Professor Mark Scott:

A lot of great issues were discussed there. The idea of the land use review is to provide a menu of the types of options to allow those decisions to be made more in the political space. The decisions need to be tailored to the correct geographic context environmentally and socially.

I wish to come back on this false divide between urban and rural. The land use review is not just focusing on rural places. Many of the land use sectors are in rural areas and used for farming. However, we are looking holistically at the impacts of urbanisation and how we can enhance biodiversity within our cities. Where should our houses be located? Should there be more compact development in line with the national planning framework? How does that impact on the fragmentation of habitats if it is allowed to be much more deconcentrated? It is certainly looking holistically at land. It is not urban versus rural and should have the support of people whose livelihoods depend on the land as well.