Plantation Management – Regulation and Planning
Tasmania
Legislation
Summary – Tasmania legislation
The key legislative instrument in Tasmania is the Forest Practices Act 1985. The Act, Code and other referral arrangements to other agencies, responsible for other Acts, have been amended as new Acts have been introduced; and as the Forest Practices Act 1985, has been amended.
The referral process, established as part of forest practices system, is essential to ensure provisions of other Acts, particularly the Threatened Species Protection Act 1995 are met. Forest Practices Authority specialised staff are required in certain situations to referral to specialised staff in other agencies. The process of resolving issues on some matters can be lengthy and time consuming. There are few instances in legislation where there are defined time periods within which decisions must be made.
The recent amendments of the Forest Practices Act 1985 introduced the requirement that a fee be lodged when a forest practices plan is certified. The fee payable varies with type of operation and operational area. In the case of plantation establishment, or harvesting, a flat fee of $93.17 is payable for a small areas (up to 5.8 hectares) or for larger areas $19.30 per hectare. For example, a 20 hectares operation attracts a fee of $387.20 and 100 hectares $1936.00. In addition, persons lodging a forest practices plan for private land are subject to Private Forest Service Levy based on net area (with some exemptions for specific operations such as non-commercial thinning). The fee is currently set at $14.00 per hectare. Plantation development on private land, not declared as a private timber reserve, requires development approval, and a fee is payable when the development application is lodged.
There are now a considerable number of fees that are payable when establishing or harvesting a plantation.
To establish or harvest a plantation, on land not declared a private timber reserve, requires approval under the Forest Practices Act 1985 and Land Use Planning and Approvals Act 1993. There is considerable duplication and uncertainty in these situations. The requirements of the forest practices system are clearly detailed in the Forest Practices Code and associated administrative instructions, and are applied State wide for all tenures. The requirements under local government planning schemes vary between zones in individual schemes and between different schemes. There are 29 local government areas with Tasmania and in some cases more than one scheme for an individual local government area.
The intention of the Forest Practices Act 1985 is to provide an integrated planning and approval system with a statewide set of standards for forestry practices. Both the State and local government are co-operating in the development of model planning schemes, and in some cases single planning schemes covering a number of adjoining local government areas are being considered.
