LAUNCESTON'S CORPORATE STRATEGY

Debbie Pickett

Executive Assistant

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Reframing failure as a learning opportunity is one 

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LAUNCESTON' PLANNING 2025

This process has all the hallmarks to show that it was flawed from the get go because of its undlying statuo quoism. ... SEE https://www.launceston.tas.gov.au/Council-Region/Reports-Plans-and-Strategies/Launceston-Housing-Plan ... AND look for a clear statement of 'purposefulness'.

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Reframing failure as a learning opportunity is one 

of the most important life skills anyone can master.

LAUNCESTON'S RECALICTRANT COUNCIL

Apparently Stike it Out’s ‘Sleeping Pods’ are safe enough to be used by emergency crews et al but conveniently and subjectively they have been deemed to be of dubious value and safety when providing shelter for people suffering stress from their loss of access to a home place in Launceston!   Bureaucratic claptrap and humbug is what it is and it is, and it is clearly in evidence in this instance.

Safe comfortable and secure housing is a human right but ensuring that – well Launceston’s Councillors have evidently abdecated that role! They seem to be saying that as your representatives, they cannot help people suffering from the loss of shelter as a consequence government’s housing cum investment policies. 

QUESTION: How do they see themselves ‘representing’ all their constituents without fear or favour? Seemingly, they – Councillors and the determiners of policy & strategy –  can only see their way clear to be representing a constituency who ‘invest’ in housing as they, and their associates have done and in the ways that they do and have.

The facts are what they are. Launceston’s Town Hall sends homeless people off to a charity to find shelter and emergency sustenance without offering any support to its constituents in stress because they have for whatever reason lost access to shelter. Despite the Mayor saying that homeless people sleeping rough are "not moved on" they are being 'moved on' and there is evidence of it being so! There are three things that cannot be hidden … the sun … the moon. … the truth … and the truth of the Mayor’s assertions are clear to be seen on close inspection.

Sadly, collectively the Councillors and the officers they employ are by-and-large self accountable and the inconvenient truth is that is the way they like it. The take-away here is … 'make them accountable and hold them accountable!’. 

IT JUST DOES NOT STOP AT HOMELESSNESS

What passes for 'strategic planning' at Launceston's Town Hall is siloed, and it exhibits disconnectivity, along with making assumptions that the status quo is adequate and thus it will/should remain or prevail as the background for change. 

EssentIally what is being listed is a set of 'OBJECTIVES/GOALS' rather than the 'STRATEGIES' envisaged and required to fulfil an 'objective/goal' - a desired/planned/targeted outcome. This is where the DISCONNECTIVITY is and where the status quo is unchallenged.

Given the already obvious paradigm of climate change and the CHANGING international political realignments, the status quo must give way to change and quite possibly fundamental change. 

Strategic planning is a process – something that is being done – it is not a product – something that has been done – and its coming to be must be transparent in order to be meaningful and truly purposeful.  

Moreover a 'plan' in itself is absolutely useless and ever likely to be defective if it is imagined to be complete, resolved, fixed, settled, firm, unbending or established.  

Nonetheless, planning is everything as is a purposeful planning process that has milestones and performance indicators.

What is really important, strategically, is determining what is NOT to be done as that offers the option of everything else plus the reasoning that informed why certain actions/goals should/would not be of strategic advantage.

ALBEIT A DRAFT, IS IT IN FACT WHAT IT CLAIMS TO BE??!!

A strategic plan in execution is the ability to convert a plan into purposeful and desired outcomes. Yes Lauceston does need a 21st C Strategic Plan but it must be purposeful and implemented. The most important thing about any strategy is its purposefulness and its execution. If you have a strategy, but you can’t or don't execute it, you’re nothing and you have got nothing!

Doing anything without strategic purposefulness is chaotic. Likewise advocating a strategy without implementation, without benchmarks, and without the achievement of measurable outcomes that is delusionary. Launceston needs a plan that clearly states:

1. What objectives are being planned to achieve and who sets them and when? 
   
2. Why it is envisaged by whom that an objective is in need of being addressed?
3. How and when will the planned objectives be achieved, by whom and by what means?
4. That is the purpose of purposeful strategy to be determined, and that is strategic and it must be transparent – it is not ba wish list!

The DRAFT PLAN to hand bears the hallmarks of ‘Council Management at work’ and for all intension’s purposes the ‘elected12’s voices are silent (silenced?)’. This is deeply embedded in the https://tomorrowtogetherlaunceston.com.au/ planning process and clearly 'the people's, the ratepayers', voices are absenent and/or are being silenced in effect. The voices that are being heard are only being heard by ‘management' thus far and quite possibly the voices of the so far ‘voiceless’ may not ever be heard or given the chance to be heard.

Sadly, mediocrity executed brilliantly is sometimes better than a brilliant strategy executed poorly albeit that the status quo is ever likely to be intolerable given its inbuilt weaknesses and the unmitigated failures embede within. As Ronald Regan told us “the status quo you know is Latin for the mess we are in."

BAMBOO & EARTH UNBEATABLE COMBO FOR SUSTAINABILITY

This set of images suggest further machinations of THEcombo relative to circumstance and placedness. Given that bamboo is the excellent reinforcement that it is the possibility of bamboo reinforced 'cob' between 2 WATTLEdaub 'skins' may offer local advantages. It would allow for a wetter COBmix that in turn would/could allow for some mechanisation of the process.

The advantage also being the thermal mass this approach would provide.

IMAGElink

BIG TREES & BIG NUTS

Trees need advocates to represent them and especially so if they are BIGtrees with BIGnuts!

I an not objecting to anything or anyone BUT here we have a tree that is voiceless and right now it needs a voice given that it cannot represent itself and is danger of being turned into so much WOODchip and as likely as not into FURNITURE imber when it might not be the most appropriate future for it! BUNYA PINE like HUON PINES & PINE have/has layers of 'value' invested in them/it.

A Huon Pine can no longer be felled if it grows because of the value invested in each and every tree. Huon Pine commands respect as should every tree as it will be largely due to trees that humanity might save itself from us now. Launceston's Councillors are being asked to exercise their 'cultural intelligence' and to respect this tree's Community of Ownership and Interest's aspirations and sensibilities. Will they be found wanting?

218 Charles Street Launceston

REPRESENTATION: DA0031/2025 Removal of Bunya Pine Tree ... 218 Charles St.

Firstly, it needs to be said that this tree over a very long time has gathered around it a rather large Community of Ownership and Interest and in evidence of that the question of its management falls to the city’s Councillors. Councillors are the representatives of those who claim a layer of ‘ownership and/or interest’. Consistent with this I make this representation asking Councillors to consider several important issues pertinent to this tree’s status in its CULTURALlandscape given that it is a ‘significant tree’ within it.

Moreover, for many this tree is something of a HERITAGE LANDMARKtree for Launceston and its loss, should that happen now, would represent a significant loss far beyond any pragmatic concerns without diminishing them and their relative significance.

Somehow the words of Napoleon Bonaparte resonate here … “Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.”

CONSIDERATIONS

• The tree’s age is not insignificant in that it was deliberately planted to be a feature in Launceston’s evolving CULTURALlandscape in a colonial cum settler context and possibly a century ago; and

• In the time that that this tree has stood where it stands it has been, and remains to be, a PLACEmaker and a PLACEmarker; and

• The tree’s ‘values’ are held by and defined by a network of networked people who share in the ‘pace’s’ PLACEmakeing and the PLACEmarking; and

• Currently, one of the tree’s most significant values is the CO2 invested in its materiality in the context of the ‘climate emergency’ that is upon us and that this impacts upon every human, in every way, and all the time – in reality and symbolically; and

• The tree’s ‘relative health’, given that it is endemic origin, is sound and healthy and does not present any apparent risk of becoming diseased and thus enhancing any risk factor in prospect; and

• The tree’s ‘impact’ upon its adjoining built structures may well be deemed to significant but it is an open question as to it being manageable or unmanageable and especially so given the lack of an engineer’s report as a component of the development application. Indeed, as this DA is presented Councillors might well this as a ‘truth-by-assertion’;  and

• The tree’s ‘impact’ upon boundary structures and adjoining streetscaping has not been deemed to be either manageable or unmanageable and in what context and thus subjective aesthetics to one side this is not a compelling factor worthy of consideration; and

• The ‘impact’ of the tree’s large cones falling and injuring a hapless passer-bye has been asserted albeit that many arborists will tell you that the risk of injury from falling limbs and the cones of many conifers is something in the order of one in five million. In any event the mitigation of the risk here is quite achievable and has been proven as so elsewhere; and

• The ‘proponent/s’ of the tree’s removal have not offered to address in the way the loss of public amenity etc. in any way, whereas in Adelaide that city’s Council has imposed restrictions with ‘cash off-sets’ payable for the purpose tree planting for carbon sequestration on another site – albeit the $amount is relatively small and not linked to the litreage of canopy cover lost; and

• The ‘impact’ of the loss of the tree’s canopy in this case is significant and calculated as $1per litre the mitigating compensation would be substantial; and

• Given that this property apparently changed ownership relatively recently the owner must have been aware of any clear and present risk at that time and especially so currently as apparently Council has denied approval for this tree’s removal previously.

218 Charles Street is managed as a visitor’s accommodation venue which adds some context to this application. The building has been occupied by various businesses over time and thus as a heritage building is concerned it has accumulated a significant cohort of people who have developed relationships with ‘the place’ with this tree being a component of those relationships.

All things considered, Councillors are faced yet again with making a determination relative to this tree on behalf of the constituencies they represent, and ideally mindful of the independent expert advice Council’s Management is bound to provide under the provisions of SECTION 65 of the Local Govt. Act.

In conclusion I ask councillors to be very mindful of everything that is at stake relative to this tree and all the symbolism there is in trees and their PLACEmaking determination on behalf of the communities they were elected to represent along with the proponent in this instance. Poignantly, this tree with its ‘heritage’ status unavoidably stands as a significant representative of trees in Launceston’s CULTURALlandscape and thus precedence set here will background future decision making in the urban environment that will have ‘trickle-down’ effects elsewhere and decades ahead.

IMPORTANTLY WHATEVER COUNCILLORS DETERMINE IN REGARD TO THIS SIGNIFICANT HERITAGE TREE IT WILL BE A BENCHMARK AGAINST WHICH

FUTURE DEVELOPMENT APPLICATIONS OF THIS KIND CAN BE

AND ARE EVER LIKELY TO BE MEASURED

CLICK HERE TO GO THE ENTIRE DEVELOPMENTAPPLICATION

YES Bunya Cones are large, however if removed at the juvenile stage, or at any time before ripening,  the risk of large nuts falling on unsuspecting pedestrians is and can be mitigated.  Drones have been deployed in similar circumstances and there are anecdotal reports that comes from this tree have been removed from a crane. In any event has there been a incident reported in the life of this tree where the has been an injury cased by a falling cone? Has a car or any other been damaged since this tree has born cones?

Additionally, aborists have other risk mitigation strategies and technologies at their disposal that might well be used if this significant heritage tree presents an untenable risk sometime in the future.   

SCHROL DOWN

ABBREVIATED DA ATTACHMENTS

                                                              

FROM WIKIPEDIA ... Araucaria bidwillii .... Araucaria bidwillii, commonly known as the bunya pine (/ˈbʌnjə/),[4] banya[5] or bunya-bunya, is a large evergreen coniferous tree in the family Araucariaceae which is endemic to Australia. Its natural range is southeast Queensland with two very small, disjunct populations in northeast Queensland's World Heritage listed Wet Tropics. There are many planted specimens on the Atherton Tableland, in New South Wales, and around the Perth metropolitan area, and it has also been widely planted in other parts of the world. They are very tall trees – the tallest living individual is in Bunya Mountains National Park and was reported by Robert Van Pelt in January 2003 to be 51.5 m (169 ft) in height.

Bunya pine

Conservation status
Least Concern (NCA)[1]
Araucaria bidwillii will grow to a height of 50 m (160 ft) with a single unbranched trunk up to 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) diameter, which has dark brown or black flaky bark.[6][7][8][9] The branches are produced in whorls at regular intervals along the trunk, with leaf-bearing branchlets crowded at their ends.[8] The branches are held more or less horizontally – those towards the top of the trunk may be somewhat ascending, those on the lowest section of the trunk may be somewhat drooping. This arrangement gives the tree a very distinctive egg-shaped silhouette.

The leaves are small and rigid with a sharp tip which can easily penetrate the skin.[10] They are narrowly triangular, broad at the base and sessile (without a stem).[6][10] They measure up to 5 cm (2.0 in) long by 1 cm (0.4 in) wide with fine longitudinal venation, glossy green above and paler underneath.[6][10][9] The leaf arrangement is both distichous and decussate (referred to as secondarily distichous) – that is, one pair of leaves are produced on the twig opposite each other, and the next pair above is rotated around the twig 90° to them, and so on.[6]

The cones are terminal, the male (or pollen) cone is a spike up to 20 cm (7.9 in) long which matures around October to November.[7][8][9][10] The female (or seed) cone is much larger, reaching up to 30 cm (12 in) long and 20 cm (7.9 in) wide, which is roughly equivalent to a rugby ball.[7][8][9][10] At maturity, which occurs from December through to March,[7][8] female cones are green with 50–100 pointed segments, each of which encloses a seed, and they can weigh up to 10 kg.[8][9][11][12] Both seed and pollen cones are some of the largest of all conifer species.[13]

The edible seeds measure between 2.5 cm (1.0 in) and 5 cm (2.0 in) long and are ovoid to long-elliptic.[6][7][8][10]

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