Wednesday, 11 September 2024

Department of Treasury and Finance

Budget papers 2024–25

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (17:38): Tonight I want to talk about the state budget and specifically the Department of Transport and Planning outputs. I want to draw the community’s attention to the government’s proposals for 10 large development zones in our suburbs, three of them in my electorate of Southern Metropolitan – one at Moorabbin, one at Chadstone and one at Boroondara in Camberwell. But these descriptions and these names are not accurate. The Moorabbin one sprawls out much further than that, taking in chunks of Bayside, chunks of Glen Eira and chunks of Kingston. It crosses three council areas. It is a massive area, and people should understand what this means. I will talk about that in a moment.

The one in Chadstone is a similar example. It takes in a chunk of Glen Eira, a large chunk of Monash and a massive chunk of the Stonnington municipality. It crosses different electorates. These are huge areas. The one in Camberwell is not really Camberwell; it takes in Hawthorn, Hawthorn East, Canterbury and Camberwell as well, and parts of East Camberwell around the station there. These are huge swathes, huge distances, that are being talked about. In the case of Ringwood it is an area that spreads across two municipalities, into the City of Whitehorse and a large area of the City of Manningham. But each of these councils was surprised by the state government. There was no consultation whatsoever about these large zones around the central activity districts. The central activity districts have some history to them. There was some consultation earlier, and some of them would be supported in large measure by certain councils. But in the so-called catchment zones – what an Orwellian term, catchment zones – where there is as-of-right six-storey development, you can go nuts if you are a developer there; you can go off your tree. I was talking to someone about Kintore Street in Camberwell the other day. That is a beautiful street and well looked after in terms of street vegetation and large vegetation – canopy trees and so forth. They will all be knocked over. Make no mistake: they will all go. And there are heritage areas in these streets. I am talking about Camberwell here, but the same could be said of areas of East Malvern and the same could be said of areas of Bayside. There is massive development – no consultation. The government is determined to do this and is pushing forward.

People need to understand that we are actually fighting now for the future of our city. Do we want a city that has pleasant streets with proper canopies, streets with proper trees and streets that protect heritage? In the case of the Boroondara area nearly 50 per cent of that area is actually heritage listed, heritage recognised, either by the council or statewide. All of that will go. The neighbourhood residential zones that Matthew Guy put in place to protect suburbs – saying ‘You can do dense development here, but you need to protect large areas of the suburb’ – will go, with the proposed code assessment that is associated with this. That will be all gone. The neighbourhood protections, the canopy protections, the heritage protections – all that is being swept aside by the government, and there will be dense development. People will wake up, and they will discover that there is a six-storey building being built next to what is a one- or two-storey current construction. That is what is going to happen. It is an absolute outrage. It is an arrogant government that has been there for 10 years. It is so far out of touch with the community and what the community wants.

In the Ringwood case – think about that – there is an area there that is understood and agreed to by the council. But there is one area of density that the council had pushed for that was not agreed to by the government, but other areas further along were added to the 12-storey as-of-right approach. Then a massive area spreading out all the way down along the railway line – down to Heatherdale, up to East Ringwood, all of that – is in the six-storey as-of-right catchment zone. These are massive swathes of territory. Thousands and thousands and thousands of Melburnians are going to be impacted by these zones, and it is wrong. It is just flat wrong. It is going to do damage to the feeling of our city – (Time expired)