Highlights from both the Legislative Assembly & Legislative Council

Planning: Caulfield Racecourse

Mr
SOUTHWICK (Caulfield)
— This morning I had the pleasure of joining the Minister for Planning, the Honourable Matthew Guy, in my electorate to announce the approval of a planning scheme amendment that will allow for a $1 billion development near the Caulfield Racecourse. As part of this development Caulfield residents will see an improvement in the quality of open space facilities for the community. I am pleased this agreement that I helped facilitate between the Glen Eira City Council and the Melbourne Racing Club has led to such a wonderful result. Facilities for the community to enjoy will include a picnic area by the lake, a large off-leash dog area, walking and jogging paths and a junior soccer pitch. I look forward to continuing to engage with the community on ways to utilise this fantastic facility.

Planning: Caulfield Village

Mrs COOTE (Southern Metropolitan) — My question is to the Minister for Planning, Matthew Guy. Can the minister inform the house what action he has taken to assist the planned development around Caulfield Racecourse and around community involvement in this planned development?

Hon. M. J. GUY (Minister for Planning) — I thank Mrs Coote for her outstanding question and for her outstanding work in facilitating what is a terrific outcome for the community in Caulfield. The work done by Mrs Coote, Ms Crozier and the member for Caulfield in the Assembly, David Southwick, has been outstanding. The work they have put in as local MPs is unique.

Mr Lenders — What about Mr Davis?

Hon. M. J. GUY — Mr Lenders, I could also talk about Mr Davis and the work he has done. In the health portfolio he has been cleaning up 11 years of mess left by you. Mr Davis, as the Leader of the Government in this chamber, is trying to clean up $2 million a day worth of financial mismanagement from the desal contracts, which you signed with your mate Tim Holding.

That aside, it was terrific to be part of the Glen Eira planning scheme amendment C60, which will facilitate Melbourne is to have urban renewal, this is the place to have it — around a railway, an activities area and existing facilities where new child care and sporting facilities and open space can be built into this outstanding development.It should also be remembered that in the previous Parliament the public land committee, which was chaired by Mr Davis, also met to hear issues in relation to Caulfield and public space, and I can report to this chamber with pleasure that the C60 amendment will, for the first time, pick up the recommendations of the committee’s report. The C60 amendment will pick up those recommendations thanks to the work done by Ms Crozier, Mrs Coote and Mr Southwick to ensure that the central part of the racecourse will be used as public open space, which is a far cry from what we saw under the previous dark decade of former planning minister Justin Madden and former Premier John Brumby.

Mr Finn interjected.

Hon. M. J. GUY — Mr Finn, as he knows about open space issues, would also be interested in the fact that the C60 amendment — and the figure 60 is just two digits away from the Prime Minister’s disapproval rating of 62 — which former Labor member Evan Thornley was in favour of, puts in place, as Mr Davis said, the results of a lot of work by the racing club and by the council, which should be congratulated for the work it has done. The council presented a planning scheme amendment to the state government, and there has been a truly collaborative approach between the government and the council. A ‘collaborative approach’; don’t you love that word? Labor Party members love it. It gets their little left-wing juices running. There has been a cooperative approach between the state government; the local government; our local members of Parliament, who have worked so hard on this; the public land inquiry, which reported on the necessity for open space; and the racing club, which has put forward a proposal and had it accepted and presented to the state government with the support of Glen Eira City Council. Congratulations to all involved.

AND TODAY’S ‘AGE’

Caulfield development off and  racing

Matthew Guy has this afternoon announced the formal rubberstamping of the C60 Amendment. Interviewed by Steve Vizard these were some of this comments –

The C60 is a “billion dollar development, planned for 5 years, right next door to a railway station….one tower (only) which will …only shadow the racecourse itself…large development in an area where it should be….

Guy also spoke about the centre of the racecourse claiming that this decision will “ensure that open space and centre of racecourse can be used, (the) centre will now be opened up,… we are now going to open up centre of land for parkland and open space which can only be good for the people of Caulfield…..”

As to the land swap with the MRC, Guy stated that the MRC were “taking a large amount of risk” in their investment. That they would “be opening up the centre of that track….a very important win for the community….we are addng a very large area in the centre of the track….a good outcome for the community”.

Also interviewed was Mr. Don Dunstan, President of the Glen Eira Residents’ Association. Mr Dunstan highlighted:

• the granting of Crown Land for private interests
• the undemocratic processes involved where only 4 individuals decided the fate of the C60
• the implications for other areas and for the people of Victoria

Several of our readers have alerted us to the fact that the Caulfield Racecourse will now be the venue for just on a month long stretch of Silvers Circus performances. Looking at their website many of the dates include both matinees and evening shows. The seating for each show, according to booking diagrams, holds close to 800 people. It further looks like this will take place on the Guinea’s Car Park which is Crown Land.

Important questions arise out of this little arrangement – some of which have already been pointed out by our readers –

• Did council and/or councillors know about this?
• Did the Planning Department issue a permit for the advertising signs?
• What consideration was given to the potential impact of noise, and events of this magnitude finishing at 10pm on local amenities?
• What has happened to the so called ‘agreement’ that only 10 days of special events were to take place?
• When does this ‘agreement’ actually come into operation? Or will Council and the MRC argue that it has not as yet ‘started’?

Sunday’s Herald Sun featured a two page spread on the C60 development. Below are edited highlights from the story. Author –  Graeme Hammond.

“For Mr Curry and his partner, it (housing developments) will mean vacant land behind their house – cleared of homes more than 10 years ago after they were bought by the racing club – will be occupied by 270 new properties, including six-storey residential blocks. There are still no drawings of how the neighbourhood skyline will change, but he can guess.

“This development will put 2500 people at my back door,” Mr Currey said. “it’s an incredibly intense concentration of retail, commercial and residential building and I’ll look out the back and see every one of them.”

He said the centre would dramatically increase traffic congestion in Kambrook Rd and the surrounding streets.

“The beauty of this area is that within 15 minutes’ drive we have Chadstone Shopping Centre, St Kilda, Glen Huntly Rd and Glenferrie Rd,” Mr Curry said. “The area is already well catered for by retail. We don’t need this. It is physically and visually wrong here. I’m not against development, but it has to be reasonable and practical. With every decision our council makes, they show they do not listen to residents and don’t care. We voted them in, but they are not representing us.”

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“What’s good enough for the Meblourne Racing Club should be good enough for everyone, budding entrepreneur Noam Rosen says. Mr Rosen supports high-rise development in suburban areas and considers the Caulfield area as ideally placed to become a residential and business hub, capable of housing many more people. But he said: “If I wanted to demolish this house and build a six-storey complex I think I’d be knocked back Why did the Melbourne Racing Club get approval? There should be a level playing field so everyone has the chance to do sensible property development”.

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She (Mary Healy) said the (MRC) plans bore little resemblance to the original 1996 concept of Caulfield Village. “It just keeps growing. We’ll have another 10,000 people working and shopping here, but they’re providing only 2000 parking spotes,” she said. Mrs Healy said Camden ward residents had elected councillors opposed to the project, but Glen Eira council had ignored their views and few councillors had attended a state planning panel’s six-day set of hearings. “It’s one of the biggest planning decision ever made in the state, but they showed no interest,” she said. “They have effectively disenfranchised the voters.” 

PS: A copy of the article has been uploaded HERE

Below is our coverage of the presentations made by the guest speakers at least week’s Community Forum. We invite debate and discussion on the points they raised.

Dr. Birrell – explicitly it is acknowledged that Melbourne 2030 is dead and that something different will take its place. …..we’ve seen a meteoric rise in Melbourne’s population growth….(but it’s going to fall)….because the reason why Melbourne’s population growth has accelerated is because of overseas migration. The dominant reason that overseas migration has contributed to the surge in Melbourne’s population is attributable to one group – overseas students. That acounted for about 60% of the migration growth in Victoria. …The overseas student industry is now in rapid decline and as a consequence it will affect Melbourne’s growth. No doubt about it. Melbourne could drop to the order of 50,000 or so….just because of this change in immigration policy. …But there’s more. One reason why Melbourne has been able to do so well as far as population growth is concerned ….because we have had the comparative advantage in the price of housing….that’s all changed. Prices of houses and land have escalated to the point where they are now more expensive than in Sth East Queensland. The possibility then of people leaving, particularly going to the west where land is cheaper than Melbourne and jobs are plentiful, to my mind is quite likely…..That may open up opportunities for rethinking the planning …that’s created the Phoenix Project. 

DR. LAY – ‘we know that roads are congested….by any standard……We have a long time spent in traffic (by international standards). We have long distances,….The two things you can do when you are facing congestion is …to build a new road infrastructure and I don’t even know of any proposals to build new road infrastructure in this area. I couldn’t even think of what they might be. And the other is to make the roads work more efficiently. …Vic Roads is one of the world’s best authorities in terms of managing the road system…the traffic signal system is viewed around the world as one of the best….a model for elsewhere…..but what I’m saying is that we are already milking our road system as efficiently as possible….we are using our road system quite well at the moment and there’s really not a lot of reserve that they can fix the thing….I now want to … explain why you’ve got what you’ve got (in Glen Eira). …We all know that infrastructure like roAds and trains doesn’t happen overnight….what you’ve got in Glen Eira you’ve had since about 1840! …..it hasn’t changed much at all. Glen Eira wasn’t really the centre of the universe even when Melbourne was founded in 1834 and the big competition for Glen Eira was downtown Dandenong…as you headed from Dandenong to Melbourne as you look at the map it’s a straight line, until you get to Warrigal Rd. At Warrigal Rd they hit Gardiner’s Creek. And Gardiner’s Creek was a sloppy, muddy, impassable creek. And that’s where Dandenong Rd starts bending. Glen Eira was the pits. Glen Eira was a swamp. …..there were about 14 known swamps and in between the swamps there were wet stoppages. ….Dandenong Rd and the railway followed the edge of the swamp…all the bends are attempts at avoiding the worst bits of the swamp. …..Caulfield didn’t develop and what Dandenong Rd did and then the railway,  was to make north south movement the popular route…but nothing here because of the swamp. …….You don’t have any decent connections running through! …The rest of Melbourne was divided on a mile square grid, but again because of the swamp and the other developments ……you’re stuck with a strange road system. It doesn’t really work as well as the rest of Melbourne and you’re also stuck with the fact that development happened around you. …..all sort of coming down on this area. And it was developed late….and the railways went through in about 1880 and again the railways weren’t built in this area to service Caulfield. They were built because down in Gippsland there was dairy farms, vegetables and then there was coal. So there was a market and private companies built the first railroad to get these products into Melbourne. …..The first shops weren’t in this area. They were along Hawthorn Rd. Camden Town was the first real (development) ….but they were not even strip shops in the way we understand them today like Glenferrie Rd (those active shopping strips) it didn’t develop the way the other side of the railway did. ….So you had a community which was very much a local community without any of the natural road infrastructure which was created elsewhere in Melbourne to provide the through traffic. You didn’t actually go through Caulfield to get to anywhere so there wasn’t any real demand….so nothing happened and the roads that you’ve got are very much a local road system. They’re flat so you put trams down them…but it is very much a local structure. There’s no way that you can conceive of that structure being any different in the future. There’s nothing that you can do; there are no fixes …..and I suppose that when I look at the future I don’t see any changes given the road infrastructure plans of Melbourne that there is any relationship to what happens in Glen Eira. ….You’ve inherited a road system….(all was in place) by the time motor cars came along about 1906. ……One of the propositions in 1906 was to ban cars in this area ……so even when cars came then it was recognised that this was not a community for fast rapid cars…. 

PROF CURRIE – one of the interesting positives about growth is that it’s helped the economy. And the CBD’s of capital cities have been a big part of growing the economy in Australia….the CBD’s have grown a huge amount. …There’s been a huge growth in the service sector and the knowledge economy….part of it was what Bob was talking about with international students…Australia is getting pretty good at using…universities as knowledge based economies with the service sector to actually feed off the economy of Asia in a very successful way. So it’s not just living off mining and so forth….When we talk about planning, there’s not a lot of success we can talk about, but here is one example we can. Growth in employment in the Melbourne CBD – it has skyrocketed…..(Then there is) the transport point of view….there’s been a lot of growth in usage, but also a growth in public transport usage..(the CBD) is now quite an interesting place; there’s a lot more people living there, and lots to do….the CBD has been very successful I think. ….We’re going to have some growth in different areas, but it’s mostly going to be in the outer suburbs…..in fact it has been. …Really it’s the fringe where growth is expected….It’s not going to be the same as it was in the past. We’ve got an ageing population and that ageing population is going to be in the outer suburbs. Why is it an issue? Well we won’t have the services and facilities in those places. …..What are the transport issues? Congestion! …the growth that has occurred has really been beyond what was originally forecast. …Business costs (because of congestion) are 3 billion dollars. …congestion is happening more and more in this area…We’ve got trams in the middle of traffic streams….so again slower…..traffic grows. Trains – massive meteoric growth in trains…..the trains in Melbourne are about 40% overloaded….(Question from audience: How does that compare with other countries?)…we’re about the same as Sydney….London would have similar congestion….

we haven’t talked about the environment ….you are surrounded by roads here and they are not nice things….accidents are still a major issue….there’s great concerns about how we’re going to drive in the future to get around….and one certain truth is affordability.. We’re experiencing another peak in fuel and we’re expecting much more…..when we have growth occurring in on the fringe this is a major concern…Also we’ve been walking less….Your area has got great sustainability. You’ve got great transport access, close to activities, within walking distance, ……There hasn’t been a great change in train travel in Glen eira, cars still dominate…..

Issues:…the bus service has no framework; rail crossings dominate. I think of Glen Eira as a suburb surrounded by transport problems and you’ve got through traffic that can’t get through….congestion is a real consequence. So what about the Phoenix project? One perspective is that we’re always talking about planning. You know, I often think that we don’t have planning in Melbourne. I think that whenever there’s growth and someone wants to develop they often, by any means possible, get what they want because they can get a market for it. I’m not saying that’s desirable, I just think that’s often what happens. But the real truth of where you are is that you are a mighty successful place. …..I think in the future that success will actually increase in many ways if your railway – you’ve got a very high quality railway -…..you’ve got great access in Melbourne to the CBD, and to developing areas, and regionally you’ve actually got direct connections to Gippsland and the rest of those areas. It’s quite staggering how well connected you are here. ….You guys are going to be a metro city that gives access to St. Kilda Rd and the CBD….Very desirable place in my opinion.  And whether you are interested in development or not there will be a lot of pressure for it here. ….

There is an opportunity here to try and do this properly. I think it’s very hard for you to try and stop this (the Metro/Footscray link) ….and certainly the transport opportunities with the Metro and so forth will tie this into appropriate development….Melbourne doesn’t have a second CBD. With all the accessibility here and with all that’s happening particularly in the growth of knowledge centres …Caulfield would be a mighty attractive second CBD. I don’t think anybody wants it to be as big as Melbourne, or even as big as it is in North Sydney and Parramatta,  but those places as well, don’t have the features that you have here already. you know, attractive development – a large university site. ….these will be a natural draw towards that… 

JEREMY HEARN (architect/designer): I’ve worked on a fair number of master plans for activity centres all over Melbourne, going back to the original Docklands where I was on one of the teams that put a proposal in for one of the major segments of that development…..I had a bit of a look at the various influences that are coming to bear on the area around Caulfield station. …Our previous speakers have commented  quite thoroughly on public transport and the road network and clearly they are two of the strongest influences on that area. The fact that Caulfield is a knuckle in a public transport system is quite critical and also, with Dandenong Rd a very major traffic route for cars. It will remain a transport hub. Not only will it remain…but we’ve all heard that there are plans for additional lines to go in on the Frankston line….Now all of those are going to require land. The area that has been designated for the Phoenix precinct is actually not very big. It’s been called up in the Melbourne 2030 plan as a major activity centre, but major activity centres are usually the size of something like Dandenong or even the Glenferrie Rd shopping centre. Chadstone actually jumps in as a major activity centre and that’s very dense now, but always wants to be bigger.

It’s unlikely that the size of land that the Phoenix Activity Centre represents is sufficient for a major activity centre. So the area that we’re looking at to be a major activity centre is not really there at all. It would have to take in a much larger area. Dandenong Rd and the railway are of course a huge barrier to any kind of general movement from one side, so it’s almost certain that any expansion of that area would go to the south. So I would see realistically, that any development for a major activity centre would actually have to rezone areas all the way down to the south end of the racecourse reserve at least. And with the same sort of width as well. So it would be a much, much larger area. …..

In a way it’s quite inappropriate …because there are so many issues of state significance involved in this particular area…first off it’s a transport interchange, with various additional lines which will require more land; secondly, it’s got the racecourse…..there is no doubt that the State Government and the major activities part of the state government consider that the Caulfield racecourse and the Caulfield cup to be a substantial leg of Melbourne’s party town atmosphere which houses our tourist industry…so the State government would have a very strong interest in maintaining Caulfield as a racecourse……(people) know about Caulfield on the other side of the world (by virtue of the Melbourne and then the Caulfield Cup)…..it’s also historic…and hence part of Melbourne’s fabric….it also has a major use as an exhibition centre….part of major events calendar there…

You then have the shopping centre which is usually considered the heart of a major activity centre. Well, frankly, I’ve done a lot of shopping centres in my time and I really can’t see the basics there for much increase in terms of retail. You’re competing against a very well established shopping centre in Glenferrie Rd which is 5 minutes away once you get on the road, and just down in the other direction you’re competing against Chadstone, which is the largest and best known shopping centre in the whole of Australia. So I really don’t see that there will be much development in the way of retail around Caulfield. It will remain as a local shopping centre, with a slightly struggling supermarket. But even if you bring in another 3000 people, …I don’t know how well that will go.

Then you’ve got the Monash University Caulfield Campus with their own plans to get bigger and stronger, and I would have thought that they had trouble with the amount of land they’ve got. A very condensed campus. Especially when you consider that it’s not in a major city centre. Normally you would expect in Australia that any kind of tertiary institution would have access to quite  extensive playing fields to keep the youth of the day healthy and here there is really not a lot.

….So all in all, there seems to be three state level influences and one local…..Then there’s the State government’s intention in the Melbourne 2030 …..for the reasons I explained earlier I don’t think it’s going to be a Major Activity Centre unless the state government moves in and gets fairly serious about it and it would have to do some substantial (with) road operations and probably lose Caulfield Racecourse entirely for it to become big enough for it to classify as a Major Activity Centre. I think that one is just waiting to fall over.

So when you stand and look at all those, you have to look as a resident and ask ‘what do we want for the area?’ Should the Monash University campus become bigger and take over more area? Should the racecourse move in and extend itself towards the tramline and create some sort of entertainment precinct which seems to be almost, reading between the lines, being a competitor for the casino? Or should we land bank a lot of the land around there  for future transport infrastructure? A very legitimate thing to do but without the state government stepping in and doing the planning work it’s hard to see. I have difficulties with the plan that’s been proposed because it doesn’t seem to address any of those issues. It addresses the land that is owned by the MRC and its specifically dedicated to allowing the increase of density of that area….I had a look at the Incorporated plan which is when you draw little boxes and say ‘that’s what it’s going to be’ and I’ve worked on a number of those, and they never end up like that., because when you actually look at details you find that they don’t work. So you end up having to go back and get another planning permit anyway. So the Incorporated Plan overlays don’t really work ……

What’s been proposed is to increase the densities and to reduce the required car parking under the planning regulations. I don’t know that that’s a terrifically good idea. Essentially it seems to me that the MRC has been acquiring that land over the last 40 or 50 years for the purpose of car parking to make sure the racecourse has adequate parking on race days. and I imagine most of you, if you are residents, and have driven past on a raceday, you know that they need every bit of it. So, taking up that land that they’ve got for carparking and putting buildings on it and reducing the required car parking seems to be not a really good idea….I had a look at the MRC aims for their organisation …and they were to ensure they had a cash flow to provide prizes for races….selling off the land in order to have the prizes….it doesn’t seem to me that the whole thing has been thought out. ….I haven’t come across anyone in the community who has said ‘wow I’m just waiting for them to redevelop that land’…’I really wanted 20 storey buildings there, that’s why I moved in’….

It should be done over a very much larger area than just that limited area that they’re talking about. …(20 storey) has another disadvantage….the only thing that will be built there are lots of units…..when you allow a building to be sold off as own your own units it’s almost impossible to redevelop that site later on. Because to do that you have to go and deal with 20,40,100 owners of individual units to buy that block of land. …..If you want an activity centre that you want to develop over time as this was units, now it’s going to be an office block…if you allow that plan to be developed as own your own units – forget it. You can’t do it. It’s just locked in forever. So essentially we’re looking at a proposal to create a very high density set of units in that area and to reduce the carparking availability for the other purposes. So when…they want to move the roads so they can put an extra railroad line in, they won’t be able to without buying 80 odd owners of units. which doesn’t seem to me to be very smart. ….We should  be working to convince the State Government that they ….need to have a look at this from their own point of view because too many state level interests are being overridden by this local and very specifically owner based proposal.