Communities Under Stress: Understanding and Managing Growth in Resource-Based Regions - the Case of the Western Downs, Queensland

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Communities Under Stress: Understanding and Managing Growth in Resource –Based Regions – The case of the Western Downs, Queensland

Dr. Severine Mayere

School of Urban Development

Queensland University of Technology

2 George St, Brisbane, QLD 4000, Australia

E: [email protected]

Professor Douglas Baker

School of Urban Development

Queensland University of Technology

2 George St, Brisbane, QLD 4000, Australia

E: [email protected]

Paper presented in Track 19 (Rural and Regional Planning and Development) at the 3rd World Planning Schools Congress, Perth (WA), 4-8 July 2011

Communities Under Stress: Understanding and Managing Growth in Resource –Based Regions – The case of the Western Downs, Queensland

Abstract: The Western Downs region, located in Southern Queensland, about 200 kilometres west of Brisbane, has been experiencing rapid and significant changes over the past years, due to a massive boom in the energy sector. The rapid growth triggered by the development of mining and energy sectors has generated environmental, socio-economic and land use issues, and has revealed strong weaknesses within the region’s current governance arrangements. The present paper develops a four-stage approach to managing current and expected changes in a resource-based region under tremendous stress and uncertainty.

Keywords: Land use conflict; Spatial cohesion; Mining; Resource-based communities

Introduction

The Western Downs region, in Southern Queensland, was until recently a predominantly rural community with no expected rapid growth, and whose economy was based on agriculture and feedlots. The recent discovery of significant energy resources within the region has led to major changes triggered by the rapid development of mining and energy industries to exploit coal, coal seam gas, and petroleum resources. The mining and energy sectors are now driving economic growth and change within the region, and are responsible for the rise in gross regional product over the past two years. These industries have created sudden and extreme growth in population, and it is expected that the 42 projects being commissioned over the next 5 years will require approximately 30,000 construction workers and more than 8,000 permanent workers for maintaining the operations (WDRC, 2010). The population increase due to the resource boom and the rapid development of energy resources has placed this rural region under stress.

The benefits of mining and resource development are important with increased employment, income and business investment and a reduction in rural outmigration. However, very little revenue at this stage comes back to the Western Downs communities.

For example, a business capability study conducted by the Western Downs Regional Council indicated that 52% of businesses in the region import what they need, rather than using local production (WDRC, 2010). The challenges that the Western Downs region are facing are numerous and include: environmental problems e.g. water resources, preservation of farming lands, infrastructure provision and maintenance, fly-in fly-out (FIFO) with no economic benefits for the region, as the transient population is not accounted for (when it comes to using infrastructure and services), skills shortage, and the supply of affordable housing. The primary challenge for the regional council is dealing with both demographic and socio- economic rapid changes with limited policy and planning tools. The policies for dealing with these changes are disjointed and top down. The governance and land use issues are explored in greater details in this paper, with a focus on developing a conceptual strategic framework for managing growth in the study region.

The Western Downs region

The Western Downs region is located within the Surat Basin, an area of approximately 110,000 square kilometres rich in natural resources (Map 1). The recent discovery of significant energy resources within the region has led to major changes triggered by the rapid development of mining and energy industries to exploit coal, coal seam gas, petroleum resources. The mining and energy sectors are now driving economic growth and change in the Surat Basin, creating rapid growth in population, and increasing demand for services and infrastructure.

The 2009 Western Downs population was estimated at 28,563 by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS, 2006; 2010), with a projected growth of 31,936 by 2030. The latest number released by the Western Downs Regional Council shows a 2010 population of 31,897 a number beyond what has been predicted by the ABS, with a projected growth of between 36,800 and 42,100 by 2031 (WDRC, 2011). This represents a significant increase in terms of population, with a predicted growth rate of around 32% over the next 20 years.

Map 1: Location of study area within the Surat Basin (DIP, 2010)

Challenges

In Australia, financial and legislative power primarily exists within the federal and state levels, while local governments are administratively weak and constitutionally unrecognised (Brown and Gray, 2008). Local and regional councils tend to be limited in their operational abilities, constrained by the legal context in which the States have formed. With the exception of some metropolitan areas, local authorities are even still inhibited while trying to function within their legislative boundaries by the disproportionate financial resources which local government have access to.

The Surat Basin and its associated regions, although not a formal regional entity, have recently experienced a significant internal administrative change with local government authorities amalgamating into “regional” bodies. In 2008, the local government areas of Dalby, Chinchilla, Tara, Murilla and Wambo were amalgamated under the label of the Western Downs Regional Council. Although the amalgamation process undertaken by the state government has been controversial, it has created a more administratively capable set of organisations which have a greater ability to negotiate partnerships and a larger taxation share 4

(O‟Toole, 2006). However, even with this institutional redesign, regional councils are still struggling to effectively manage growth and demographic change. Change from the cumulative impacts of mining projects are of particular concern, as the financial benefits flow to the state government - whilst problems and associated management demands are largely left to local governments (Brereton et al., 2008).

As a consequence of increasing mining activities within the Surat Basin, the Western Downs Regional Council is experiencing a broad spectrum of problems associated with its ability to deal with social, economic and environmental impacts. In terms of environmental/land use issues, the region is facing problems related to environmental deterioration, disposal of saline waters, soil erosion, preservation of farming lands, construction and maintenance of infrastructure and utility services, and rehabilitation once resources have been extracted and mines closed.

The Regional Council is also challenged by a number of social and economic issues. Like many other mining regions, the fly-in fly-out workforce employed by mining companies does not effectively contribute to community life, and only brings minimal economic benefits for the region. Fly-in fly-out mining operations usually provide food and lodging accommodation for workers at the mine site. This kind of operation is widely used by mining companies as a means of accommodating workers for remote area mining operations and is viewed as a beneficial alternative to constructing residential towns from scratch. However, these temporary accommodations often exist in isolation of existing local communities. In some cases, they have been associated with a loss of economic and social values affecting existing communities. Furthermore, the leakage of skilled workers to the mines affects other sectors of the regional economy, especially farming operations. Housing provision and affordability is also a very relevant socio-economic issue for the region. Census data show that the region is experiencing increasing rents, increasing housing loan repayments, increasing sales prices with only a slight increase in rental stock. The large majority of housing stock at the 2006 census consisted of detached houses (91.22%). Flats, units, apartments, semi-detached dwellings and other forms of residential accommodation only consisted of 8.73% of the region‟s total housing stock (ABS, 2010). Furthermore, increasing rents and house prices have been recently observed, and previous “mining town experiences” in Queensland indicates a likely pressure on the residential market in Western Downs Region. The

most influential consideration is the predicted increase in mining population. This is likely to elevate the house prices for both rental and home purchase sectors of Western Downs Region.

Governance Issues

Perhaps one of the most intractable issues the Regional Council has to deal with relates to its governance and decision-making capability. As a recently amalgamated entity, the Council‟s inputs into the assessment and negotiation of mining projects are limited, and the bulk of decision-making rests with the State. In other parts of Australia, such as New South Wales, local governments play a more significant role in the assessment of development applications for mining projects, as well as associated infrastructure contributions (Brereton and Forbes, 2004). Furthermore, the Queensland Local Councils‟ actions are hampered by the complexity of sometime overlapping state and federal legislative and policy frameworks that tend to favour the mining sector, and give little power to communities (e.g. complexity of the tenure and approval process for resource projects, and the absence of royalties for regions to compensate for the costs from the impacts of mining). The position paper “Supporting Queensland‟s Resource Regions” released by the Local Government Association Queensland in 2010 emphasises the lack of coordination of the various policy frameworks developed by the state government over the last few years, as well as the lack of clear reporting in terms of implementation and monitoring mechanisms of outcomes against the objectives detailed in these policies. And funding is at best opaque. The report highlights the need for collaborative, comprehensive and coordinated responses to current issues, as well as innovative solutions and improved communication and collaboration between sectors (LGAQ, 2010).

Some of the solutions being discussed and implemented, such as the Strategic Cropping Land Policy developed by the State government aiming to protect the best cropping land resources and support a strong agricultural sector, intend to reduce the conflicts between farming and mining, as both sectors are important contributors to the regional economy and employment (Queensland Government, 2010b). Mining operations generally trigger disputes over land uses, as the land demands placed by mines can hinder the development of other industries such as farming and small businesses, and cause community disruption in communities that were predominantly farming communities (Hilson, 2002: 65). Land use conflicts arise from a change in land use demand and supply.

However, many of these top-down governance solutions are yet unproven, and do not alleviate the uncertainty surrounding the future of rural communities in the mining region. Uncertainty is a major issue which needs to be managed as part of the decision-making process. Landholders and local government bodies are plagued with issues of uncertainty, such as the lifespan of extractive industries and the future of their communities.

These problems are even further compounded by the fact that the most effective management tools which local governments posses are not adequate to solve the problems. A 2009 AHURI report on housing distress in resource boom towns reveals that mining communities share common issues in terms of a lack of robust policy framework or governance arrangements for managing the multiple implications of the resources boom (McKenzie et al, 2009). Some of the shortcomings identified in the report include a lack of accurate information to inform planning decisions, a fragmentation of responsibilities and roles, and a lack of meditation between conflicting interests, or with regards to coordinating responses.

The hard tools which local administrations do have at their disposal are strictly defined and framed by the States, and even within these defined boundaries, often state legislation overrules local implements. In the case of the Western Downs, the region‟s strategic documents are lacking robustness and coordination. The Western Downs‟ planning scheme is currently under review, and the Regional Council has to rely on pre-amalgamation planning schemes mostly produced by consultants to a formula, with performance measures and targets hard to quantify, objectives too general, and the overall plan quickly outdated. The Regional Council is also relying on a community plan that is still in draft form. There is no clear link between these two policy documents at this stage; and there is no policy document related to economic development for the region. The Regional Council is also relying on a Regional Planning Framework (the Surat Basin Future Directions), which is a creature of the State, and still in draft form. There is no clear means of linking these policy documents, or the capacity to implement them.

The current policy instruments amount to a reactive and disjointed approach to change, where state legislation and tenure decisions are imposed on the Regional Council which has to rely on outdated and standardised schemes and plans. At this stage, the Western Downs Regional Council, like many other resource-based local government areas, can only react to the multiplicity of mining and resource projects and their impacts rather than 7

proactively planning for them. As such, one could argue that the Western Downs is lacking a pro-active growth management strategy adapted to its specific needs, underpinned by land use controls that are spatially coherent and capable of guiding development towards the long term goals of social and economic cohesion. What steps can be taken to alter this situation?

Developing a Strategic Framework for Managing Growth

The proposed research will use a four-stage approach in order to develop a framework adapted to resource-based regions facing resources-based boom.

Stage 1: Identifying transferable best practices from international and Australian case studies

The first stage will involve the identification of suitable planning tools and best practices based on the experiences of other communities (in Australia and abroad) facing similar difficulties. Once these tools and best practices have been identified the feasibility of translating them within the specific context of the Western Downs region will be assessed. International examples will include, but not limited to, case studies from South Africa and Canada and will focus on tools such as strategic assessments and monitoring systems (Franks et al, 2010). Australian examples will include cases from New South Wales (Hunter Valley) and Queensland.

Examples such as Moranbah, located in the Bowen Basin, Queensland, will be of particular interest with regard to this first stage. The community of Moranbah is facing issues similar to the Western Downs region e.g. urban growth and adequate supply of land, social impacts on existing communities, economic impacts and mine expansion issues (air quality, noise, water, etc). More importantly, and up until recently, the governance structures to deal with land use and growth management have been underdeveloped (at regional and local levels), with actors operating in isolation and state agencies being reactive to issues such as housing stress (Phillips, 2009: 9). The fragmented policy responses to issues have led to an increasing level of frustration. The Local Council has been lacking the capacity, authority and instruments to deal with the various stakeholders involved in the area, which in turn created issues with mining companies in terms of delayed development approvals. In the view of the 8

lack of existing governance mechanisms that could deal with these issues, the policy response adopted in this case has been the establishment by the State government of the Moranbah Growth Management Group, which integrates various stakeholders (Phillips, 2009: 10). The group is aiming at identifying issues, policies and options for the sustainable management of the community (Queensland Government, 2007). This on-off structure‟s mission has been to agree on the location, timing and sequencing of infrastructure provision and land development.

Stage 2: Developing a strategic resource management framework

Based on the results of the first stage, a strategic resource management framework will be developed in an effort to align existing schemes, plans and policy frameworks (e.g. the strategic cropping land policy, and to link them with the tools to implement them). The main goal is to enhance current decision-making processes in a way that will benefit all sectors of the Council such as the efficient allocation of industrial, commercial and service uses; housing needs; and reduction of conflicting land uses and co-location of uses.

In part, the framework will rely on the integration of existing information and gap analyses coming from different community streams such as growth management, land use planning, community planning, economic development and other relevant sources. This framework would align with some of the state‟s objectives to develop a range of policy options focused around managing the growth of Queensland‟s coasts and regions. The most relevant component of the document deriving from the 2010 Growth Management Summit is the “strengthening regions” policy, which seeks to develop a range of mechanism which will push growth into some of the regional centres. Some of the policies include regional first home buyer grants, relocation of some government function to regional areas, and the development of a Queensland regionalisation strategy.

The primary outcome of this second stage will be a conceptual model for aligning these forms of planning with the achievement of targets. Particular attention will be paid to the experience of South East Queensland in this regard. Particular attention will also be given to infrastructure charging and a self-managing method of quantifying and supplying the Council‟s needs for funds for new infrastructure.

Stage 3: Creating a land use optimisation platform

Stage 3 will focus on the creation of a land use optimisation platform. This will involve the development of a simple, but effective multi-criteria decision-making process for efficiently allocating land uses for business, services, infrastructure, housing, and community purposes. This will allow an assessment of the impact of the types of businesses to be attracted to different local areas, the workforce required and the need and location of affordable housing options. A land use optimisation platform will require the development of a model that can help understand the current dynamics and driving forces of land uses and project future land use changes in order to target management decisions (Verburg et al., 2002: 391). The proposed research will seek to develop an integrated social-economic-environmental (ISEE) modelling framework/platform to support rational policy making regarding conflicting land uses – tool to be used by decision-makers.

The steps involved in developing the land optimisation platform include:

- Collecting baseline data: population projections, and a gap analysis.

- Determine main factors susceptible of determining land use changes (see Table 1). According to Verburg et al (2004: 125), it is necessary to gain a good understanding of determinants of the spatial configuration of land use to assess the impacts of future development on a given region. Actors involved in land use related activities will seek to allocate land uses and/or land use conversions at locations that will have the highest preference for the specific type of land use or conversion in a particular moment (Verburg et al, 2004: 128).

- Conducting an inventory of available sites to determine their current use/s.

- Developing a set of criteria to identify land uses in terms of what their potential suitability could be. These criteria would include economic, social, and environmental factors.

- Mapping land uses based on above criteria.

- Determining land conversion or optimisation preferences for appropriate sites.

- Sequencing the provision of infrastructure/housing/service provision to be determined. 10

Table 1: Determinants of land use changes

Characteristics Biophysical constraints Specific soil characteristics and potentials Climatic conditions Topography Ecosystem structure Economic factors Location relative to market (accessibility to market), Infrastructure Economic structure / industrial composition Consumption structure Exports/imports Social factors Cultural values, norms and preferences Housing prices Social composition of neighbourhood Uncertainty Population Age/sex structure Labour force Income distribution Distribution of profession Quality of life

Spatial interactions Location Land use intensity Land productivity Productivity of resources Concentration of functions Political/institutional Land tenure Planning regulations Conservation strategies/policies Institutional structures (Adapted from Briassoulis 2001; Van der Veen and Rotmans, 2001; Verburg et al, 2004)

As Wamsley et al. (1998) have noted, there are numerous benefits associated with developing a land optimisation platform:

- It ensures a balance between different community needs e.g. population growth and infrastructure, and housing.

- It relies on information such as accurate population projections and land availability survey, as well as an inventory of existing infrastructure and gap analysis, some of which the Western Downs regional council has already collected.

- It requires a wide range of data and information including local and expert knowledge, and spatial and non-spatial data.

- It can be useful/effective in informing and focussing discussion, mediation and negotiation for the use of land and resources.

- It has the potential of reducing conflicting land uses.

Stage 4: Governance platform

Stage 4 will involve the creation of a governance platform. This will be a model for bringing the powers of all organisations together to implement the strategic resource management framework developed during Stage 1. Notably, this model will require negotiation with the Commonwealth, the State Government, adjoining local governments, the regional NRM bodies, the mining industry, national and State-level peak bodies and local civil society. The logic behind this platform is that all of these organisations have powers to influence the development of the region and there is at present no forum in which those powers are brought together to achieve common goals acceptable to the community. This stage will also examine the flows of royalties, taxes, development charges and government budgets with the intention of proposing a self-managing and sustainable model for allocating public moneys to the areas of greatest need. The success of the governance platform will rely on the development of soft governance tools, which are characterised as being malleable and less restrictive due to their non-legally binding nature, in order to . Although soft governance is less authoritative, less interventional and more participatory it can still yield effective outcomes (Slominski, 2008). One important information that can be derived from the Moranbah case is that contrary to hierarchical mechanisms and market mechanisms, a network approach relying on relational governance tools can achieve long lasting agreements between stakeholders. As a result, the proposed platform seeks to integrate notions of network theory and meta-governance.

As Rittel and Webber (1973) explain, social problems (and economic as the economy is a system based on human interactions) can be differentiated from that of science, as scientific problems are definable and measurable. The problems of government and social policy however are ill-define, biased and unsolvable, as they can only ever be resolved again

and again. To be able to respond to these unavoidable wicked problems of increasingly complex societies, government must rely upon network solutions and collaboration in order to progressively narrow their need for autonomous policy making (Haveri et al., 2009).

According to Keast et al (2004), networks occur when links among a number of organisations or individuals become formalised. Networks structures form when groups of individuals and/or organisations understand that some problems (common to a variety of organisations) cannot be individually fixed, but require a collective effort. Network structures are comprised of network nodes (individuals) and links (relationships), and may take the form of, but not limited to, informal linkages, co-operation, coordination, task force action, or coalition activity (Madell, 1999; Keast et al., 2004). Network structures may have a leading organisation/s which establishes the rules of collaboration. In the place of formal contractual arrangements networks rely more upon interpersonal exchanges, and therefore rely more upon characteristics of trust. Therefore social capital is one of the most valuable attributes within a network structure.

As regions like Western Downs are experiencing rapid change and growth, soft governance mechanisms seem to present a viable course of action in the management of change. Network structures have the potential to be established by local governments between themselves and the range of individuals and organisations that hold an interest in the region. This can result in a regional scale network structure of network municipalities that are linked with mining companies, the community, state and federal government. A network municipality is characterised by a hybrid of organisations and networks and the complex governance relations between them (Haveri et al, 2009). In the context of network municipalities, success for local governments will hinge on how well the various components of the hybrid perform and how effectively the other actors can collaborate.

Meta-governance is required to manage collaboration of networks, and to accelerate the fluent performance of networks and their coordinated efforts (Haveri et al., 2009). Although it is the nature of networks to be non-authoritative, local governments must ensure that democratic legitimacy still exists, this is can be accomplished through meta-governance (Sorensen, 2006; Haveri et al., 2009). Meta-governance is also considered as the “governance of governance” in which it attempts an “organisation of self organisation” (Bell, Park, 2006). One of the key aspects relating to meta-governance is the idea that government bodies need

to adapt new arrangements to deal with the sensitive network environments through a range of soft and hard governing tools governance (Whitehead, 2003).

Network municipalities although in a sense have always existed in an unrecognised form, are becoming a new modern model in which local governments are begging to invest in (Stoker, 2004). Operationalising such a network within the Western Downs region could assist weak local governments in structuring a network with the community and the corporate sector, collectively empowering the actors through shared resources and knowledge. Currently the State government has already attempted to establish a network of actors with the Surat Basin Futures Framework. Through framing networks to deal specifically with regional mining issues, a mutually beneficial structure could form which achieves a variety of positive outcomes, such as:

More efficient use of resources. Efficient and effective collaboration through shared knowledge. Increased capacity for local government to govern. Improved integration within community input and needs. Improved negotiation and management of cumulative impacts. Greater inter-corporation collaboration. Reduced responsibility for strategic direction of social development for corporations. More transparent and informed decision making. More accurate analysis of regional problems through shared resources. Better management of mine closure. Increased capacity for forums of mitigation or dispute resolution between actors. Improved effectiveness of social impact mitigation plans.

Future Research/Conclusions

The four-stage framework proposed in this paper underpins a different approach to local government planning. It seeks to extend the influence of regional councils into traditionally state-run territory. This will be challenging because of present state revenue issues in Queensland. However, the final stage proposed in this paper suggests that the creation of a governance platform will provide a forum within which different organisations and stakeholders will be able achieve common goals acceptable to the community. This stage also

intends to propose a self-managing and sustainable model for allocating public moneys to the areas of greatest need via a more equitable and efficient distribution of the flows of royalties, taxes, development charges and government budgets.

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