Lions Park overflow parking

Noosa Heads Lions Park is a reserve. Council is its trustee, which means council does not own it outright — it holds it for the purpose the State set, under the Land Act 1994. A trustee who wants to use a reserve for something inconsistent with that purpose needs the Minister's blessing, one way or another.

For over twenty years council has used part of it as overflow car parking across the Christmas peak. In 2026 the question finally landed on an agenda: is that lawful, and if not, what does council have to do about it?

Why this matters beyond one car park

Two things make this worth following even if you never park there.

The first is that the advice council acted on reversed itself in nine days, and the councillor who spent a meeting being voted down for asking about it turned out to be right.

The second is what it shows about how this council handles a question it does not want asked. On 11 August, five separate attempts to get legal advice or to ask the Minister a question were defeated. On 20 August, council resolved to do substantially what two of those defeated amendments had asked for.

11 August: the door closes

The General Committee adjourned specifically to get legal advice, which was then read into the record. Its thrust was unambiguous:

Although section 52AA of the Land Act remains in force and continues to provide for ministerial approval of inconsistent actions, the department's advice is that local government trustees cannot rely on 52AA of the act as an alternative to the 52AB management plan process. Accordingly, as a matter of risk management and statutory administration, Council should proceed on the basis that a land management plan is required before authorising the proposed inconsistent use.

Mayor Wilkie treated the matter as closed — that s 52AB applied, that s 52AA "applies to trustees other than the council", and that council did not "need to be asking for advice for which we've already received."

Cr Lorentson and Cr Phillips tried five times to test that proposition. Every attempt failed:

#	What it asked for	Result
1	Legal advice on whether the use is inconsistent at all	Lost 2–4
2	Legal advice on what would satisfy the s 52AB tests	Lost 2–4
3	A scoped, proportionate plan for the 21 days actually in question	Lost on the chair's casting vote, 3–3
4	Written advice on whether s 52AA applies here, and if not, why not	Lost 2–4
6	Ask the Minister whether he would consider a s 52AA application at all	Lost 1–5

Cr Lorentson tabled her own analysis of s 52AA as an attachment to the minutes. Cr Stockwell was absent.

20 August: the door opens again

Nine days later the Director of Development & Regulation told the Ordinary Meeting that a second pathway does exist — that council can write to the Minister under s 52AA, and that on his understanding no land management plan is required.

That is the answer to defeated Amendment 4. Council then resolved to write to the Minister, which is the substance of defeated Amendment 6.

Asked directly by the Mayor whether this represented a change from the advice given the week before, the Director said "not necessarily".

It is a change. The Department's stated preference for a management plan has not moved. What moved is the operative advice council was acting on: from "you cannot rely on 52AA, proceed on the basis a plan is required" to "52AA is available, no plan is required."

What council actually resolved

Not to discontinue the parking. Not to approve preparing a land management plan either. Council resolved to obtain a further report first, and in the meantime to write to the Minister under s 52AA seeking interim approval for temporary overflow parking over the 2026 Christmas period. Carried 5–2, with Cr Stockwell and Cr Wegener against.

Note what dropped out. The General Committee's recommendation had three parts, and part B was an approval to commence the land management plan. The adopted motion dropped part B entirely.

Cr Phillips, who moved it, was explicit that this was deliberate and not cost-driven — her argument was that the Property Advisor's own report said council should first satisfy itself the use is reasonably capable of passing the statutory tests, and that she had not been given enough information to make that call. She itemised what was missing: what share of the usable reserve is occupied, what physical impact twenty years of seasonal parking has actually caused, rehabilitation and cumulative-impact data, and whether the seasonal controls work. No external community consultation has ever been done, though community views are expressly a public-interest factor under the State guideline.

The swing vote

Cr Karen Finzel. She voted with the Mayor's bloc on 16 July to strip the parking approval, and again on 20 August on a wording amendment — but crossed on the substantive question and then seconded Cr Phillips' replacement motion.

Her stated reason was not about parking. It was that a bare discontinuation is the wrong instrument — that reducing a question of "higher order planning around land use" to "discontinue temporary car parking" diminishes the strategic question, and so she could not support it in that form.

How the votes fell

Vote	Wilkie	Finzel	Stockwell	Wegener	Phillips	Lorentson	Wilson	Result
16 Jul — strip the parking approval	For	For	For	For	Ag	Ag	Ag	Carried 4–3
20 Aug — discontinue parking	For	Ag	For	For	Ag	Ag	Ag	Lost 3–4
20 Aug — write to Minister (s 52AA)	For	For	Ag	For	For	For	For	Carried 6–1
20 Aug — letter must "demonstrate"	Ag	Ag	Ag	For	For	For	For	Carried 4–3
20 Aug — "demonstrate" → "submit"	For	For	For	For	Ag	Ag	Ag	Carried 4–3
20 Aug — final resolution	For	For	Ag	Ag	For	For	For	Carried 5–2

Where this goes next

The letter to the Minister is discretionary — s 52AA approval is a decision the Minister may or may not make, and the wording amendments fought over on 20 August went to how hard council has to argue its case in that letter. The further report on scope, cost, funding and consultation comes back before council decides whether to commit to a management plan at all.

Watch for: whether the letter goes, what it says, when the Minister answers, and whether the further report finally supplies the impact and consultation evidence that nobody has produced in twenty years.

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Sources. Votes are from council's adopted minutes for 11 August and 20 August 2026. Quotations are from a machine transcript of council's own recording — accurate enough to follow the argument, but not verified word-for-word against the video, and we flag it rather than pretend otherwise. Every quoted passage is linked to its timestamp on the relevant meeting page so you can hear it yourself.