Several weeks ago Hyams & Delahunty were interviewed on the JAir radio station. Below we present the opening section with Hyams. The audio goes for 5.24 minutes.
As per usual with Hyams he is not averse to making statements that are misleading, incorrect, and blatant misrepresentations of the truth. Here are some examples:
HYAMS: What’s going on in Glen Eira is actually a lot less than what’s been going in some of the neighbouring municipalities
COMMENT
Dead wrong! We have compiled data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on building permits for the past 5 years and uploaded the 2015/16 data HERE so that readers can check for themselves. What residents need to realise is:
- Of our ‘neighbouring municipalities’ Bayside, Kingston, Port Phillip, and Monash have had less development over the past 5 years! The only ‘neighbours’ with greater numbers are Stonnington and Boroondara – and there are some good reasons for this!
- Glen Eira has 2.8% zoned Commercial. Stonnington according to the recent State of Play Reports has 8%, Boroondar has 3.6% and Port Phillip has 12% plus this latter municipality being in the unique position of being ‘capital city’ zone and a tourist hub. In these municipalities the majority of new development occurs in these commercial areas, whereas in Glen Eira, the overwhelming majority of new dwellings are in our quiet residential streets – thanks to the zoning and the small percent zoned commercial.
- The number of houses built in Glen Eira is small compared to many other municipalities – thus development in Glen Eira is primarily apartment blocks
- Other municipalities are double or triple the size of Glen Eira which already has the highest density per kilometre in the Southern Region. The impact on density and liveability is thus far greater in Glen Eira than say Kingston.
- Victoria in Future 2016’s projections (UPLOADED HERE) indicate that from 2011 to 2031 Glen Eira will require an additional 11,800+ new dwellings to meet its population needs. The figures on building permits show that in Glen Eira more than half of this target has been reached in the space of 5 years AND these figures DO NOT INCLUDE THE 1500+ UNITS FOR THE CAULFIELD VILLAGE AND POTENTIALLY ANOTHER 4000+ FOR VIRGINIA ESTATE. At this rate, Glen Eira will meet its ‘target’ not in 2031 but in 2020. Then what?
Please consider the following table carefully. The figures in parenthesis represent the number of houses with building permits for that year.
There are plenty of other statements that amount to arrant nonsense and we believe designed to deliberately mislead:
- Minimal change areas have had 50% site coverage, 25% permeability, and 4 metre setbacks since Amendment C25 which was gazetted in 2004. The only thing the zones have changed is making 8 metres mandatory and 2 dwellings per site – and not as Hyams so inaccurately portrays that these ‘additional’ protections are a result of the zones! What he also neglects to mention is that even this ‘protection’ is not sacrosanct if the size of the lot happens to be larger than its surrounding blocks of land. In Glen Eira at the time of the introduction of the new zones there were 1,795 lots of land in the Neighbourhood Residential Zone which were greater than 800 square metres. (Source: DEWLP document procured under FOI)
- There are no setbacks to the Residential Growth Zones apart from ResCode. They have been there since time immemorial and again have nothing to do with the zones!
- Developers buy up multiple blocks because they can squeeze more units on and this is explicitly encouraged in the Planning Scheme!
- Glen Eira does not have 78% zoned as Neighbourhood Residential – it has just under 70%
But the best line must be – It’s not like we changed the zones to allow more development without telling anyone…..
Really? Is that why the zones were introduced in secret and public question responses were nothing but lies and all such responses ‘signed off’ by councillors without a single murmur?
There’s much, more more that could be said on Hyams’ performance on JAir. We will leave it to our readers to comment further.
Glen Eira Debates 
September 25, 2016 at 5:19 PM
As you sure that when Hyams said
“What’s going on in Glen Eira is actually a lot less than what’s been going in some of the neighbouring municipalities”
he wasn’t talking about the actions Glen Eira Council is taking to mitigate the impact of over development
September 25, 2016 at 5:45 PM
Implementing discretionary height limits of 7 storeys in Carnegie and 5 storeys basically in Bentleigh will not touch overdevelopment whilst the Neighbourhood centres remain untouched – and that could take another 10 years or so according to council’s ‘action plan’. Hyams was also referring to ‘what’s been going on’ – ie past tense! The facts do not support his statements – as per usual we might add!
September 25, 2016 at 6:31 PM
More dribble from the long time Councillor with typically no mention of facts, planning or leadership.
September 25, 2016 at 7:54 PM
Hyams must really be banking on everyone being an idiot and blind. Take a drive up some streets and they’ve built 4 storeys on single house blocks. They don’t need 2 and 3. They can get away with one block thanks to the zones. Bent has got some of these and a friend lives in Truganini where they’ve demolished two units and built a four storey and about 20 boxes on land that is under 600 square metres. I’m rapt that this post has gone up because it shows what bullshit this council and Hyams keeps putting out. Give him the boot.
September 25, 2016 at 10:57 PM
He’s relying on residents being disengaged, uninterested, ambivalent or all there. Sadly, most residents are all three which is why this incompetent Councillor will most likely get back.
September 25, 2016 at 9:12 PM
A Report on developments in Glen Eira worthwhile reading is at http://www.dtpli.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/291392/Residential-Zones-State-of-Play-Southern-Subregion-Report-.pdf .
Pages 32 to 36 provide analysis of Glen Eira. The estimated average population increase (page 34) annually is given as 0.9%, This is wrong as in the last few years the population increase was 1.6% per year (over 2,000 additional residents per year). And I cannot see that this rate will be diminished when taking into account that most developments are in NRZ, which will continue, and in addition we will have Caulfield Village and East Village (Virginia Park) adding over 6,000 dwellings within the next 5 years!!
September 25, 2016 at 10:53 PM
A peddler of half-truths and misinformation and a third rate conman, also a man clearly in love with himself.
September 26, 2016 at 12:55 AM
Council makes the following inaccurate claim on their website: “two-storey maximum across 78 per cent of the municipality, the Neighbourhood Residential Zone (formerly Minimal Change Areas)”. Since this isn’t true I asked Council if they would correct it and they said they wouldn’t. I asked them to state how many hectares were zoned NRZ since I didn’t believe they had done due diligence and instead were making numbers up. Council refused to provide the requested information. The State Government does publish detailed data about zoning, and it confirms that less than 70% of the municipality is zoned NRZ. If Council is untruthful about this then nothing else it says can be trusted.
September 26, 2016 at 8:35 AM
They the Council are untruthful about everything, not just in planning. They have 100’s of people employed (out our cost) to basically lie to us and then reinforce that lie at every level of display and enquiry.
The self serving corporate machine will grind away at all realities, except one, “they are never wrong”
September 26, 2016 at 9:44 AM
I’ve been looking at the table. The numbers are a pretty good indication of why lots of residents are complaining. Boroondara might have more building permits yet half of these permits are for single houses and the area is 20 square km bigger. Glen Eira has about 17% of its development as single houses. All of this must have a massive effect on infrastructure and open space. If you’re replacing one house with another then drainage might not be such an issue, but if you’re replacing one house with an apartment block of anything up to ten or twelve dwellings then it is sure to be a problem down the track. Traffic and parking goes without saying. I agree with what’s said in the post. Hyams can prattle on with his rubbish as much as he likes but the facts show the exact opposite.
September 26, 2016 at 3:08 PM
In some cases 3 average houses are being replaced by 30 to 40 apartments. What does that increase do to drainage etc?
September 26, 2016 at 7:28 PM
The forefathers fortunately showed more foresight that the current Councillors and built a drainage system that has so far reasonably stood the test of time. But drainage must be approaching the max.limit. Extreme weather flooding is evidence of that..
What has way passed the max. are the things that forefathers couldn’t have foreseen. These are things like traffic, parking and public safety.
Yet Council, despite consistent residents demands for improvements for all of the above, has decided to continue rolling the dice.
September 26, 2016 at 7:57 PM
Readers may be interested to know that for the past 3 budgets council has allocated $3.5m for drainage. Given price hikes and rising labor costs this amounts to a reduction in real spending – especially when development is going full bore.
It is also curious that council keeps blaming Melbourne Water for delaying any revision to the Special Building Overlay. We find this hard to accept given that surrounding councils such as Port Phillip and Bayside have together with Melbourne Water revised their SBOs and introduced new overlays. They have also introduced amendments to impose a higher Development Contributions Levy. In contrast, Glen Eira dropped its levy from the planning scheme in 2010 and since then has continued to blame Melbourne Water for the lack of any ‘action’.
September 26, 2016 at 10:04 AM
Luv the bit if ya living next to 4 stories ya won’t have the top near ya boundary. Hyams should get some glasses or stop the crap.
September 26, 2016 at 12:37 PM
He meant the top won’t be near his home’s boundary.
This guys has sold the resident out time and time again
September 26, 2016 at 4:14 PM
Found this – https://omny.fm/shows/gelt-finger/gelt-finger-21-8-15-cr-jamie-hyams
Sticks the boots into Lobo with the Simon Crean endorsement but does not mention his own endorsement from a former Liberal MLC. Typical of the underhanded tactics of this chap.
September 26, 2016 at 9:57 PM
I listen to the whole of the radio episode, there wasn’t a lot you could criticize Cr. Hyams on, just some of his usual, you can’t build anything now that you couldn’t build before blah.
He was relaxed a comfortable with his mates on J-Air. No real hard questions thrown up. Just more of a chat show format.
It was a bit of a shame they didn’t broach some of the more interesting issues in Glen Eira, this may have been more educational and informative to listeners.