Mostly Angry Submissions to Inquiry into Community Consultation practices, Vic Legislative Council

Fri, 2025-07-11 20:31 by Sheila Newman

120 submissions to the Inquiry into Community Consultation Practices (Victorian Legislative Council Environment and Planning Committee)[1] are now on the web.[2] There are some highly informative submissions here. Put together, they provide shocking information of how successive Victorian State Governments have abused their positions and behaved as if the power they hold has nothing to do with the voters. Victorians' self-determination and democracy are in crisis! The range of submissions is also good. For instance, city people often believe that population growth should be absorbed in rural areas, but they don't realise it is also problematic, unwanted, and unconsulted there.

Submission No 19 gives a feeling for how people in the country feel about densification:

"I moved from the packed and difficult to live through inadequate facilities and parking from the city to a very small town. As the State planning dictates us here in the country, we are forced to endure mass housing developments with no change or upgrade to infrastructure and what upgrade is on the plans, we as locals must pay for that. We didn’t ask for it, and to satisfy State/city centric rules, we get all of the negative and lose our identity as a small town." (Submission No. 19)

We can read how The Melbourne Maritime Heritage Network feels about Development Victoria's attempts to redevelop Docklands in Submission No.26, and also about Development Victoria's plans to evict Melbourne's heritage fleet from Victoria Harbour, here. I did not know of this network and, reading the history and the qualifications of the board members, and some papers about the geography of the marine infrastructure, would make me sit up, if I were Development Victoria.

"MMHN, have over a number of years experienced firsthand the tokenistic approach taken to the delivery of Victoria’s leading redevelopment precinct. We see significant room for improvement in the approaches and would counsel that under the current approach the Docklands community and beyond remain oblivious and disenfranchised around the future of this signature precinct. DV have been afforded significant standalone powers to avoid typical planning pathways under the Docklands Zoning, and this position has been squandered to deliver a precinct which is the subject of international scorn and a running joke across Australia. This approach rings alarm bells for State Government’s intended approach to Activity Centres, new precinct development and delivery, the Housing Plan, and the Suburban Rail Loop." (Submission No. 26.)

Submission No.1, by Ms Dale Webster, is a riveting account of the fate of Dan Andrew's Commonwealth games funding and the Bendigo Showgrounds Redevelopment Project being
managed by Development Victoria for Sport and Recreation Victoria. Agricultural and equitation groups seem to have been repeatedly misled and sidelined despite many local attempts to find out what was going on. It's as if Victorian Planning wants to take the rural out of rural, and the horses and the mostly girl-riders out of showgrounds.

"Through the Bendigo Showgrounds Master Plan, the biggest and most active user group that sits hand-in-glove with the Bendigo Agricultural Show Society’s primary reason for existence has been absolutely and unceremoniously shafted. It is understandable now why no consideration at all has been given to the impacts of an arena re-design on horse events, or why equestrian users were not asked if they would prefer a sports pavilion and the stables replaced to a more costly shed in the market area. After reading the master plan, Development Victoria can no longer maintain its position that the consultation necessary for the current planning process has been completed because the show society was representing its user groups. The show society was instead actively undermining equestrian users, corrupting the consultation process with its own agenda." (Submission No.1,)

Surrey Hills and Mont Albert Progress Association provide a well-documented and interesting account of how people feel about the way they were 'consulted' about a railway crossing removal in the Submission No. 40. Removal of vegetation supposed to be protected is a recurrent feature in many submissions.

"Another issue that was never communicated was the extent and bulk of ancillary infrastructure, such as highly visible overhead gantries, heavy raw concrete walls and many (>20) large (3x3x1 metre) steel cabinets for services located in prominent street locations where trees had previously been present. The overall effect has been to convert a leafy green rail corridor into a semi-industrial landscape."

You can also read how failure to adequately consult farmers about State-pushed business schemes can severely impact their properties and ability to produce food. The insensitivity and slapdash or deceptive planning of corporate energy-companies seems gob-smacking. (Submission No. 44) I have republished the whole submission here.

Then, of course, there are submissions about the Activity Centres and other arbitrary processes in the metropolitan areas. Submission No.62 details the severe failures to meaningfully consult, and notes that, of thousands of public submissions about Activity Centre plans, none were made public:

"The Referral Letters were dated 22 October 2024. According to the Terms of Reference, these were supposed to be public documents. The Referral Letters outlined a very narrow in the remit for the Standing Committees, very few referred documents and submissions, and a 10-working day timeframe for the report. No public hearings were held. The reports were received by the Planning Minister 6 November 2024 Thousands of submissions and survey responses were received by the VPA. None of the submissions have been made public by the VPA. Submitters have no idea who viewed their submissions. The VPA made a Universal Submission Key Matters Report that was sent to the Standing Committees. This has never been made public nor have the other Key Matters Reports."

Submission No.63 writes:

"At times, it felt like we were up against a well-resourced public relations machine—one with infinite time, money, and messaging, while we juggled jobs, families, and lives. The imbalance of power was stark. When you're forced to fight for facts, to reassert your right to be heard again and again, and to watch the narrative being rewritten in real time around you, it is easy to feel helpless. That too is part of the design—because a disempowered community is easier to manage than an informed and organised one."

Submission No.68 graphically describes how the public were completely snowed by the Victorian Government regarding the drastic changes Metropolitan Activity Centres would bring, and how the government promoted divisive marketing:

"Misinformation & dirty wedge politics. Because of the lack of consultation and credible information, misinformation and nasty scapegoating spread throughout the community. On social media, many, particularly younger people, expressed belief that these planning changes would lead to a lot of public housing and cheap housing around areas such as Camberwell and Brighton, and that anyone opposed or concerned about the government’s planning changes was “anti-housing” and more interested in trying to maintain their house prices and lock up their suburbs. This is simply untrue. The level of debate turned so nasty that I read posts including one that proclaimed, “middle aged Camberwell residents should get heart attacks and die and free up their houses for someone else to live in”. This deceit and nastiness is heartbreaking, and one of the worst aspects of this saga. This misinformation was never corrected but was instead fuelled by the Premier’s social media posts, with simplistic slogans including “Builders and Blockers” [...]."

Submission No.89, from Frankston's Long Island Residents' Group, where the first of the Activity Centres is impending, concludes:

"When residents no longer have a say in their neighbourhood, from initial consultation through to the removal of third-party rights, it is not constructive to future community engagement and good planning outcomes. It also constitutes a denial of natural justice and questions the future of democratic rights for all Victorians. [...] The process and implementation of the recent planning reforms, including lack of due and proper consultation, has effectively removed councils and residents from decision making and participation and is seen as contradictory to objectives of the Planning and Environment Act 1987."

Not surprisingly, the Metropolitan Activity Centres feature as a major object of complaint about failure to consult the community among submissions to this inquiry.

Reading these submissions, I am filled with admiration and fellow feeling. It is rather like reading state-coverage in a newspaper where the journalists have actually lived through what they report and no-one has been censored, for a change. I grew up in an Australia where people knew their neighbours, had a knowledge of local history, understood Australia's geography, and were aware of the fundamental importance of primary industry. The mainstream press still published long letters to the editor, which made papers far more interesting and informative. You could easily get in touch with a letter-writer. The 'news' was not entirely viewed through US lenses, and did not feature property advertorials. The key point is that these submissions are crucial communications for our future, as they collectively highlight significant problems. They also represent one of the few ways for Victorians to know how other Victorians feel, and to convey their sense of deep injustice to the government through the Legislative Council Environment and Planning Committee, while we are all watching.

NOTES

[1] Victorian Legislative Council Environment and Planning Committee Committee Members: Ryan Batchelor, Southern Metropolitan (ALP); David Ettershank, Western Metropolitan (Legalise Cannabis Party); Melina Bath, Eastern Victoria (Nationals); Gaelle Broad, Northern Victoria (Nationals); Jacinta Ermacora, Western Victoria (ALP); Wendy Lovell, Northern Victoria (Liberal Party); Sarah Mansfield, Western Victoria (Greens); Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell, Northern Victoria (One Nation Party); Sheena Watt, Northern Metropolitan (ALP); John Berger, Southern Metropolitan (ALP); Ann-Marie Hermans,South Eastern Metropolitan (Liberal Party); Evan Mulholland, Northern Metropolitan (Liberal Party); Rachel Payne, South-Eastern Metropolitan (Legalise Cannabis Party); Aiv Puglielli, North-Eastern Metropolitan (Greens).

[2] Submissions are at https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/get-involved/inquiries/inquiry-into-community-consultation-practices/submissions

Mostly Angry Submissions to Inquiry into Community Consultation practices, Vic Legislative Council

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