Planning NSW Living Centres Project-presented by Martin Puddey

What I'm going to talk about today is just a broad outline of what our project is, why were here and stuff like that and how we've come to be in the Northern Rivers. The living centres programme is a new programme of Planning NSW there's four projects that have been put I place in regional NSW, there's three people in region to look at specific problems that are occurring in areas and just to try and address those. There's one down in Griffith down in the Riverina area, there's one down at the south Coast in Eden another one in Wollongong and then us here in the Northern Rivers. We've been looking at the issues that face rural lands for the last 18 months, we've had a couple of changes in direction but were now getting fairly firm in what were doing now.

The reason that we have ended up in the northern Rivers from a Government perspective, there was a lot of major issues that were going on up here that they felt need some assistance with, to target these things and some of the major challenges that are going on that brought the team into the area was the loss of prime agriculture, we've got some of the best agricultural land in the state but because of population pressures, it's just being used to grow houses and once it's gone to residential subdivision it cant be aggregated back and we've lost that land for production so that's a really important thing. Related to that is the whole issue of associated conflicts, there is a lot of stuff associated with residential area's coming into agricultural areas, lots of problems with spray drift or noise and it's becoming a bigger problem all the time up here as it is with a lot of rural areas that are experiencing a high population growth so were looking at issues related to that.

Again related to that is the rural land subdivision thing that posses some big challenges for local councils just in terms of servicing those areas if it's not done in a controlled and manageable way, if it's not contained it can have lots of problems with infrastructure and a whole range of other issues so it's an issue that we need to be looking at. The other thing is the viability of agriculture and that's been in a pretty tough way up here for quite a while now with issues like the deregulation of the dairy industry and global market forces and things like that and that puts farmers in the difficult position of either managing their land sustain ably, they start to go into decline and rural community's rely on them going into decline so it's just a big issue. Our teams been focusing on some mechanisms that we can do to try and reinvigorate the agricultural sector and get them making a bit more money and being a bit more sustainable in an economic sense and again the other big issue which is right across the state is degradation of natural resources.

We live in a beautiful region with amazing natural environment and with the population pressures and things like that we are losing a lot of it, there's a lot of government programmes to try and protect a number of areas but it's still a huge issue up here so that's another issue that we want to focus on and basically try and look at the policy's and things that are in place and try and come up with a better outcome for things so that will help us to achieve a bit better management of our natural resources and help reduce some of those pressures. The way that our department and previous planning councils have always been a little bit, they have just gone away and done the work and then imposed it on the communities or local government without much consultation and the whole thing about living centres is doing it a little bit differently and bring planning back to the people, bring them into the process and letting them have a say so where about doing thing in a different way than it's been done in the pasts.

One of the ways we do that is by coming in and forming these partnerships with other organisations and the community to identify and address some of the key issues, like today having this opportunity to come and talk to people and to get feedback on what you think the issues are foe this area and we've been doing this over the last 12 months to basically hone down what were targeting on and what's important on the Northern Rivers so we formed that process and partnerships with other organisation in some of the projects that were doing so we just come in and build on projects that there doing or give them some money for projects and just help to achieve a lot of other things that agencies are doing in the area and again things like consultation with the local communities. We've done that to help establish the issues that were looking at and keep doing that go back and ask is there any problems are we on track, are we doing the right things are there other issues we should be focusing on, that a continual process that we keep doing which makes it a little bit different to the way the organisations have been run in the past. Just to go on a little bit and talk about some of the major aims of the project were basically looking to coordinate a system with the other land manager and the community to achieve a shared vision of where they want to go.

This builds on the work of the Northern Rivers Regional Strategies, there's a whole range of diverse interests out there, farmers, environmental groups, different sectors of the community and state Government agency's, talking a bout where we should be and what we should be trying to do in this region. So we kind of help people to talk to each other and get a bit more consensus and a bit of an agreed vision of what were trying to do and where were going, pull some of the policies together and make a bit more sense in the direction of what's happening up here so that's a major aim of what were doing. Were also looking for and trying to identify better opportunities for land use management and to come up with some sustainable agricultural sector growth? That's some of the work that we are doing to get guidelines for sustainable agriculture for different parts of the sector and trying to promote that and looking at the range of policies and stuff that are in place at the moment and look for gaps where those policies aren't addressing issues in terms of land management up here and we'll be making recommendations to government to where we can pick up on some of those gaps and try to manage the area better than we are at the moment. And the way wee get that out to the community is, well we'll be doing a fairly big distribution of our final plan when it's finished there will be a lot of guide lines to councils and land managers, so that will be a practical thing that councils and land holders will be able to use in terms of decisions there making about there properties or applications there making for development.

Were also putting together, another way were putting the information across, is a brochure of all the agricultural services that are available, from rural councils to farm and lobby groups, where just going to put that broacher together and mail it out with rate notices to local councils to land holders in all the local areas, we've doing fairly active things and briefing sessions with the findings s o that's how were trying to get it out. Just to go on to there, how we achieve some of those aims, the main part of our project, the major components is providing a frame work for the protection and enhancement of rural lands by economic, ecologic and social benefits, so that's that whole balancing thing trying to bring all that stuff into wether it's by legislation or the different projects that's going on, trying to provide a bit of a policy frame work for how all that stuff fits together. A key focus of this stuff that's also related to the viability of agricultural stuff is providing appropriate employment development that can generate sustainable employment opportunities so the main area that were focusing on is the viability of the agricultural sector and even if it's not about the creation of new jobs maybe it's about keeping the jobs that are in that sector at the moment because that's so important in terms of maintaining rural communities so were looking at a range of things that are going to encourage appropriate development and I guess were hoping that some of guidelines are going to have a bit of an influence on the production technique on the things that people use and different codes of practice so were really trying to make sure there's appropriate development going on in the region instead of that ad hoc stuff that goes on at the moment. Where going to pull together a document that brings all the drafts and policies that applies to rural land management into one place.

You probably know the water plans, the vegetation plans the catchment plans there's a huge range of things out there that effect the way we can manage rural lands and it make it really difficult for rural land holders or council's to get an idea of what's applying to different lands or what's going on and there's a lot of overlaps and inefficiencies in the way that's done and relates to each other. So we can pull all that together in a single document distributed to local council's and land holders and that will allow them to find in one single place things that apply to them and what's going on and well do a bit of analysis and make recommendations about new policy and other things that aren't being covered in that document. To give you a bit more detail about what were doing, the two main parts would be what I've already mentioned that policy and planning framework that pulls all that stuff together. Another area were focusing on is a little toolbox of initiatives to strengthen the agricultural sector and rural communities and that basically y just about bringing together a whole range of information on different mechanisms that exists like rate rebates and there's a whole lot of things that we can do in the existing system that can help a lot of farmers who are doing the right thing that will actually get us in to a position that will strengthen the agricultural sector and were going to pull this into a single document so that people will know what they can apply for in terms of grants, rebates or voluntary conservation agreements or there's a whole range of different things and it's all out there it's just never been pulled together in one document before that make it easy for people to access it or if it applies to there land also as a big resource for council and that will be a big help in terms of the work that there doing.That will be a document that we'll distribute fairly widely.

A couple of examples of what will be in there, there will probably be up to 30 to 40 tools in that toolbox, an example of those is that were going to come up with a best practice guideline for council's and land holders and sustainable agricultural practices. Another consultancy that we're running at the moment is with Byron council on sustainable agriculture strategies for that LGA. That document is going to come up with a whole heap of guidelines for the different rural industries that operate in Bryon and basically recommend how they can be put in for sustainability of there production or a whole range of different things so were going to pull some of the generic stuff out of that and apply it to the whole region and hopefully that will have a bit of an impact on how people manage their lands and make those production techniques more sustainable and we will give fairly detailed information in this toolbox about that. There's also a range of economic incentives as well like rate reliefs and rebates that can be put into place and if people dedicate parts of there land s under a voluntary conservation agreement to protect native vegetation or whatever there's a range of incentives in place that can compensate them a bit so that will reward them for taking a proactive step in there land management so were going to pull a lot of information together about that for councils and for people as well so they know wether their appropriate for them. Also property management planning, some of you have probably heard of that before, that's basically a tool farmers can use to pull all the information together on all the natural resources that their property has, they can just g through a process of determining their current processing techniques then also providing information on what they might want to do in the future and those documents might be really useful for them to get an idea on who they have to go to for approvals and what they might & might not be able to do on their property.

As I said a lot of the stuff that were doing is in partnerships with a lot of different organisations that are in the region, just to give you a run down on some of the work we are doing in partnership with other organisations. There's the Byron sustainable agricultural strategies, we've just co funded them to get a consultant in to come up with strategies for that whole LGA that has all the guidelines about sustainable management practices, it's going to be done in a really detailed consultative way with local land holders, there involved in the whole process, so the recommendations that they have made about modifications that they make to their techniques is not only going to increase their sustainability but it's not going to result in them not being able to make a profit from their land. Another exciting thing that were working on at the moment is co practice for the macadamia industry with the Department of Regional & State development, Lismore City Council and the Australian Macadamia Society. That's going to be a document around trying to reduce it's land, based on the problems that Lismore City Council gets about the noise associated with the noise from macadamia de husking, chemical spray drift things like that.

This is going to be a code of practice that the industries involved in and local government as well, so we can hopefully try and reduce some of those conflicts because at the end of the day if you've got an easier environment to farm in and we've got situations where you're not going to move people out of these areas there already living in so it's just a matter of trying to reduce some of those conflicts and it's going to be easier for the farmer to make a viable living of those properties as well as making life easier for some of those residence living in close proximity. Things we might be looking at are information about hours of de husking, machinery that they can use, just a whole range of things as well as stuff about spray drift, hopefully that can reduce some of those conflicts. Another couple of projects that were working, well one of them is of course the Northern Rivers Sustainable Industry's Expo with the Big Scrub, we actually had the idea about 6 months ago to have a sustainable industry's expo in our project and then we were approached by the Big Scrub with the same idea and it was like hey great we can give you guys some money, we can get involved in this and achieve our aims and help you guys to do it as well, things like today's workshop and the whole event so were really support of these guys and really involved in what there doing and it's going to be a fantastic event over the next few days and hopefully take on a life of it's own over the next few years as well. We're also running a series of field days on different crop diversifications with the Northern Rivers Regional Agricultural Development Organisation.

We've had one of these already on Japanese Taro which we help up in Tweed Heads and we had about 65 people along and basically we just funded them to have the talk It was a chance to give farmers information on this new crop, it's got really high yields on small areas and it gives them a chance to diversify into something else if they are in a financially difficult position. What we did was get them all in a room and get some experts to talk to them about various aspects of the crop in terms of how to grow it, what it's worth and where to market it and then we took them out into the field to show them a crop in the ground. It was a different sort of thing for a planning organisation to do and were planning another couple of field days in Kyogle and Grafton over the next couple of months and it's a really successful tool to try and give them a bit more information about new and exciting things that are out there that they wouldn't normally be able to get access to. That's the end of the planning component that I wanted to talk t o you about. Another area that were involved in which is a really interesting and exciting thing because we get to give away money to community groups in this area is this community partnerships grants programme. That's a project that were running across the state on all the living centres teams there's 1.9million at that level, We've got about 450,000 on the Northern river to give to community groups.

To be eligible for it you have to be a incorporated community group or local government can apply for it as well. You can apply for grant money to do 2 major components which is either the urbane design advise which is pulling together information about design advise about how you want a community space to look or to redevelop an area, were doing some redevelopment work on the river bank with Lismore city council getting them some design advise on how that area should look. The other component which compromises the bulk of application we get is these small capital works projects, so community groups with projects that are out there to rebuild community spaces within there areas, they may have had these ideas for ages but never had the money to be able to get these projects going are able to apply to us for amounts of money up to $15,000 to get these projects going.

We've allocated about $150,000 we've got another $300,000 to spend in the region over the next 12 months on these applications and basically there about building community spaces which is a really important part of maintaining and sustaining rural communities, getting some money back in there wether it's the pride associated with a better looking town it can make a really big difference.

The main aims of the whole partnership grants programmes are to achieve really high quality urban and rural villages and towns and spaces across the region. Some of the things that we need to look at, the applications need to reflect the special characteristics of areas and the cultural identity of some of the communities. They need to be about enhancing liveability and safety in public spaces, there's things in there about lighting if that's a problem in your area in terms of security and just promoting the attractiveness of towns across the region, we have a whole range of different little projects out there that do a lot of these things. Basically we want to provide things so the community can come together. We can match the funds dollar for dollar, be it in kind of with cash, it needs to have the support of local council and the project can't be funded by the area assistance scheme. Some generic examples that we could fund are things like developing a town square or design a land scape area in a village or a playground in a community area, there's a whole range of different things we can fund under this programme.

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