Boroondara

"I am highly concerned that residents’ rights are being eroded progressively and quietly by the State government through these Planning Reforms under the veil and distraction of a COVID emergency." (Kate Hely, Mayor of Stonnington.) The Toorak Residents' Group emailed the Malvern East Group material including the comments below, which are from the Mayor of Stonnington, Kate Hely, who, with a number of Mayors, had asked for a meeting with Minister Wynne to discuss the recent Planning Scheme Amendments. Minister Wynne chose not to meet with them. He sent one of his staff instead and the Mayors were NOT pleased. It is thought that he won't meet with the MAV either and that organisation is not pleased either. Mr. Wynne's disdain for local communities is well known.

"The State is looking to introduce a new Planning Reform that could lead to further removal of the community’s ability to shape local planning decisions; reforms that could remove your ability to meaningfully object to a development next door or down the road; and that could ignore the desire of our communities and the commitment of our councils to build neighbourhoods to be proud of.

I am highly concerned that residents’ rights are being eroded progressively and quietly by the State government through these Planning Reforms under the veil and distraction of a COVID emergency."

I recently led a group of 10 metro mayors who together represented 1.4 million people and 12,000 planning decisions a year to politely discuss our concerns about potential reforms with the Minister for Planning, and yet we were only deemed worthy of meeting his advisor.
We overtly asked to be involved in forming reform decisions but were essentially dismissed.

This week I heard that the President of the MAV (Municipal Association of Victoria - the peak body for all 79 Victorian councils) had not even been able to get a meeting with the Minister to discuss the concerns of our sector. So councils have been proactively trying to cooperate and work with the State on these reforms, and yet the door remains shut to us.

Compounding this sense of alarm, Council officers have been asked to sign non-disclosure agreements with DWELP (The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning - which is the State Government department in charge of planning) such that they cannot share information about the proposed Planning Reforms with the community elected councillors.

….. They are attempting to block the ability for democratically elected community representatives to know about or feed into what will dramatically impact our community, villages, streets and neighbourhoods! Alarm bells should be going off!

I have not been given any detail about these reforms. There is a discussion that they could speed up the planning process. But is that by simply removing the voice of our community? There is discussion that the reforms will help to stimulate a post-COVID recovery. But are quick builds more important than long-term neighbourhood character and due consideration of context?

My neighbouring Mayor, Gary Thompson of Boroondara pointed out, “Over the last 24 years each State Government has introduced a few new Planning Provisions. The Andrews State Government has introduced 1/3 of all the Planning Provisions over the last 24 years in just over two and a half years…. Why? Because they have the power to do so in Government.”

This is not democracy in action. It is more like democracy being locked out of the room.
And it all might happen before Christmas. However, we don't really know because they will not share with locally elected representatives what’s behind the ‘secret planning reform’ door.

Stonnington Council has goals and plans for how we want to preserve and enhance our neighbourhoods, villages and streets. We have educated and sophisticated residents that expect to be able to have a voice in what happens in their neighbourhoods and streets. We have residents who expect their Council to advocate on their behalf. I am highly concerned about these reforms - and our community should be too."

The draft Yarra Strategic Plan claims to deliver the first Victorian integrated river corridor strategy and to identify immediate actions for the river corridor, enabling long-term collaborative management between agencies and Traditional Owners. It is intended to guide local planning. We publish here a critical submission to this draft plan. Summary of submission by candobetter editor: Climate Change and human failure to interact safely with the natural world. Plan fails to adequately factor in transport interaction with Yarra. Lack of proper transport interconnectivity. Higher density depends on high quality public transport. Private car still dominates. Forecast population growth and new constructions will inevitably cause major environmental damage. North-East Link Freeway will comport massive land-fill problems, hardly referred to in Draft Plan. Likely potential for destabilisation of groundwater in the Yarra Valley in the Bulleen and Rosanna area as a consequence of the North-East Link Freeway project. Substantial areas of public open space is threatened by the project, together with about 25,000 mature canopy trees. Adverse human health effects of the project would include increased air pollution and heightened road noise. Lack of cycling provision on roads in cities of Boroondara, Banyule, Manningham and Maroondah and the Shires of Nillumbik and Yarra Ranges. Proposal in Plan to increase lanes capacity on the Eastern Freeway to cater for the North East Link project by over 40%, from 802,000 square metres to 1,127,000 square metres. Adverse environmental effects would include increased run-off of polluted stormwater into the Yarra River and elevated ambient temperatures as a consequence of the large increase in concrete and asphalt surfaces. Report of the Commissioner of Sustainability, State of the Yarra and its Parklands (2018), concluded that the status of the Yarra river was poor for 18 of its 25 environmental indicators. This can only deteriorate if planned stressors go ahead.

Submission on the Draft Yarra Strategic Plan

Introduction

The draft Yarra Strategic Plan rightly identifies climate change as a threat to the Yarra River. In this regard, climate change is neither more or less than a register of the failure of the human species to interact properly with the natural world. COVID - 19 also falls into that category.

Transport and the Yarra

The draft Plan gives too little attention to the relationship between transport and the health of the Yarra. This is a major flaw. The functionality of large cities is decided more than anything else by the dominant modes of mobility deployed in them.

The draft Plan declares (p. 16) that the Department of Transport "plans, builds and operates an integrated, sustainable and safe transport system across Victoria. It does not, actually, as little effort is made to integrate the various modes. Within the public transport sphere in particular, insufficient effort is made to ensure the connectivity of the network.

Even more importantly, the concept of integrated transport and land use planning has pretty much been abandoned by the Victorian government, and has done so since Melbourne 2030, with the concept of the poly-centric city at its core, was all but forgotten.

The idea (p. 12) that higher density residential development should be the sole province of inner areas is flawed. There is significant demand for higher density residential development in locations well removed from inner Melbourne. The central problem is that the government has abandoned the key enabler of this, which is high quality public transport across the whole of Melbourne.

The reality is that the modal mix for personal travel in the City of Melbourne is little different from what it was 50 years ago. The private motor car dominates. And it is very space-inefficient.

The draft Plan anticipates that Melbourne's population will grow to nearly 8 million by the year 2051, and with an extra 140,000 dwellings to be built in the Yarra River corridor by 2041.

There are no grounds, within current policy settings, that these "milestones" would be reached without damaging the environment very seriously. The central issue is that the Victorian government does not have a transport plan for Melbourne.

North East Link

The Victorian government's North East Link freeway project is hardly referred to in the draft Plan. It should be. It was developed in the absence of any consideration by the government of other forms of transport, and especially public transport, which would have a relatively benign effect on the Yarra River corridor.

It is understood that the extensive tunnelling proposed for the project would require the excavation of about 1.5 cubic metres of rock and soil, which would go to landfill (see Timna Jacks and Benjamin Preiss, "Warning over toxic soil from 'big dig,'" Sunday Age, December 1, 2019). It is not known whether any of the material is toxic and there appears to be insufficient landfill capacity to take it.

There appears to be potential for destabilisation of groundwater in the Yarra Valley in the Bulleen and Rosanna area as a consequence of the project.
Substantial areas of public open space is threatened by the project, together with about 25,000 mature canopy trees.

Adverse human health effects of the project would include increased air pollution and heightened road noise.

Paved surface area

One of the dysfunctional elements of the dominance of the motor car is the increase in paved road surface that is required to cater for ever-growing motor vehicle numbers. For instance, it is proposed to increase lanes capacity on the Eastern Freeway to cater for the North East Link project by over 40%, from 802,000 square metres to 1,127,000 square metres. The adverse environmental effects would include increased run-off of polluted stormwater into the Yarra River and elevated ambient temperatures as a consequence of the large increase in concrete and asphalt surfaces.

Local government and transport

It is not only at state government level that we have major policy failure in transport. For instance, if one is to consider the land area of the City of Boroondara, it is comprised of about 6,022 hectares, of which 1279 hectares, over 20%, is comprised of road reservations. About 80% of the land devoted to road reservations is controlled by the City of Boroondara, with the balance controlled by VicRoads. The reservations controlled by Boroondara contain about 560 kilometres of local roads.
Significantly, very few of these roads have been developed to provide for safe cycling traffic. They are designed, with few exceptions, exclusively for motor car traffic. Apart from the City of Yarra, the other councils with a direct interest in this project (the cities of Banyule, Manningham and Maroondah and the Shires of Nillumbik and Yarra Ranges), also appear relatively uninterested in increasing the mode share of space-efficient, and therefore environmentally friendly forms of transport.

Conclusions

The Status Assessment contained in the report of the Commissioner of Sustainability, State of the Yarra and its Parklands (2018), concluded that the status of the river was poor for 18 of its 25 environmental indicators.

These measures will continue to deteriorate unless substantial reforms are made to transport capacity in Melbourne, and especially in the Yarra River corridor, to preference space-efficient and less carbon polluting transport modes.

Ian Hundley
29 March 2020