Wednesday, 18 March 2026

 Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (17:40): Let us bring some decorum back into the chamber. I am pleased to rise to speak on the report from the Legislative Council Environment and Planning Committee’s inquiry into community consultation practices 2025. This is a report that contains 55 findings and 26 recommendations arising from extensive public hearings. It has a number of findings around the practices of government consultation or poor practice in government consultation, particularly where that consultation includes closed and leading questions, constrained response options, scope manipulation, concealing what cannot be changed, failure to build on prior consultation findings and tokenism and box-ticking in the design. These were serious findings of failure within government consultation methodology, and I wanted to see how seriously the government was going to take its own report, as it was a Labor majority committee – it was voted for and supported by Labor members. So I went and compared this to the existing Blackburn activity centre consultation that is taking place online right now. This is what I found: 16 clear areas where they breached the findings and the recommendations of their own report. I will give some examples – as many as I can give in the time I have got available. Finding 7 is:

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

Finding 8 is:

When seeking public participation on a decision, it is important to be clear on what can and what can’t be changed.

Recommendation 5 is:

… input … should be sought at a point when it can be meaningfully used.

In the Blackburn activity centre consultation, people are being asked to define the future of their suburbs, and I found that the survey never discloses which decisions within the survey have already been made and where nothing is going to change. There are questions in there about how the Blackburn activity centre will be established – that is not under review. Rezoning form overlay and house choice and transport zoning will occur – that is not revealed. Deemed to comply track approval pathways will apply – that is not revealed. The Victorian government’s housing targets for activity centres are fixed policy – that is not revealed. The closing statement – only the statement at the very end of the survey – confirms that this consultation is only about the detail. It just says, ‘Your feedback will help us understand if we have the plans right and if there is anything we have missed,’ so it is a candid admission that the plans will be finalised and implemented regardless of community feedback.

If you want a practical example of that, today the government released its height limits for 25 activity centres where in some cases the heights are actually higher than what they surveyed on. In Brunswick they are going to be 20 storeys instead of 16, so all the community feedback that was based on a 16-storey ceiling meant nought, because it is now going to be 20 storeys as well. The Blackburn consultation says, ‘There is no opportunity to actually express opposition to the activity centre in principle.’ There is no such option. So the survey’s architecture systematically excludes principled opposition. There is no question that asks: do you support the establishment of an activity centre? Should the current planning controls be retained? Do you consider the scale of the proposed rezoning appropriate for the neighbourhood? Question 4 in the Blackburn survey says:

To what extent do you support change in your area to deliver more homes?

Even the most negative response – ‘strongly against’ – is framed as an opposition to change and to more homes rather than to opposition to the specific program. A respondent who supports housing growth generally but objects to this specific proposal mechanism or scale has no way to express that position. There are others, and I will not have time to go through them all. It is a sham consultation, and it completely breaches the findings of the report handed down.