Cape York Regional Planning Committee meets

Members of the Cape York Regional Planning Committee today gathered in Cairns to review a draft version of the Cape York Regional Plan, prior to its release for public consultation.

Deputy Premier and the Minister for State Development, Infrastructure and Planning Jeff Seeney said the third committee meeting brought together the Cape York Mayors, key industry and community stakeholders and fellow State Ministers.

“The Newman Government is setting a course to open the region to economic diversity and opportunities, while balancing the protection of the Cape’s unique environment,” Mr Seeney said.

“While we seek to create land use certainty in areas suitable for appropriate agricultural, tourism and resources extraction activities, we also want to protect areas of high-value agricultural land use and communities from encroachment from inappropriate resource activities.

“Further, we want to identify infrastructure opportunities that will support economic growth in the region and not introduce additional unnecessary regulation.”

Mr Seeney said the meeting discussed how the Newman Government proposed to address land use planning in the far north of the state, including the scrapping of the four Wild Rivers declarations in the region introduced by the former Labor Government.

“The government is keen to ensure the draft plan reflects the committee’s input before it goes out for public consultation,” he said.

Mr Seeney said public consultation on the draft plan was likely to start by early November this year and close early in 2014.

The final plan is then expected to be released by mid-2014.

[ENDS] 18 September 2013

Media contact: Kate Haddan 0418 373 516