Tuesday, 29 July 2025

Planning policy

Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (19:04): (1766) The action I seek is from the Minister for Planning. I rise to speak about a completely unaccountable planning process, one that is almost certain to deliver bad local urban design outcomes and shuts out communities. It is a broken process that is not fit for purpose. What we are seeing now is planning by ministerial diktat. Local knowledge and community voices are being sidelined in favour of blunt instruments and centralised control. If you need any proof of how flawed this approach has become, you need to look no further than Greensborough.

Greensborough is a peaceful and tight-knit community in Melbourne’s north-east. For decades it has stood as a model of sensible, sustainable suburban development – quarter-acre blocks, good schools and passable public transport but a very strong sense of identity. It is not glamorous, but it works, and it works because of good planning carried out over time with care and consultation. But all that is now under threat. Through sweeping planning powers the minister has decreed that Greensborough must change without consultation, without consent and without regard for the residents who call it home or the 2500 signatures I have now accumulated on a petition against it. It is a top-down approach that shows a complete lack of respect for the people who have invested in this community. As the local member, I have spent time in Greensborough. I have listened to locals and understand the challenges they face, especially around housing affordability. They know there is a need for more social housing, but they also know that if we get the planning wrong, it will end up compounding disadvantage, not addressing it.

We have been here before. High-rise social housing developments in the 1960s and 70s taught us that simply stacking people into towers without adequate support services, mobility options or open space leads to poor social outcomes. We should not be repeating these mistakes under the banner of progress. When you add insult to injury by removing car parks, you make it even harder for residents to access work, education and community life, and when you approve apartments that are smaller than regulation size, you are creating the perfect conditions for bad social outcomes.

Greensborough is not the CBD; it was never planned to be. The absurdity of applying inner-city planning models to suburban communities is obvious to anyone willing to listen. The action I seek is for the minister to immediately pause the process of building a 17-storey tower in Greensborough and genuinely engage with the local community. Planning should be done with people, not to them. We need a planning system that respects place, empowers communities and delivers good outcomes, not one that bulldozes its way through longstanding neighbourhoods with the pretence of reform.