[Janelle Dalton]

We currently have a large timber mill, as an activity on a large assessment (27,478ha) of rural land. They have been categorised as general farmland up until now. This property purchased by “the Great Cumbung Pty Ltd” is known as “Juanbung” and one of the largest private conservation-focused purchases at $47 million. new articles pitch them as pursuing sustainable land-use options such as carbon diodiversity offsets and stewardship and ecotourism” .
Even though there is a lot of pitch about conservation of the land, I believe that the most dominant use the “largest privately owned river red gum forest and the associated large Juanbung timber mill .

should this be categorised as a Rural Business, not farmland?
under section 515 of the LGA I cannot find milling listed as a farmland activity, which would therefore make them a business.

[Robert Hay]

Hi Janelle

Without knowing all the details I would just check that they don’t come under Forestry which is mentioned under 515.

Robert

[Simone Fisher]

Hi Janelle,
I would have them supply details of their forestry operations. If the timber mill is running ancillary to the red river gum forestry operation on the property & the size of the forestry operation meets your minimum farmland rating policy criteria I’d be inclined to grant them farmland rating.
If all of the forest is now being conserved & not used for forestry but the timber mill is running independently with timber from off-site being brought in I’d be looking abit closer at recategorsing to business.
Do you know if a formal conservation agreement is in place? If there is & it is under the National Parks & Wildlife Act I expect that they may make an application for exemption under section 555(1)(b1) for the portion of the land under the agreement anyway.
We’ve also had a circumstance here where a large portion of a farmland property previously used for grazing became subject to a conservation agreement. Due to agreement the property could no longer be used for the farming activity but there was a small cottage located on the property. In this situation we recategorised the assessment to residential & the ratepayer was initially unimpressed.
In this particular circumstance the conservation agreement was not under the National Parks & Wildlife Act so there was no entitlement to exemption but the Valuer General did take the agreement into consideration when issuing a new rateable valuation & the new valuation came in significantly less than the previous valuation prior to the conservation agreement. This caused the rates to remain roughly the same despite the recategorisation anyway.
Hope this has been of some help.
Thanks,
Simone

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