All Green Wedges

2024 AGM - Victoria's New Plan - Implications for the Green Wedges

The Annual General Meeting of Green Wedge Coalition Incorporated will be held online at 7.30 pm on Friday 15 November 2024.

The agenda is attached and a Zoom link will be sent with RSVPs.

David Redfearn OAM Secretary

AGM - Will the Green Wedges Action Plan protect the Green Wedges

"Will the Green Wedges Action Plan protect the Green Wedges?" Guest Speaker Emeritus Professor Michael Buxton, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT.

Green Wedges Coalition Inc. AGM 7:30pm on Thursday 28th March, 2024

RSVP by Tues 26 March 2024 to David Redfearn: dredfearn@vtown.com.au and a Zoom link will be emailed to you
(cc Rosemary West: rowest@ozemail.com.au)

Minister launches Green Wedge Action Plan, but will it protect the Green Wedges?

The Green Wedges Coalition welcomed the Labor Government’s 2018 election pledge to tighten controls to better protect Melbourne’s Green Wedges and peri-urban farmland. It was a popular pledge: every community consultation since the 2002 Melbourne 2030 strategy has found overwhelming support for protecting the Green Wedges for their environment and biodiversity, agriculture, open space and scenic rural landscapes.

We are pleased we now have a Minister in Sonya Kilkenny who wants to fulfil her predecessor’s promise to ‘protect Melbourne’s Green Wedges from urban and inappropriate uses’ and to  ‘permanently tighten controls to better protect Melbourne’s green wedges against over development.’    We welcome the controls the Action Plan plans to tighten and the extension of Green-Wedge-style protections for agricultural land in the peri-urban areas within 100k of the CBD.

But there seem to be no actions in this plan to effectively achieve these reforms.  We are concerned that the Action Plan fails to address the perennial problem of urban uses encroaching into the Green Wedges. 

LIVEABLE VICTORIA MANIFESTO’ LAUNCH

Residents and community groups across Melbourne and regional Victoria are hitting back against State Government plans to rip environmental and amenity protections from the Victorian Planning Scheme, deny resident rights to object to development proposals and strip planning powers from local government. Planning Democracy and the Green Wedges Coalition are launching the ‘Livable Victoria Manifesto’ to push for progressive, democratic planning reforms and reject the demands of developers and their State Government backers.

BATTLING ON - BROKEN PROMISES AND DASHED HOPES FROM STATE GOVERNMENT

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.” 

Protecting Green Wedges in a parallel planning universe - GWC AGM

The Green Wedges Coalition (Green Wedges Guardian Alliance Inc)  AGM is being held on Thursday 24th November 2022 at 7:00pm by Zoom (see link details below).

Guest Speaker: "Protecting Green Wedges in a parallel planning universe" by Emeritus Professor Michael Buxton, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University

Click the Zoom link  to attend.

Green Wedge Development Pressure - AGM 2021 Presentation

Author: 
Prof Michael Buxton

Context to present development pressure
The cities which survive this century will be those with the best quality environments. Urban hinterlands are a critical element in sustaining cities. Maintaining the rural values of Melbourne’s green wedges and its broader peri-urban area is essential if the city is to remain a viable place to live. Lose these values and our city will become just another casualty to anonymous global urban sprawl, another city that has obliterated the last vestiges of nature.

02/12/2021

Last call: THE GREEN WEDGES NEED YOU NOW

Please email or submit online to the Government’s consultation

Closing date for submissions: Friday 5th 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.

AGM Presentation by Professor Michael Buxton

Warm thanks to the 44 members and supporters who attended our AGM by zoom on 8/12/20.  After the existing committee  was elected unopposed, we heard from our patron and guest speaker, Emeritus Professor Michael Buxton, planner par excellence and author of more than 80 books and papers and 20 research projects. His latest book is  The Future of the Fringe: The Crisis in Peri-urban Planning.  

Highly relevant to his AGM topic, the latest government options paper: Planning for Melbourne’s  Green Wedges and Agricultural Land, which sets out to improve Green Wedge protection but has some disturbing options.

Introducing Prof. Buxton, our president Kahn Franke suggested his next book could be titled: The Precarious future of the Fringe. 

Please click below to hear Professor Michael Buxton presentation to the AGM

AGM reminder

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.

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