The Echo’s recent report (2 May) on Cr Elia Hauge’s proposal for a community assessment panel for the old Mullumbimby Hospital site contained a sentence that deserves more than a passing read.
Council’s Acting Director responded in writing that the planning framework does not generally provide for ‘ongoing community governance or participatory assessment mechanisms.’
It is a technically accurate statement. And it is, in the same breath, a reason to do exactly what Cr Hauge is proposing.
The NSW Environmental Planning and Assessment (EPAA) Act sets the minimum for community participation – mandatory exhibition periods, notification requirements, and the obligation to receive submissions. It tells consent authorities how far they must go. It says nothing about how far they can go. The absence of a statutory mechanism for ongoing community governance is not a prohibition. It is a gap. And gaps in legislation are precisely where leadership lives.
Community panel
This land has belonged to the community since 1901. They managed it, handed it to the NSW Department of Health, then fought to reclaim it when the hospital closed. Now, 125 years on, a Council officer cites the EP&A Act as the reason a community panel isn’t warranted for this four-and-a-half flood-free hectares at the heart of Mullumbimby. Planning instruments are designed for private land assessed against public interest. This land is in the public interest. It always has been.
The director conflates two different questions. Does the planning framework require ongoing community governance? It does not. Does it permit it? Absolutely. Nothing prevents the Council from establishing an advisory panel, encoding community governance obligations into the DCP, or formalising what this community has been doing informally for a decade.
Cr Hauge’s proposal is not a radical departure. It is a sensible extension. A community panel doesn’t replace the consent authority’s legal function – it informs it. It holds the community’s vision in the room at precisely the stages when that vision risks being quietly renegotiated away, as already experienced with a DCP that more than one commentator described as reading like a developer’s dream.
The director is right that the law doesn’t require it. The community is right that the situation demands it. There is a word for doing more than the law requires because the circumstances call for it. That word is leadership.
The planning framework gives communities a fire exit. Mullumbimby deserves a front door – and a say in designing it.
Dale Emerson is Convenor of the Mullumbimby Residents Association.
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