Wednesday, 18 March 2026

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (17:25): I rise to speak on the report of the inquiry into community consultation practices, which was tabled on 3 March. I was a member of that committee, so I know exactly what the committee heard from community members. The committee heard that stakeholders were highly critical of the Victorian government’s engagement strategy and their unwillingness to listen. Finding 2 of that report says:

The Public Engagement Framework is not consistently applied to all engagements conducted by Victorian Government departments and agencies.

In some cases we heard that major decisions were made without any consultation or community engagement at all. A good example of that is actually the Central North renewable energy zone, which covers a very large area between Shepparton and Bendigo. When that came out, it aroused significant opposition from farmers and locals, who stressed the importance of protecting the irrigation district and productive farmland within the draft zone. Following concerted community efforts, the zone was significantly reduced in size. This is a situation where they actually listened about that area. However, to compensate for the reduced size in that area, the final Victorian transmission plan included in the zone a completely new area that included land from the east of Shepparton from Pine Lodge through to Glenrowan, a very, very large area of land. No-one at all had been consulted about this. The only people who knew about it were the energy developers who had pushed the government to include the area. The farmers did not know about it. This is their land, and they did not know about it. They were not consulted. Local councils did not know about it. This was a complete failure by the government to engage with the local community on what was a very significant decision. Knowledge of this change only became widespread after I issued a media release slamming the government for completely bypassing community consultation in order to satisfy developer interest.

Back to the report: many submissions were also highly critical of engagement that involved top-down sharing of information rather than genuine consultation where people had the opportunity to contribute to the decision-making process. Finding 7 of the report says:

Engagement processes should be designed to seek community input at a point when it can and will be meaningfully utilised.

When people share their views in good faith but later on find out it was a waste of time because the design was already fixed, it completely erodes trust for future engagement. But this government does not understand that, and they do this time and time again. People deserve to be told beforehand if aspects of the proposal are not negotiable. Do not waste their time telling them that they can have input when you are not going to change anything and you are not even going to listen to them. Far too often consultation is a sham, a box-ticking exercise that comes after the final decisions have already been made. In particular we heard from people in regional Victoria around solar and wind transmission lines, and they were highly critical of the lack of consultation with their communities and the lack of opportunity to have input into decision-making.

This Labor government is also arrogantly cutting local communities out of major changes to planning rules and development proposals. We all know about the Riddells Creek Amess Road proposal. Riddells Creek is a small town in the Macedon Ranges. It has about 4500 people at the moment, and this will change the whole town. The developer who recently won approval from the Minister for Planning for a development will basically double the size of that town. It currently has 4500 people in it. They are going to build 1360 new homes on the edge of that town and accommodate another 3800 new residents. In contrast to the town’s existing country charm, this development will pack over 3000 people into a mid-density suburb, with homes on lots as small as 100 square metres and an average size of only 300 square metres. Now the government has also come out with another proposal which completely bypasses the local council for a huge development in Clarkefield that will almost join Riddells Creek and Clarkefield together. Clarkefield currently has a population of 303 people, but this will develop over 220 hectares of housing that will develop about 2000 lots.