Currently Planning Panels Victoria is sitting in Frankston and hearing multiple objections to the State Government plans to force Frankston to absorb a continuously increasing number of new people, in order to provide profits to the Property Development and Finance oligarchy that has basically taken over much of government policy and planning in Victoria. We begin by publishing the summary of Sheila Newman's verbal submission to VCAT given 4 July 2024, with her longer written submission attached as a pdf file.
My name is Sheila Newman. I am an environmental and evolutionary sociologist and an independent researcher and writer in land-tenure, population, and energy resources systems. I have lived in Frankston for about 32 years.
Some people here have probably wondered why we find ourselves here today with some very respectable, very well organised, financially well-auspiced, and legally assisted, professional supporters of imposing a big Frankston on the local population, and, on the other side, a number of apparently amateur people trying to support the status quo, particularly the natural environment? And why does the State Government exert such pressure on our local government to bring growth about? The answer is that there are big money windfalls for a few in population growth and the accompanying development, and there are hardly any big money windfalls in keeping the natural environment and in the maintenance of a lay-back traditional low-cost Australian lifestyle – just lots of generalised benefits for ordinary people, like low-cost land, plenty of space and natural beauty, and a sense of personal control and ownership of their surroundings.
Local Frankstonians who support a massively bigger Frankston probably wonder why on earth anyone would oppose a bigger Frankston. I would suggest that would be because the different groups have different values. Some, looking at business failure, also support growth because they hope that declining trends in traditional retail and hospitality can be salvaged by a bigger population. Others may hope to profit personally from an increase in house values that population pressure brings, whilst their opponents want to live in their houses without rates constantly rising as Frankston struggles to accommodate more and more people.
As an environmental and evolutionary sociologist and artist, who really loves nature, living space, and personal freedom from artificial structure and regulations, I have sought to understand why, in a democracy, there is such pressure to grow Australia’s population, despite the fact that most people do not want this, as demonstrated, for instance, by Australian family sizes. Overseas migration has been the main tool used to grow our population, although, of course, most of us experience this as local population movement and changes in demand for land and housing.
To understand how population growthism is able to dominate in the mainstream press and in government, I used an established theory (James Q. Wilson - see Sheila Newman, The Growth Lobby and its Absence) that suggested that I should look at where concentrated benefits and diffuse costs were located in Australia in relation to immigration impacts. I found that narrowly focused benefits mean that those benefiting from immigration are consciously aware of this and are able to recognise each other and organise to keep those benefits flowing. But the costs are diffuse and fall upon a disparate population at many different points in many different ways, which makes their origin difficult to identify. There are few obvious political rallying points for the public to organise a protest against population growth engineering around. That means that most people, unless they have a strong personal or financial stake in population movement, are mystified as to what is happening, as costs for basic needs increase and habitat for Australian wildlife disappears, along with open green spaces and a personal political voice in the growing crowd. But those who benefit from growth have massive organised lobby groups at international, national, state and local level – such as the peak body, The Property Council of Australia, and many others. I first became aware of an organised developer group lobbying for massive cities all around Australia and a much bigger population in 2002 with the rise of APop – the Australian Population Institute, although the big newspapers, which would go on to run domain.com.au and realestate.com.au had been promoting the idea for decades.
The Downsizing Ideology (and personal experience) : I have lived and worked in Frankston for over 30 years. Initially I purchased our property with my mother because she had to sell her flat in Sydney because she could not afford the body corporate fees and maintenance costs, which were affected by the disparate aspirations of young working people and those with fixed or small incomes. This is illustrative of the fallacy of the downsizing ideology promoted so strongly by the Big Frankston lobby. Overpopulation had already made Sydney terribly expensive, but Kennet had not yet managed to reverse Melbourne’s declining population, so we were able to buy a large property in South Frankston with the proceeds of a cramped North Shore Sydney flat. So, my presence in Frankston was dictated by my mother’s flight from overcrowded Sydney’s ridiculous land and housing prices. Now overall population growth and flight from the suburbs nearer the city, has brought high prices to Frankston itself. I read accusations on facebook from people who see Frankston South as a luxury leafy green suburb that should be densified, apparently not realising that, until recently, Frankston South was an unassuming low-priced suburb, without much competition for houses, and relatively low rates.
Self-determination and Democracy: In my opinion, unnecessary and undesirable change is being imposed coercively and deceptively on the people of Frankston, in the form of state and federally engineered population growth and land-use intensification programs, which were never on any Labor or Liberal election platform, but have been relentlessly promoted by state and corporate media, which also market them internationally, whilst also excluding any meaningful public discussion in the same media.
A recent Parliament of Victoria Legislative Council Environment and Planning Committee Inquiry into the protections within the Victorian Planning Framework Interim report recorded widespread concern among community groups on this matter.
I consider that the consultation and community engagement process was deeply flawed and prevented residents and citizens from commenting on the most critical aspect of C160fran, which is to facilitate massive population growth engineering outside the control of the Frankston community.
Affordable Housing and Economic Growth trickle-down economics. I consider the excuse for C160fran of promoting more affordable housing and economic stimulus to be dishonest or mistaken, since subdivisions plus population growth inflate land-prices, and present a major cost to doing business or providing services, as does physical densification. The C160fran project really only benefits the property development and finance industry and those upstream and down, which mostly rely on more materials and energy consumption. In my view, this is a parasite economy that takes away from most Australians’ natural geographical and social endowment.
Current laws and processes are inadequate for the problems of insuring badly built high-rises and dealing with defective body corporate management.
Environment: The project is dangerous. Melbourne and Victoria are already failing very badly to protect the natural environment, although it is vital for our economic and biological survival, as noted in successive State of the Environment and Victorian Auditor General Reports which I have cited in my written submission. There is no reason to believe that our governments are capable of or intend to reform their poor performance on this, despite their loud rhetoric to the contrary. In my opinion, it is also foolhardy and irresponsible for government to promote a bigger population and more intensive development, which will greatly add to carbon emissions and climate change risk, and to food, water, and energy insecurity. I personally and professionally explored those problems when editing and writing two editions of a book collaboration by myself and other scientists exploring survival in a post-carbon-fuel economy, The Final Energy Crisis, Pluto Books 2006, 2008.
Precinct 4: [This is the area along Kananook Creek.] I wish particularly to register my objection to the increasing building heights for Precinct 4 which is a particularly iconic and charming area, and the lack of mandatory provisions to protect the sensitive coastal environment, Kananook Creek and significant views, and to the denial of the democratic rights for myself and others to have a say about developments within the proposed ACZ1.
I reject the ACZ1 and seek changes to community consultation, and to planning laws to address the areas of concern set out in my submission, and for recognition of the rights to self-determination of we who live there to preserve the uncluttered, uncongested, beautiful, natural, human-scale Frankston and determine, mostly via our family sizes, the size of the population here. The speed and volume of land-use change in Victoria overwhelms democracy. Instead of the much touted ‘certainty’ for a quazi-oligarchy of development and finance, who want to further suppress community influence on planning, the community needs certainty for citizens and residents.
Economist: We heard a report from an economist for Frankston City Council a couple of days ago, whose reports were unable to keep up with Australia’s accelerating population growth. And we heard a discussion about how the C160 Amendment might be tweaked somehow to accommodate the newer figures, although they are probably out of date already. This strikes me as high-risk seat-of-pants planning and a reason to challenge the vertical expanding envelope of Big Frankston as unreasonable.
Finally, I would like to explore the idea of Money as an Extended Phenotype and its effect on growth, choice, and self-determination.
Just looking at the current juggernaut form that population growth has taken in this country and impending in Frankston, I would like to express a theory on how dangerous this can be. A phenotype is the genetic expression of a species, such as humans or beavers. An extended phenotype is where that phenotype carries an impact on the social or physical landscape. An example with beavers is that beavers build dams. Beavers don’t read and write, but humans do. Our writing is an extension of our phenotype. Another extension of our phenotype is money, which beavers also don’t use. Humans invented money, which comes from capitalisation of land and other things that once only used to be passed on to people and their descendants in a particular locality, and could only be taken in war. Money has made transacting land something that can happen far away from the people and animals who live there. It has become possible for individual humans to get control of vast quantities of land and power by aggregating money. Unfortunately, money has taken on a life of its own, and resisting the justification of financial profit – for a justice system as for a planning system or a corporation seeking growth – has become almost impossible. But, if we do not strongly resist this, nothing is going to stop us from concreting and wrecking our environments and covering most living things in waste, and turning them into slaves, because the profit-motive is now a kind of machine with failing brakes.
Thank you for your consideration of the matters I have raised in my written submission.
Sheila Newman
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