Speech given by Councillor Seal Chong Wah, to the full Brisbane City Council Council Meeting, Tues 27th May 2025

I am speaking to the E & C report, Clause F, Major Amendment package K.

As usual we have these major amendments to the City Plan, with no briefing to Councillors. Railroaded through the secret E & C committees with inadequate efforts by this LNP administration for democratic processes to ensure all Councillors are informed and made aware of the detailed changes.  

Does this LNP administration care about democracy? Absolutely not. The information sharing and debate process created by this LNP administration is a farce. Real democracy has left the house. 

Again, we find changes buried deep in this amendment, as we did for amendment 1B. Today it’s changes to zoning for six beautiful old character buildings very close to my Ward boundary, which are part of my Toowong community. The amendment removes three properties on Sylvan Rd from the Neighbourhood character sub-category. It also removes two others on Sylvan Rd, in the same block, from the commercial character sub-category.  

Previously four of these properties had some protections via two different character overlays, now they have one of these overlays removed. These are a beautiful collection of six very historical old buildings that date back to the early 1900s, that are an important part of the character of the surrounding community. At least one of these buildings is probably pre-1911, even though it doesn’t appear on the pre-1911 overlay.

As this council knows, many pre-1911 buildings are not in the overlay and any applications to the council heritage team, to add buildings to the pre-1911 overlay, are required to have extensive historical research to prove their age. The Council heritage team is not funded or directed to assist in establishing the age of historical buildings. The direct result of this is that Brisbane is losing many pre-1911 buildings that are being demolished by uncaring developers, who claim they just didn’t know the age of the buildings.  

Even if they get prosecuted, in a rare instance, it is obviously a defence to say the building was not listed on the pre-1911 overlay.  I know this defence has been used before, with very minor fines from the State Planning & Environment Court.

Changing the zoning, which generally reduces protections that are already full of holes, will eventually allow for these buildings to be progressively removed from this site or gutted. I would not be surprised if these changes were being made at the request of developers.

I also know our community values its traditional character and heritage and they will be saddened if we lose this iconic group of character buildings.