Recession motion on Tweed’s Tringa Street access carried by Polglase

Councillor James Owen (Liberal) had promised a rescission motion on last week’s refusal of a modification on the controversial industrial zombie development at 60 Tringa Street, Tweed Heads. 

The previous refusal for a ‘temporary’ access to the site on the northern border had been upheld on the casting vote of Mayor Chris Cherry as the absence of conservative councillor Warren Polglase from the meeting had left the decision with three votes each way. 

Yesterday afternoon Tweed Councillors attended an extraordinary meeting and pushed through the approval as councillor Polglase was able to attend this meeting. They also refused to support an amendment by the Mayor to seek an acid sulphate soil plan of management for the council land that would be impacted by the temporary access. 

The original development application (DA) from 1996 required the developer to buy a strip of land on the southern border of the site for access. It is understood that this was the case because the Roads and Maritime Authority (RMS) had refused the development access via Tringa Street. The RMS refused this access route in 1996 because an industrial estate would have significant heavy vehicles accessing the site and that impact was considered unreasonable for the Tringa Street residential area.  

Southern route – trees not guaranteed

The Dubbo developer MAAS is also seeking to make the temporary access route the permanent access. They currently have an application via the federal government’s Environment Protection & Biodiversity Act (EPBC). 

Cr Owen and Rhiannon Brinsmead (Liberal) were both quick to highlight that this route would ‘save’ the trees on the approved route on the southern boundary. However, the Mayor corrected them by pointing out that under this amendment there was only a two-year agreement to not clear that area. Cr Cherry also highlighted the fact that none of the councillors were objecting to the development that was approved in 1996 but that she and councillors Dr Nola Firth (Greens) and Meredith Dennis (Independent) were looking to provide the developer with a clear way forward to seek the access. 

‘I don’t believe that it has been demonstrated that this development is substantially the same as that development that was approved in 1996,’ Cr Cherry told the meeting. 

‘As councillors, we need to be satisfied that it is substantially the same development. I am not, as a councillor, satisfied that that is the case. I think that it’s really important that with developments that are that are undergoing a series of modifications, we need to always make sure that what we’re looking at each of those modifications. This temporary access was not in the original development and it does create environmental impacts, impacts on the tidal channel that’s running along the north of the site and there are impacts on the use of our sewage treatment water plant that haven’t been considered because we’re proposing to have public going through operational areas of our site.

‘Because of that, I believe that it is really important that we provide the proponent with a clear planning pathway, which is to just submit a DA to have permanent access.’

Staff recommendations

Cr Owen once again spoke about how the councillors should follow the staff recommendation for approval. However, this appears to be only the case if he agrees with staff as was seen when he voted against the staff recommendation to refuse the DA for the monopole at Pottsville.

Both Crs Firth and Dennis pointed out that if they were to never question the staff recommendations then there would be no role for councillors. 

Labor councillor Reece Byrnes also supported the motion for the temporary access route telling the meeting that, ‘On the balance of this I think it is a better outcome for residents overall with the alternate road route’.

He also highlighted the increase in population and the need to create jobs. 

Cr Firth responded saying that it would be better to have employment lands in areas that are not of significant environmental importance. Cr Firth pointed out that the growth management and housing strategy options paper, which has just been released for comment, recommends future employment lands that are ‘not on environmentally sensitive areas’.

Rising legal costs

Cr Owens raised the cost of legal advice on this development modification which is at $67,901 as well as the increasing legal costs to the council which stands at $2,490,582 in 2023.

Responding to the accusation that the rising legal costs were a result of the mayor’s actions Cr Cherry said, ‘So that everybody understands, during covid the the ability to access many of our staff was hindered [as was] the ability of consultants to access their staff. 

‘During this time economic stimulus programs were put in place by the government and a lot of DAs came in. It was very difficult for council to deal with that number of DAs at that time because we couldn’t access all of our staff due to border closures and covid restrictions. So we had this perfect storm where we have a lot more days than normal and not as many staff as normal to assess the DAs so the assessment times have ballooned out. 

‘Proponents are now taking the course of action that is available to them to go directly to the Land and Environment Court (L&EC) after the deemed refusal period. Unfortunately, it is likely to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. It is an unfortunate fact of the current legislation that allows proponents to do that and then modify their development applications within the court system over and over until they get approval.

‘It is a very hard system for council to deal with. And unfortunately, legal fees are going to continue in that vein until we can convince the state government to allow a deemed refusal period to be changed.’