Fact Sheet: Shortcomings of the Draft Far North Coast Planning Strategy

i) The detailed maps do not show any environmental and physical constraints – that is, an urban growth boundary is shown without any reference to the high conservation value areas or other severe constraints of land within it (and these areas are labled as ‘existing urban footprint' or ‘new release areas');

ii) The urban growth boundary includes all urban zoned lands and non-urban zoned local strategy lands – that is, basically everything developers and rouge councils have been asking for for the last decade! It includes land such as Iron Gates, the strip between Ballina and Lennox, Condon's Hill and all Terra Nora non-urban zoned lands (and of course Kings Forest);

iii) All land west of the Pacific Highway (even outside the growth boundaries) will be available for urban development if it fulfils vague ‘sustainability criteria' simply imported from the Metro and Hunter Strategies;

iv) Locally specific criteria developed by the technical advisory group (TAG) , which included no clearing of vegetation, village development and character, etc – was simply ignored. The government's plan to homogonise the state is not appropriate;

v) The plan does not demonstrate how biodiversity will be protected much less enhanced – in fact, one could safely presume the opposite;

vi) The plan will be ineffecitve in directing growth inland as it fulfils the coastal development ‘wish-list' for the foreseeable future, and developers will be able to successfully push for urban density development all over these lands just by going to the Minister under Pt 3A (if they can't convince local government);

vii) Hence the plan's stated aim to protect the coast will not be achieved under the draft, in fact urban sprawl we have been resisting a long time would occur;

viii) There is no real detail about how the plan will be implemented to achieve its goals – ie no development levy, no infrastructure plans, no promise of trains on our tracks, etc.