Black Swan Production Restart, page-726

Thanks, Blowie. I heard/understood a bit differently re- council's attitude towards an on-site camp at BS, given its 'relative' proximity, heavily favouring a town-based accommodation solution (Catch 22).

Notwithstanding, I agree that management should be pushing on with on-site camp planning and DA application, fully expecting the Admin Tribunal getting involved.

I do understand the challenges around boom-bust real estate cycles in heavily reliant mining towns. My main gripe with the council is in the apparent lack of forward strategic planning to help mitigate the inevitable accom. supply squeeze that arises from time to time. For example, they could have incorporated into the town planning scheme, say, a dedicated precinct of vacant land (various lots for supply scalability), which council may strategically own on the outskirts of town, or not far out, which could be made available via land lease to industry for temp overflow accommodation to be installed during periods of accommodation supply stress. Structure such leases with a short-ish term to permit extension or removal of capacity, based on what vacancy rates do over the cycle. Having such a precinct (of multiple appropriately sized lots) already set aside and zoned, serviced, etc... would go a long way to facilitating fast-tracking the provision of temp accom. supply by industry, as required.
Just one broad brush idea.

In short: There appears to be a complete absence of policy by the local authority to facilitate supporting the town and industry wrt a phenomum that repeats periodically, which is entirely forseeable. Only the timing of such periods is unknown until they emerge, hence the arguement for the council to strategically own the precinct.