Wednesday, 17 August 2022

Green wedge planning

Mr BRAYNE (Nepean) (10:01): I want to take this opportunity to thank the Mornington Peninsula Shire Council for their assistance in spreading the word that if we become regional Victoria we lose the green wedge. I cannot be more clear than that. The council’s comments came in the most recent edition of their newsletter, Peninsula Wide, and followed the council’s own work which showed that:

… the proposition to reclassify the Mornington Peninsula as regional will threaten the strong protection of our cherished Green Wedge and result in significant planning issues and uncertainties.

The green wedge has been the best defence for the protection of the Mornington Peninsula and has kept us from being truly overdeveloped for the last 40 years. The livability of our peninsula, the green space on our peninsula, the biolinks on the Mornington Peninsula and our wildlife on the peninsula would all be put at risk if we saw the loss of our green wedge.

This does not need to be a political issue. Let us work together to protect the Mornington Peninsula’s green wedge for the long term so that our kids and grandkids can live on a peninsula similar to the one we grew up on. And let us fight for actual metropolitan services. We deserve better public transport, better schools and better roads. That is what I have spent the last four years fighting for and actually delivering.