Tuesday, 12 August 2025

Dingley Village golf course development

Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:02): (1815) My adjournment is to the Minister for Planning, and the action I seek is that the minister join me in meeting with Kingston council and concerned residents facing the prospect of an inappropriate development at the Kingswood golf course site. The Liberals are strongly in favour of more housing development positioned in the right places and executed in the right way. The only thing that is blocking this goal is this Labor government. They are hell-bent on destroying our suburbs while heaping tax after tax onto developers and leaving the heavy lifting of infrastructure provision to councils. With this government, you will end up with overpriced dog boxes for homes. The other side might not like hearing that, but facts do not care about feelings. So today I would like to expose the utterly inappropriate development plans at the Kingswood golf course site. I am united with Dingley Village residents and recently spoke at a community rally alongside Cr Caroline White and Save Kingswood president Kevin Poulter. I am sponsoring a petition that opposes this development plan in its current form, and I look forward to presenting it soon.

Dingley Village, you were completely misled: you were told that there would be 800 lots, but if the Labor minister signs off on these plans, you could end up with 941 lots. In population terms, it is an increase of 25 per cent and more than 2500 additional residents, placing massive pressure on existing services and infrastructure. What is the plan to address this? None, actually. Labor has no plans for shops or medical centres, no employment opportunities, no public transport options and no additional schools or kindergartens in the plan. In fact residents will only have one main road and narrow streets, preventing easy access for the emergency services or waste collection trucks. Most ridiculously, many properties will be built on a flood plain and owners will struggle to get insurance. The flood plain controls are half-a-billion litres inadequate to deal with the building implications, yet hundreds of kilometres of drains will be dug up and pumping stations and aquifers will be trashed.

There were 8000 objections previously and Kingston council has opposed three plans over the last 13 years of applications. I have met with several councillors who note that council can meet its housing targets without this development. An independent golf course advisory committee was set up by this government, but how many of their recommendations were adopted – just one. The size of the units beggars belief. There are eight proposed units with a size of just 81 square metres – you could fit all eight units on an average Dingley Village block. Now the developer is seeking to exempt 300-or-less-square-metre lots from requiring a planning permit. How can we have confidence that these will be compliant without being independently checked by planners? Minister, for the sake of our community, heed our calls and change course on this looming disaster.