when that’s the way it’s always been, and what puts the word country into countryside?
In the coastal villages of Orford, Bridport and Penguin, too, Tasmania’s holiday towns are being given the look of a commuter suburb.
In seaside Penguin, about 1300 people have signed a petition complaining to Central Coast council about new street furniture in the main street. There are dotted white lines, pavement markers, bollards, painted pedestrian islands made of concrete, yellow bumps in the road and median strips, all in the space of half a kilometre between the church at one end and library at the other.
The council says it’s to make it safer but how, you wonder, with so much distraction? Sue Wood, who has lived on the coast for 30 years and at Penguin for six, says: “Before the changes Penguin Main Road was pleasant and no one fought over parking.”
Driving through Penguin now, she says, makes you feel like you need to keep your elbows in. “The council has spoilt the seaside town. Now it looks like everywhere else.”
Plus, she and others think it’s more dangerous. There have been several near misses at the supermarket and many letters of complaint have been written to the council. Wood describes the replies she gets as “bureaucratic gobbledygook”. And although the council has told her there will be changes, they haven’t happened yet.
Who has the vision for the amenity of our towns, with natural charm at heart rather than identikit development? Who talks about the poetry of the roadside, a wild dog rose wrapped around an old wire fence? The grader driver that scrapes and piles them up on the side of the road to be burnt has no eye for the superb fairy wren that nests within.
Two weeks ago the Heritage Council advertised the removal of 514 properties from the Tasmanian Heritage Register, which lists buildings deemed important to preserve by the state because of their historic value and ‘for the benefit and enjoyment of future generations’. Anyone who has previously made a submission to appeal has the right to appeal again – in 30 days.
Tasmania’s natural and built cultural heritage seems under attack – a point made by Professor Michael Buxton at the recent town planning meeting in Hobart. Another public meeting is being held in Launceston on Tuesday, December 3. While Building and Construction Minister Guy Barnett said the proposed changes to the planning laws would “create certainty for developers” and “bring on more development and growth and jobs” that’s exactly what Prof Buxton warns against in Tasmania.
Tasmania, he says, is the last state to adopt statewide planning changes which favour the property industry.
“What’s been happening in Australia for the last 10 years has been one of the most sustained attacks on resident rights through changes to land use planning systems in this country’s history, and part of a national deregulated approach to favour developers,” Prof Buxton said.
“Tasmania’s heritage and amenity are its greatest strengths. Once that character is changed it’s gone forever.”
Concrete gutters on rural streets and street furniture in seaside towns are ugly symbols of centralised control by planning. Beware the angry gardener.
A public information night, Planning Matters, will be held on Tuesday, 7-9pm, at the Pilgrim Uniting Church in Launceston.
First published in TasWeekend, Dec 3, 2016
Hilary Burden 