ALL too often council planning decisions are being overturned by VCAT. This is in spite of councils applying local planning policies that reflect the community’s wishes and concerns.
Most recently VCAT approved an application by Moran Logging Limited to log a large area of forest in Hoddles Creek. The decision to allow the logging to proceed was despite the area being in a Rural Conservation Zone and subject to an Environmental Significance Overlay – the two strongest environmental controls available to the council.
The council had previously knocked back the application by Moran Logging in January this year to log the 99 hectares site due to its environmental significance and strong opposition to logging by residents. The council’s case was supported by the local community and the Environment Defenders Office representing the Friends of Hoddles Creek.
Despite developing well-grounded policies based upon scientific research, widespread community consultation and given the highly significant flora and fauna and biodiversity values of the site, the council’s and community’s arguments were largely discounted.
In light of this and numerous other VCAT decisions such as the Mitcham Towers, the Shire of Yarra Ranges is calling on the State Government to reform the Planning and Environment Act and the operation of VCAT, providing far greater weight to local planning policies.
This is being done in partnership with the Eastern Region Group of Councils, representing 10 eastern metropolitan councils. As their name implies local planning policies are developed in partnership with local communities and predominantly reflect the community’s wishes.
Mayor Monika Keane, Deputy Mayor Noel Cliff, Cr Terry Avery, Cr Len Cox, Cr Samantha Dunn, Cr Tim Heenan, Cr Jeanette McRae, Cr Ken Smith, Cr Graham Warren.
Shire of Yarra Ranges
ONE good car is shortly coming up for sale.
Cardinia Shire Council has approved the Westlands Road scheme, with the support of our two councillors, one of whom thinks it is a great idea for everybody else but not for him.
Perhaps I will have change from the sale of my car, after paying my $12,000 contribution, to buy some really good walking shoes.
As I walk along Westlands Road, free from dust in summer and mud in winter, I can reminisce about the 27 happy years I spent in Woodlands Avenue before friendships were lost – over a road.
Carol Nodin
Emerald
Waiting for justice
I READ with interest the column of Dr Phillipa Mason (Mail, 19 September).
Similarly I don’t know where the answer lies. The Mail reported my loss of two alpacas in July 2003. The shire took the offending dog owner to court where a guilty verdict was found. I was awarded $15,000 in compensation. Not a penny has or will be seen.
The offender was an itinerant type who shot through. His dog had never been registered. He had little or no assets. His landlord at the time got off scot-free because her accompanying dog was just that. The offending dog was put down.
I have since double fenced my property boundary of 1500 metres. The deceased alpacas were show quality foundation breeding females, pregnant to top Australian sires. The cost to me… substantial.
I took my case as far as the State Minister for Agriculture, with no result. So I was left with two courses of action. One was to get a gun, which I haven’t done because I leave myself open to legal action. So I letterboxed the immediate district with copies of the Mail, which published the $15,000 decision. That letterbox drop was a disguised warning to neighbours.
My point… I still don’t know where the answer lays but the offender got off lightly by snubbing his nose at society and authority.
Rudy Balde
Avonsleigh
Keep in touch
I AGREE with Janet Wilson (Mail, 26 September). The Emerald Pool issue has been on the agenda for ages.
I was part of the Emerald Community Pool Committee way back in 1993 and 1994. We organised interested students from Emerald Secondary College to petition voters on Federal Election day in 1993. We received over 1000 responses and the petition was forwarded to both Sherbrooke Council and State Parliament.
The students also fundraised money for a feasibility study. The $8000 study was partly funded by the Shire of Sherbrooke and gave the project the thumbs up.
An indoor pool facility in Emerald would be economically viable. We even had architect plans, blueprints drawn up. Most of the ground work has already been completed.
Cardinia councillors Ed Chatwin and Graeme Legge should be more in touch with their local area and go back to the future.
Adrian Hildebrand
Emerald
Every right to speak
I READ with dismay the comments from Bracks Government representatives from the Angliss Hospital (Mail, 19 September) regarding recent comments by medical practitioner, Dr Peter Lazzari. Dr Lazzari has rightly highlighted deficiencies in the Angliss Hospital’s budget, leading to patients having to wait up to six weeks for ultrasound treatment. Knox residents have every right to be concerned about this situation.
The community would also be rightly concerned about the way the Bracks Government has taken a “jackboot” to Dr Lazzari for speaking out and raising concerns.
Dr Lazzari has every right to speak up when Knox residents aren’t receiving the medical treatment they deserve. Instead of attacking Dr Lazzari, perhaps Labor should start listening to what he has to say and work swiftly to fix this problem.
Nick Wakeling
Liberal candidate for Ferntree Gully
Overdue respect
I AM thrilled to bits that Respect For Women is to be placed before all visitors and migrants to Australia; and indeed, I hope before all 20 million Australians. It certainly has been absent in equal pay. I worked for more than 40 years and only in the last decade was I paid equal pay as a teacher. When I was in the AAMWS, World War II, I was paid half that of a man, but I paid the same for fares, clothes and food and fed my kids after the war, still half pay.
After we have all pledged Respect For Women sexual abuse will disappear. It now stands at one in four women and one in six men; domestic violence against women is one of the highest in the world.
It is high time equal pay is true respect and bashing of women disappears into the ash can of history, and including Respect for indigenous women, women of Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is what I say to my great grandchildren.
Marjorie Broadbent
Upwey
Freudian slip
ALTHOUGH not a resident of Yarra Ranges Shire, for some reason a copy of Shirewide was received in our mailbox this week.
I could not help but laugh when turning to the back cover and noticed at the top of the page in large letters “Keep These Pests Out”. At the bottom of the page were photographs of nine shire councillors. A Freudian slip from the shire’s own publication?
Col Colson
Emerald
