Media Releases

BATTLING ON:  BROKEN PROMISES AND DASHED HOPES FROM STATE GOVERNMENT;  OPPOSITION PICKS UP THE BATON AND PLEDGES TO SAVE THE CHAIN OF PARKS. 

Last year we were enthusiastically waiting to see how the Planning Minister planned to fulfil his promise to improve Planning for Melbourne’s Green Wedges and Agricultural Land, a project that was supposed to implement the State Government's 2018 election promises.  We had been encouraged by the government's commitments to “tighten controls to better protect Melbourne’s Green Wedges from over-development,” to improve protection for agricultural land, and to “protect the environment, landscape, agriculture, and rural industry of each area, and put a cap on the size of developments.” 

Please email or submit online to the Government’s consultation

Closing date for submissions: Friday 5^th February 2021
 

The Green Wedges are under the most serious threat since the 2010-12 land grabs and the 2013 removal of protections. If you are having problems with the long-form on-line submission guide we sent out earlier, please try the attached short-form submission guide, or use it as a pro forma for a submission you can submit by email.

The State Planning Minister, Richard Wynne's 2018 election pledge was that “A re-elected Andrews Labor Government will permanently tighten controls to better protect Melbourne’s green wedges against over development, with the protections enshrined in legislation”

But some of the options his Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) has put out for consultation would spell death by a thousand cuts around the edges of the Green Wedges as illustrated above. Their proposed "transition" area would blur the Urban Growth boundary with a grey border of suburban sprawl, rezoned to Rural Living zone or Farming zone, where urban uses like concrete crushers, data centres, schools, places of worship, bars, motels, car washes and motor repairs would be encouraged as shown above, and the Green Wedges would shrink  to half their size.

This is a reminder that the Green Wedges Coalition (Green Wedges Guardian Alliance Inc) is being held on Tuesday 8 December 2020 at 5.30 pm. A copy of the agenda is attached. It is being held remotely by Zoom (see link details below).

Most importantly a presentation is being given by Professor Michael Buxton, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University on Green Wedge and peri-urban issues.

The semi-rural hamlets of Narre Warren North, Narre Warren East and Lysterfield are reeling from a sudden influx of five proposals for places of worship and schools in this tiny corner of the Southern Ranges Green Wedge, and the Western Port Green wedge is experiencing its first threat in Devon Meadows.

For six months or more, the ferocious fires devastating our eastern states have dominated the news. Why then are schools and places of worship still permitted uses in Melbourne’s high risk Green Wedge Zones?

This is especially inexplicable in the Southern Ranges Green Wedge where the whole region is in either a Bushfire Management Overlay (BMO) or a designated bushfire prone area, with large tracts of forest to the north through to the west. Bringing large numbers of people – especially children – into such a heavily timbered area on a regular basis is a recipe for disaster. (Ref: Addendum 1. Bushfire Risk)