Wednesday, 10 September 2025

Planning policy

Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (18:31): (1944) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Planning, and the action I seek is for the minister to strengthen section 60 of the Planning and Environment Act 1987 to introduce a requirement for local councils to consider health and food security when looking at applications for planning permits. If you have driven between Geelong and Torquay, you will have noticed the growing population along this corridor. While the population has boomed, so too has the development of fast-food outlets. It is hard not to notice them lined up, one after another, along the side of the road. While these restaurants certainly bring convenience for a busy community, they can quickly turn these suburbs into food swamps – neighbourhoods where the density of restaurants selling unhealthy, quick-serve options is high, and affordable, nutritious options is low. In fact over recent decades Victoria’s growth areas have developed in such a way that they have the highest ratio of unhealthy food outlets to healthy food outlets. In greater Melbourne, for every healthy food outlet being built, as many as nine unhealthy outlets are being developed alongside it.

Under the current planning scheme, communities have very little power to stop these developments from going ahead. In 1999 the Torquay community took a planning application by McDonald’s to VCAT. They lost the appeal, with VCAT citing no planning ground for rejection of the application. More than 25 years later, our planning scheme has not addressed this gap. Councils, the relevant authority when it comes to approving local restaurant developments, cannot differentiate between types of outlets when considering development proposals, leaving them powerless to support the community’s call to keep these chains out. Many communities do not want fast food in the first place; they want to support local shop owners, build variety and celebrate the uniqueness of where they live. They also understand the health impacts of increased access to fast food, such as higher rates of obesity and associated conditions such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Minister, I ask that you give communities and councils the power to make local, healthy environments a reality.