MEDIA RELEASE 22.5.08
SOS condemns State Government for removing Council Planning Powers

Removing Council planning powers - unnecessary, undemocratic and open to corruption!

Yesterday's announcement by Planning Minister Justin Madden to strip councils of planning power for major activity centre development again shows the State Government's contempt for the community.

It is yet another example of trying to make things easy for developers without regard to planning outcomes or the concerns of the whole community.

If the Planning Minister was really trying to streamline the planning process, he could simply make key planning guidelines mandatory (Rescode, Structure plans etc) which would vastly speed up the planning assessment process - any non-compliant applications would be rejected and the others would be easier to tick off. This would also greatly diminish the number of cases going to VCAT and provide what all parties want - greater certainty.

SOS Submission
Melbourne 2030 Audit Committee

September 24, 2007

CONTENTS

1 Summary of key issues and themes P 2

2 Population projections and Sustainable Development P 3

3 Strengthening Rescode P 4

4 Activity centres P 5

5 Reform of VCAT (P&E List) P 6

6 Is new development reflecting M2030 policy? P 6

7 Recommendations of M2030 Implementation Reference Group P 7

8 Other Related Issues P 8

9 Conclusion - Moratorium on M2030 P 10

1 Summary

All the critical points made in the SOS submission on M2030 in 2003 remain valid.

The State Government has announced a 'review' of Melbourne 2030. Submissions are due by Sept 24th, 2007 - See the DSE web site.

The process states that 'all submissions will be treated as public documents and may be placed on the Internet for public access'. Be aware that most of the 'consultation' on M2030 has been to gauge the responses in order to appropriately spin to the concepts, and to hide 'public' submissions... So demand that your submission IS placed on the DSE website for public viewing! .

Without any prior consultation or notice, Planning Minister Justin Madden is about to summarily terminate the State Government's Melbourne 2030 advisory group.

The M2030 Implementation Reference Group (IRG) was originally set up to provide feedback on how the new planning guidelines were working in practice.

The IRG has been critical of the way the government introduced the policy before much of the necessary council structure plans and upgraded public transport services had been put in place.

Residential amenity protection lobby group Save Our Suburbs had two seats on the IRG.

“Melbourne 2030 - Planning for Sustainable Growth” is a 30-year plan to manage change across metropolitan Melbourne , introduced in October 2002 after three years of extensive community consultation (DOI 2002). However, this feedback, along with some of the department's own technical reports, was largely ignored in the final draft. Age columnist Kenneth Davidson savaged the strategy as “simply a restatement of the main elements of the Kennett government's 1995 planning document ( Living Suburbs )… with phoney consultative processes and documents in warm, earthy colours, subliminally evocative of a sustainable environment...” (Mees 2004).