Launceston Town Hall a Bureaucratic Burial Zone

The team at Launceston's Town Hall will hide anything at the drop of a hat. The GM (AKA CEO) has that wonderful provision in the Local Govt Act, SECTION 62/2 that allows him to do  whatever he likes and all by themselves representations to Council get to be 'buried bureaucratically' in order to keep critics and ratepayers confused and at bay.

Finally, the UTas Development Applications are on the agenda for approval and it appears that all and sundry at Town Hall are busily trying to convince themselves that it is OK in 2020 to still give this imprudent public expenditure for wrong thing in the wrong place a tick despite everything.

Ratepayers representations, detailed as they are, challenging the wisdom of the developments are bound to get the most cursory consideration albeit there has been four years of community protest.

 In regard to how these UTas Inveresk Development Applications one representation has already been archived on this site to ensure easier access to it and below there are links to two more

• DA0320/2020 7 Willis Street Launceston

• DA0321/2020 2-4 Invermay Road

The representations present important information regarding the inadvisability of relocating the Newnham campus of the University of Tasmania (UTas), a project named by UTas as the Inveresk Precinct Redevelopment (IPR) as part of its Northern Tasmanian Transformation Program (NTP). The IPR is a major component of the Commonwealth Government’s Launceston City Deal (LCD), significantly funded by the Commonwealth Government, Tasmanian Government, and the ratepayers of the City of Launceston Council.

That the circumstances have changed and quite dramatically given that UTas is lurching headlong into  reconfiguring itself as a corporate entity and increasingly away from the 'social licence' it enjoys as an institution dedicated to scholarship and teaching. Increasingly, as a corporate citizen UTas uses civic infrastructure while contributing less and less.

Northern Tasmanian Networks Partners & Associates opposes the relocation of the University of Tasmania Campus from Newnham to the Inveresk and Willis Street floodplains, which will be subjected to increasing threat from climate change affecting sea level rises in the Tamar/Esk estuary, and further threatened by predicted seismic activity that could cause the collapse/damage to the levee system. 

The group and ratepayers are also concerned that this new UTas infrastructure and also existing infrastructure such as the flood levees that give some protection but mainly give time to effect orderly evacuation, and bridges crossing the North Esk River, may be damaged or compromised by untimely seismic events.

Accordingly Councillors' attention is drawn to the many reports it has previously commissioned that warn of inevitable seismic activity, flood inundation and the impacts of the current climate emergency. Yet, the indications are that despite declaring a climate emergency Councillors appear disinclined the read and absorb independent expert advice.

Every dollar invested in and spent on these developments comes from taxpayers and ratepayers and to disregard this is quite simply 'civic delinquency'. Yet, it seems that Councillors are prepared to look away.

It is an old quyote but one that is invested with truth “One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything's fine today, that is our illusion” ― Voltaire