Thursday, 27 August 2026

 David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (22:10): (2753) My matter is for the Minister for Planning, who has distinguished herself in recent days with the high-density high-rise fiasco in Moorabbin, where she has obviously drawn boundaries which are very favourable to her own property. But we will leave that aside on this occasion and deal with the matters around high-density high-rise zones – so-called activity centres. I note Bayside council’s August 2026 document, notice of motion 347: response to state government planning reforms; this is a formal Bayside council document tabled at their regular meeting. It followed a request from councillors for some sorts of costings about the impact of the state government’s high-density high-rise program, and this is what the document came back with. These are obviously not definitive statements, but they are worthwhile to start to put some parameters around what this means:

At a high-level, the study estimates that Council may need between $1.3 billion and $3.2 billion to provide transport, drainage and open space infrastructure required to respond to the increase in housing and population from the ACP –

the activity centre program, or the high-density high-rise program, in common parlance –

and SRL programs.

Obviously, we know a special tax has been applied for the Suburban Rail Loop in recent times, but of course none of that special tax went to help the councils deliver services in the area. There is going to be a massive increase in the number of people in these areas, and they will need schools, they will need hospitals, they will need open space. They will need a whole range of things.

Fortunately, Bayside has gone to the effort of starting to cost some of these things in a thoughtful way. They looked at the public open space charge and how much that is likely to bring in and a number of the infrastructure charges and how much they are likely to bring in as well. Talking about public open space, it estimated:

There could be a funding deficit of between $278 million and $1.3 billion to acquire land for public open space servicing the ACP areas even if all the revenue collected from the public open space charge is used to fund open space to service the ACP areas. In reality it is unlikely all revenue from the public open space charge will be used to fund that, because the revenue needs to also fund a range of construction.

That is from page 60 of this document. What I am asking the Minister for Planning to do is to work with councils to cost up these massive increases in these high-density high-rise zones, and in costing that up to provide some additional support to councils. Councils are going to be left carrying the can, as it were, for these massive additional costs. It seems that the state government’s approach with the Suburban Rail Loop and the high-density high-rise zones has not fully understood that they have got to get development happening in the area, but development also supported by proper infrastructure. We cannot have people forced into a high-density high-rise area and forced to live without schools, without open space, without parks, the works. It is shocking.