Land use planning: An opportunity to avert devastation from bushfires

Land use planning (LUP) provides a mechanism to reduce risk and increase resilience to natural hazards. We sought to understand the extent that key stakeholders in LUP consider natural hazard risk in determination of rezoning applications. The aim was to identify why land uses are permitted within areas exposed to risk of natural hazards like bushfires. Presenting the case of New South Wales, a state ravaged by devastating bushfires, we explore decision-making practices within the regulatory planning environment. We utilised a qualitative exploratory research design involving a multi-criteria decision-making framework as a lens to explore how key stakeholders make decisions to consider bushfire risk within the policy environment. Our findings identify the lack of a consistent process employed in LUP decision-making and priority given to decision-making criteria that emphasises achieving targets for employment and housing and results in low priority given to bushfire risk. We suggest that placing higher priority on bushfire risk in decision-making, within and between organisations, is necessary to consider bushfire risk within regulatory LUP activities to support disaster risk reduction and create resilient communities.