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. Section 52 says a trustee's actions must be consistent with that purpose. If an action is inconsistent, the Act offers two ways to make it lawful, and they are not the same road:

• Section 52AA — the Minister approves the inconsistent action, if satisfied it will not diminish the purpose or adversely affect the public interest. The decision is the Minister's, and may carry conditions.
• Section 52AB — where the trustee is the State or a statutory body, and the Land Act's dictionary defines "statutory body" to include a local government, the trustee may take the action itself, provided it has prepared a management plan showing the action would not diminish the purpose or adversely affect the public interest, and the action complies with that plan. No ministerial approval is required.

So one route hands the decision to the Minister and the other keeps it with council. For over twenty years council has used part of the reserve as overflow car parking across the Christmas peak. In 2026 the question finally landed on an agenda: is that lawful, and if not, which road does council take?

Why this matters beyond one car park

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

The first is that the operative advice changed in nine days on the question that decides how much this costs — whether a land management plan has to be prepared before council can ask the Minister at all. On 11 August councillors were told to proceed on the basis that one was required. On 20 August they were told it was not.

Be precise about what did not change. Whether s 52AA was available at all was answered on 11 August, in the affirmative, in the same session — a point our first version of this piece got wrong. What moved is the requirement attached to it.

That distinction matters because of what a plan costs. Cr Lorentson put the figure to the meeting: six to twelve months, and $30,000 to $75,000.

The second thing is what it shows about how this council handles a question it does not want asked. On 11 August, five separate attempts to get written 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: a plan is required

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.

Then the Director was asked the direct question, and answered it:

— So question, Richard, just a yes or no. Is section 52AA a possible option?

— Now, through the chair, it is a possible option. It remains in force, as mentioned in the advice. But the correct statutory interpretation is that AA and AB should be read in conjunction. So for statutory authorities, it is a possible option. A land management plan piece should inform a request to the minister as well.

So availability was never really the issue after that exchange. The live question was the one in his last sentence: does a plan have to come first? The written advice said proceed as though it does. Mayor Wilkie treated the matter as closed — that s 52AB applied, 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 plan is not required after all

Nine days later the Director told the Ordinary Meeting that the requirement had fallen away:

The question really was, I guess, posed on me around the requirements. Is a land management plan required to satisfy the requirements of 52AA? And the answer, it isn't. However, there's still similar statutory tests that must be satisfied.

He also set out, on the record, why council is the decision-maker at all — the point that makes s 52AB the cheaper-sounding but heavier road:

That's particularly before the changes to the Land Act in 2024, where there has been now changes where the Land Act has made provision for Council to be able to be the decision maker regarding inconsistent uses. The Department has been pretty clear in recent advice around their preference for Council, which now has the tools to undertake that process through a land management plan exercise.

A preference, then — not a prohibition.

Amendment 4 had sought written advice on whether s 52AA applies and, if not, the specific statutory basis for saying so. It was defeated 2–4. The question got answered twice all the same — once on 11 August and again on 20 August — both times orally, from the table, and the second time with the opposite conclusion about what s 52AA requires. Council then resolved to write to the Minister, going further than defeated Amendment 6, which had asked only whether the Minister would entertain an application at all; the resolution seeks interim approval outright.

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

On the narrow question he was asked, "not necessarily" is defensible: he had said on 11 August that s 52AA was a possible option, and he says here he clarified it with legal counsel during that meeting's adjournment. The Department's preference for a management plan has not moved either.

What moved is the requirement. On 11 August councillors were told to proceed on the basis that a plan was required before they could authorise the use. On 20 August they were told a plan is not required to use s 52AA. For a council weighing six to twelve months and $30,000 to $75,000, that is the whole question.

Only one of these positions reached the record in a prepared form

There is an asymmetry in the record worth noticing.

The 11 August position was obtained deliberately and read into the record in a prepared form: the committee adjourned specifically to obtain it. Whether the underlying advice exists as a written document, and who authored it, is not established on the public record. The 20 August revision was delivered orally from the table. No document accompanies it, and none has been published.

Nor is it clear who prompted it. The Director's account of how the question came to be asked during the nine-day gap is in the passive voice:

The question really was, I guess, posed on me around the requirements — is a land management plan required to satisfy the requirements of 52AA? And the answer, it isn't.

Posed by whom is not on the record.

One further thing was left hanging. Asked what council had actually put to the Minister on previous occasions — whether those were bare requests or full evidentiary cases — the Director said he did not have the detail and took the question on notice.

That matters more than it sounds, because it is the closest thing to an empirical test available. Council has been writing to the Minister about this parking for more than twenty years. If those letters were simple requests and approval came anyway, the wording fought over on 20 August may be beside the point. If they were detailed evidentiary cases, the letter council has just resolved to send may not be enough.

One caveat belongs on that comparison. Sections 52AA and 52AB are recent: the Act's transitional provisions convert approvals given under the former s 52(3) into s 52AA approvals. Earlier correspondence was therefore written against a different statutory test, and may not settle what is required now.

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. The officer report identified no external consultation undertaken specifically for this statutory assessment — the State guideline treats community views as relevant to the public-interest test and asks the trustee to consider whether consultation is needed, rather than mandating it in every case.

The evidence for removing it says the opposite

One exchange on 20 August is worth setting against the document it refers to, because it is the only part of this story that can be checked cheaply.

Arguing the case, Mayor Wilkie said the data collected during the Easter trial "showed that there was, when Lions parking was in place there was a 40% increase in congestion at the roundabouts". Cr Lorentson challenged the characterisation from the floor — her recollection was that the report said the parking contributed to congestion rather than caused it. Asked to settle it, Director of Infrastructure Services Shaun Walsh sided with her: it was "a contributing factor", "not the only factor", alongside the 14,000 vehicles a day arriving in the precinct.

The report is the Go Noosa report to the General Committee of 7 July. It says:

The Lions Park overflow car park contributes to congestion, particularly around the Noosa Parade / Car Park Access roundabout and the Noosa Parade / Noosa Drive / Halse Lane roundabout.

However, the modelling also indicates that the overflow car park is not the sole cause of congestion. When overflow car park demand was removed from the model, significant queues were still evident across the network.

And, on the option council was actually voting on:

The redistribution scenario also showed that removing the overflow car park without managing parking demand may shift traffic pressure elsewhere in the network. When overflow parking demand was redistributed to other areas, network-wide queues remained, with increased delays on some approaches. This indicates that the location and management of overflow parking is important, and that simply removing Lions Park as an overflow car park may not resolve congestion.

The figure of 40% appears nowhere in that packet. It may come from somewhere real — a particular roundabout, a particular hour, a document we do not hold — and a number recalled loosely in debate is ordinary. The point is narrower and harder: the motion before council that morning was to discontinue the parking, and council's own modelling says doing that may not fix the congestion and may move it somewhere else. It lost 3–4.

It matters again for the letter. Council has resolved to submit to the Minister that the parking would not adversely affect the public interest. Congestion is exactly what that test bites on — and on this the report helps council's case rather than hurting it.

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.

Two targeted information requests would clarify the record, with the caveat that neither is guaranteed to produce a document: any written advice underpinning the 20 August position — which may attract legal professional privilege, and may not exist in written form at all — and the answer on notice about what council's previous letters to the Minister actually contained.

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Sources. The traffic modelling passages are quoted from the Go Noosa report to the General Committee of 7 July 2026, in council's published packet for that meeting. 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.