TOOWOOMBA, Wednesday 23rd of September — Toowoomba residents will hear directly next Wednesday from a Gympie councillor whose own community has already watched the state’s Planning Minister strip out tree and habitat protections — just weeks before Toowoomba’s own protections reach his desk.
The Tall Trees Forum from 6pm at the Highfields Tavern, hosted by Protect Trees Toowoomba and the Darling Downs Environment Council, features Gympie Regional Councillor Gordon Maudsley, who will speak to what happened when Planning Minister Jarrod Bleijie intervened in his council’s planning scheme — and what it could mean for Toowoomba.
Gympie lost protections across around 75 per cent of its rural land in February 2026. Toowoomba’s new planning scheme — including tree and koala habitat protections the community spent months mapping, consulting on and voting through — is due to reach the State Government in October 2026.
Liza Balmain, coordinator of Save Our Darling Downs, will bring the same pattern into focus from a farming and water perspective — including the recent attempted removal of independent assessment for coal seam gas impacts on the Condamine Alluvium, the water source underpinning much of the region’s agriculture and further winding back of community rights with the Critical Minerals Act and more recent resources development application appeal rights that end the automatic right to have objections heard by the independent Land Court. Instead, the Minister would decide which objections get a hearing.
Ecologist Shannon Michael, an independent ecologist, will unpack how different approaches to mapping habitat and significant trees change what actually ends up protected on paper — and what quietly falls outside the lines. The session will show why the technical detail behind Toowoomba’s scheme matters as much as the political fight over it: a protection is only as strong as the map it’s drawn on.
Holly Paterson, Protect Trees Toowoomba spokesperson, said Toowoomba had already done the work.
“Local government mapped these habitats, engaged the community and the community elected councillors who voted in majority for tree protections to be part of the planning scheme,” Ms Paterson said. “Gympie did exactly the same thing, and watched it get overridden anyway. We’re asking Minister Bleijie a simple question: will Toowoomba’s decision be respected, or is our region next?”
It’s a question Minister Bleijie has answered before, in principle if not on this issue. In a December 2024 letter to the Queensland Parliament responding to an unrelated planning petition, Bleijie wrote that “councils have the responsibility and autonomy for ensuring the good rule and governance of their local government areas” and that “it is at the discretion of each council to make the decisions that it considers appropriate for the needs and views of its community.” Protect Trees Toowoomba says that’s exactly the standard Toowoomba’s community expects to be held to in October.
Toowoomba is the Garden City. The forum’s organisers say the region can keep growing and building the homes it needs while still protecting the old trees and habitat that make it what it is — but only if that decision is made in Toowoomba, not quietly overridden in Brisbane.
Tall Trees Forum
Wednesday 23 September 2026, 6pm
Highfields Tavern, ToowoombaMedia contact:
Protect Trees Toowoomba is a community campaign, supported by the Darling Downs Environment Council, working to secure tree and habitat protections in Toowoomba’s new planning scheme.
- Queensland Parliament — Petition 4164-24 details — confirms the petition (15 Eucalypt Close, Mackenzie), that it was referred to Bleijie on 4 December 2024, and that he responded on 20 December 2024
- Queensland Parliament — Tabled Paper 5824T0307 — Bleijie’s actual signed letter, dated 20 Dec 2024, containing the quote itselg
- Ahri Tallon
Ahri Tallon
Coordinator Darling Downs Environment Council
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