Glen Eira Debates

The rise of resident action groups across Melbourne

Allison Worrall Jan 21, 2019

The genteel streets of Elsternwick are not usually the scenes of a protest but on Saturday, more than 150 disgruntled residents, many with children in tow, marched with placards.

The rally was to highlight the community’s opposition to two apartment towers of 10 and 14 storeys proposed after supermarket giant Woolworths bought the site of the former ABC studios.

The resident action group behind the march is in its infancy; members banded together just weeks ago. “I’m a complete novice,” said organiser and veterinarian Karen Boyd-Jones. “I didn’t realise it was going to be all day, every day – lucky I’ve just retired.”

While resident action groups are not new, their prevalence, profile and role in Melbourne has grown as the city’s population has boomed. Social media has been harnessed to raise awareness, attract new members, co-ordinate campaigns and share information.

In Brunswick in the inner north, an established and well-organised action group with more than 1000 members is gearing up for the eighth day of hearings at the state’s planning tribunal.

Protect Park Street Precinct formed two years ago in response to the proposed 13-storey development of 333 apartments overlooking Princes Park. The application has since been revised to 14 storeys, 255 apartments and 12 townhouses.

To date, the group has raised more than $100,000 to mount a comprehensive legal case against the large legal team hired by developer JW Land Group, which paid $32 million for the site.

Members include former La Trobe University chancellor Professor Adrienne E Clarke, who said the group wanted to see “an appropriate building, respectful of heritage values” on the site.

The rise of resident groups has seen thousands of Melburnians, many with little or no experience in politics or lobbying, become resolute activists in recent years.

“I don’t think it’s any secret that the way the planning scheme operates at the moment tends to be quite pro-development and favours the big end of town,” says Glen McCallum, the president of Protect Fitzroy North, a powerful group that campaigned against a sprawling 16-storey apartment complex on Queens Parade proposed by developer Tim Gurner.

In that case, planning minister Richard Wynne controversially intervened to place a 10-storey limit on the site, which ultimately led to the project being greatly scaled back. Mr Gurner defended the project at the state’s planning tribunal and welcomed the approval when it was granted.

Since then, Mr McCallum’s organisation has offered assistance and fielded enquiries from resident groups in Collingwood, Alphington, Ivanhoe, Heidelberg and Brunswick.

“The pace of development has stepped up,” Mr McCallum says, “and the regime the councils operate under hasn’t changed since way back in the ’90s.”

With or without the support of councils – many of which have been inundated with development applications and are simultaneously juggling dozens of proposals and appeals – resident action groups are regularly taking on multi-millionaire developers in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

When a case reaches the tribunal, developers will often hire high-flying legal teams consisting of a QC, a junior barrister, several solicitors and a stream of other consultants and experts.

Meanwhile, residents may not have any legal representation or, if they have successfully fundraised, may hire a planning barrister like Daniel Epstein, who charges community groups a reduced fee.

“It’s absolutely a David and Goliath battle,” Mr Epstein admitted but added that resident groups had repeatedly proven effective. “It might be that the development goes through but is much more considered and restricted because of what the community did.”

Most resident groups vehemently reject the NIMBY label, and Mr Epstein agreed it was not the right description. He stressed that the dozen groups he had worked with were not anti-development, but against developments that were ill-considered or too large.

Those involved in planning disputes say it is arduous work entailing countless hours of research.  “Our little structure plan for Elsternwick had approximately 19 documents, over 1000 pages,” said research scientist Jacinta Smith, who attended Saturday’s march.

“How do people cope with that? Only ridiculous people like me think ‘I’m going to read this with my highlighter’.”

Ms Smith said she had never stepped foot inside a council meeting until 18 months ago when her land was rezoned. “I, like many people, was ignorant and apathetic on local council issues,” she said. “We assume the professionals and experts will handle this for us.”

Glen Eira council will hand down its decision regarding the Woolworths development next month.

Source: https://www.domain.com.au/news/the-rise-of-resident-action-groups-across-melbourne/?utm_campaign=strap-masthead&utm_source=the-age&utm_medium=link&utm_content=pos2&ref=pos1

PS – From today’s Caulfield Leader

To begin with, wishing all our readers a safe and healthy festive season, with thanks for your input throughout the year.

2018 has in many ways been pretty momentous. There have been some governance advances but overall majority resident views continue to be ignored. Here is a summary:

THE POSITIVES

• Telecasting of council meetings and ‘public participation’ section a continued winner
• Heritage action(s), whilst far from complete, has at least got off the ground
• Reform of permit time extension applications and council’s admission that it stuffed up badly on one application

THE NEGATIVES

• Structure planning ‘consultations’ that are ‘tokenistic’ given the continued changes that have not gone out for proper consultation and when no justification is provided for the changes – ie setbacks, heights.
• Continued delays on the introduction of parking plans, heritage overlays, open space levies
• Local Law review still well over a year away – ie removing the ridiculous clause that those asking public questions have to sit through up to 3 hours of items before their questions can be addressed. If not present then no record of the question or response exists in the minutes.
• Tree register still belonging in some unspecified never-never land.
• When the city is well and truly meeting its housing needs for population growth, no justification has been provided for why so much more development is required.
• No firm commitment to introduce structure plans for neighbourhood centres – merely ‘urban design guidelines’ that are non-mandatory. Timelines also a mystery. Yet we have seen up to 8 storeys in these centres.
• Officers granted more power via the recent delegation resolution – ie need now for over 15 objections to a planning permit in order for it to be considered as ‘suitable’ for a full council decision – otherwise decided by the Delegated Planning Committee which consists entirely of officers. One concession – councilors now have ‘call in’ rights. How often will this be used we wonder and no guidelines/policies have been published to inform residents as to how this will work.

There are plenty of other issues we might highlight. The take home message is that planning and traffic remain residents’ major concern and this council has done very little to ameliorate the continuing damage. When the vast majority of residents are opposed to 12 storeys in Carnegie & Elsternwick, and the majority were also in favour of only 4 storeys for Bentleigh, council has shown time and time again that it is intent on ramming its agenda through despite community opposition. Until we have a group of councilors determined to listen to its residents then nothing will change.