Serious concerns over transferrable land titles

Jonathan O’Neill oneill.jonathan1@outlook.com

With rates and land values soaring throughout the Southern Downs, a solution to Council’s population growth woes may be addressed when the new Regional Planning Scheme and Urban Design Framework are handed down.

However, some community members are concerned with the proposed introduction of transferrable titles for land subdivisions throughout the local government area.

Nathan Parkes, who sits on the Shaping Southern Downs Advisory

Committee has serious concerns the transferrable title policy will create a market for these titles, pushing average people out of reach.

“Developers are going to be buying these titles and regular people aren’t going to be in the market for these sorts of titles, Mr Parkes said.

“I doubt very much that there’s going to be developers buying blocks around these villages.

“At the end of the day, they’re going to want to buy and sell land around Warwick and Stanthorpe, because that’s where the market is.

“I have some serious concerns about that in terms of constraining development.

“Planning for Dalveen [and other villages] should be deter- mined by where we’re currently servicing ratepayers like supplying bins etc. It shouldn’t be reliant on having to buy a title from somewhere else”.

Mayor of the Southern Downs, Vic Pennisi said that subdivisions are a frequent topic for local governments, with historical, undeveloped subdivisions not meeting current planning guidelines.

“If you go to Maryvale for example, there’s like 250 subdivided blocks. Those historic subdivisions have no roads built by developers. There was no infrastructure whatsoever,” Cr Pennisi said.

“If those historical blocks are developed, all ratepayers pay for the infrastructure that goes on those particular pieces of land.

There are a number of those.

“If you go to Freestone, there’s also a significant number of historical subdivisions”.

The proposed transferrable titles policy will allow a property owner who has multiple titles on their land, to sell them to someone with titles on neighbouring land if it is adjoining a village, such as Dalveen.

Mr Parkes shares the sentiments of village communities wanting to subdivide their land.

“I can see some serious flaws with the consistency of what’s proposed,” Mr Parkes said.

“A lot of these people aren’t going to sell their titles, they want to realign their boundaries and sell them for smaller blocks.

“I’ve got concerns about it really

A total investment of $1.6 million was dedicated to the renovations, with Warwick Christian college investing $1,000,000, and the Queensland Government investing another $600,000 in the project.

An application is currently in progress to build a new undercover basketball court, with a grandstand which is said to get a nice view over the prospective court as well as the town of Warwick.

“We have lots of plans for the campus,” Principal of Warwick Christian College, Jason Gay, said. “We’re arranging an old campus for twenty-first century learning.”

“The new spacious classrooms allow students to learn in comfort,” Mr Gay said, “We’re investing in their needs and comfort, and if they feel that we’re putting them first, that’ll help improve their engagement with learning.” constraining development. We’re small villages, yet we provide so much.

“We’re in a housing crisis. We should be able to open these blocks up and prioritise around the villages.

“There are enough people living around Stanthorpe and Killarney to support those towns.

“Let’s put some money into the villages so they’re self-sustaining.

“I’m not taking away from the wonderful work Council has done, I’m just raising some concerns I have with the planning scheme.

“I’m only being the mouth to a community that’s poking me in the ribs”.

EVERYONE’S ENTITLED with Andrew Gale

You may have read a couple of columns I’ve written in the last year lamenting over the state of our road toll. If you don’t recall, or don’t follow the issue like I do, over the last three years, in Queensland, we have seen the death toll on our roads increase by anything up to 25 percent a year. For example, in 2019 we had a total of 220 deaths on Queensland roads, 2020 there were 275 and 2021 there were 299.

These increases were an absolute reversal of the downwards trends in our road toll over the past 50 years. For example, in the early 1970’s Australians killed themselves on our roads at the rate of about 3500-4000 a year, whereas in 2019 it had decreased to about 1200. In Queensland we suffered over 600 deaths in the 70’s yearly with deaths much lower now, as stated above.

A lot of people out there and no doubt some of you who are reading this may not have noticed this at all. I’m surprised as how many people aren’t aware of the great work we have done as a nation to achieve this. This was despite cars on our roads increasing by about ten times in that period, population increases and so on.

Hopefully you can see why I’ve been concerned. So concerned I’ve been telling everyone I can, at every chance I could, that we have a problem.

The good news is that after almost 5 months this year, the road toll, so far, is back on the downwards slope. So far this year, there has been 88 deaths in Queensland as opposed to 115. That’s 27 less people killed on our roads. Still 88 too many as far as I’m concerned, but thankfully trending in the right direction.

The question I want answered is, “Why did the toll increase by so much?” I’m sure there will be all manner of studies and even papers written about it in the future. Was it just that we as a community slackened off? Was it a result of less Police on the roads because they were tied up looking after border check-points? Was it something to do with the mindsets we developed over the entire Covid-19 thing? Who knows? Maybe we won’t ever know.

One thing we have seen come out of the rise in the road toll was the massive increase in fines and camera enforcement. I’ve seen these tactics work before and maybe that’s been what we needed. I just ask, where can we go from there? Surely those fines are big enough to give people the message.

These fines have increased so much and so quickly that even the states own advertising can’t keep up. When I was driving home from Goondiwindi the other day I passed a massive Queensland Transport billboard telling us to “Wear a Seat Belt or Wear $225 and 3 points.”

It made me think I’d be a bit cranky if had received a fine for doing that in the few months and I saw that sign. The sign is out of date – it’s a $1,078 fine now and potentially 8 points for repeat offenders. Buckle up!