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For almost half a century the right to contribute has been part of the planning process. It is a right that has led to contentious debate, both about the process of participation and the matters around which participation takes place. In this chapter, we consider these debates through the lens of four dilemmas that have been recognized in Australia, and internationally, as constituting the dynamic nature of community engagement: rights and recognition, values, registers of rationality and emotion, and actions outside the planning system. For each we provide historical context, discuss emblematic cases and feature current concerns.

Planning employment in Australia is undergoing significant change. The importance of planning as a profession is increasing, the number of planners employed in Australia more than doubled between 2000 and 2013, and vacant planning positions are filled with relative ease and attract large numbers of qualified applicants. While this is good news for planning as a profession, it means that employment prospects for graduating planners have weakened in recent years as the labor market has tightened. This chapter explores the changing planning education and employment landscape and what it means to “be” a planner and to “do” planning work in Australia.

We know that planning is complex and difficult and that many planners struggle professionally and personally under the weight of pressures and divergent expectations of their role. In urban development for example, planners routinely face criticism both from the development sector for failing to approve development fast enough and from interest groups for allowing culturally and environmentally insensitive development. In this context of planning, which is invariably contested, planners respond in different ways. Some leave the profession. Others emotionally check-out or find ways to make a contribution through advocacy, mentoring, teaching and research. Some planners rise to the challenge of planning in high conflict situations and take leadership in the pursuit of fair, just and sustainable outcomes. We are interested in exploring experiences from this latter group. Considering the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), Australia’s most internationally recognized example of resource conflict and social contestation, we examine lessons from experienced planners on planning’s front line. We draw on oral histories with experienced planners who provided critical leadership to negotiate policy outcomes in the GBR, and explore how they created opportunities to take action. First we describe resource conflicts in the GBR and review key planning policy introduced to manage conflict since the 1980s. Then we describe the oral history method and present the results describing the obstacles planners faced in resolving conflict and strategies they used to overcome these obstacles. We conclude by reflecting on how experienced planners use discerning practical judgment to address conflicts, negotiate agreements, and improve plan and policy efficacy. Planners in the GBR take leadership through collaborative processes, by building partnerships and decision systems and by bringing people along. This helps planners overcome obstacles to reef policy; we suggest it improves their capacity to act r

In 1914, George Taylor wrote Town Planning for Australia: this was Australia’s first book on urban planning. Written for a new, and highly urbanized Australia, it proposed a case for planning to achieve the ideal city: a more beautiful environment, improved living conditions, a safer city, a better class of individual, and more co-operative and cohesive communities (Taylor, 2015). The diverse interests it raised led into the first university level planning qualification, at Sydney University from 1949 (Freestone, 2015). One hundred years later, planning in Australia has grown substantially and matured as a profession. Australia now has 24 accredited educational programs in place, a steadily increasing number of planning academics, and a growing body of planning research (J. Byrne, Chapter 26). Student enrolments continue to grow and between 2000 and 2013 the number of employed planners had more than doubled across Australia (Mayere and Grantt-Smith, Chapter 25). Planners today work in diverse urban and regional contexts and across fields of planning and the scholarship of urban and regional planning has evolved since its early beginnings with this broadening base (Freestone, Chapter 8 ). It is timely to ask, where is planning today in Australia? What would a snapshot of critical essays on urban planning reveal about the practice of planning and the key challenges it confronts? What would it reveal about the state of planning policy and extent of planning action in urban and regional Australia?

The closing chapter of the Handbook is divided into three parts. First, as a way of summarising the preceding 26 chapters, we examine three themes that emerged and cut across ranges of chapters. Second, to provide some context to the Handbook, particularly for those international readers or others not familiar with Australian planning, we return to an issue raised in the introduction—how Australian planning theories, practices and education compares internationally. In the third and final section, we provide some insight on future directions for Australian planning and its role in the Asia Pacific region.