Swinging voters could knock Denis Napthine out in Melbourne’s planning zones

Concerns: Danita Tucker in Jasper Road, McKinnon, where residents are dismayed by developers’ plans to build three-storey apartment blocks. Photo: Penny Stephens

She doesn’t look scary, but there are few people the Napthine government should fear more than someone like Danita Tucker. “I’m a swinging voter,” says the mother of two who lives with her family in a quiet Bentleigh street.

It’s a marginal electorate, held by the Liberal Party by just 0.9 per cent, and one that helped deliver government to Ted Baillieu in 2010.

Bentleigh is among a clutch of seats that could help hand power back to Labor this month.

If the electorate does switch to Labor, the new government will have planning – the perennial debate in Melbourne’s suburbs – to thank for it.

Like the seats of Mordialloc, Carrum and Frankston, Bentleigh is one four marginals strung along the Frankston train line. The suburbs within these seats are not normally known for their political combat.

But, thanks to changes Planning Minister Matthew Guy started putting through last July – and still far from complete – there is an increased focus on urban development.

The new residential zones Guy has begun ushering in have been planned by consecutive governments over the past decade, and have now been introduced to 22 of Melbourne’s 31 council areas. The rollout has been messy, confusing, and has sparked anxiety for many residents.

But the three new zones were an attempt to drastically simplify the planning system and provide certainty – so residents know exactly what’s allowed in their street.

Glen Eira, the council covering Tucker’s area, was the first cab off the rank in Guy’s rezoning of residential areas into three zones: “no-go”, “slow-go” and “go-go”.

The “no-go” zones are called Neighbourhood Residential Zones. They restrict housing development in areas deemed urban preservation zones, and limit development to just two storeys.

Glen Eira had a remarkable 80 per cent of the council’s areas deemed worth preserving.

It compares with just 11 per cent on the other side of the city, in Darebin Council in the city’s north that covers areas including Northcote, Thornbury Preston and Reservoir.

The “slow-go” zones were applied to areas like Tucker’s, where “moderate housing growth” would be allowed, with buildings up to three levels.

In the seat of Bentleigh, the zoning has caused an outcry. Suddenly, residents in the streets surrounding the train line have found themselves pitted against developers wanting to build three-storey apartment blocks.

The new  rules theoretically changed little from existing land zoning. In reality, they removed any uncertainty about what a developer would get, either from the council or the state planning tribunal.

Newly formed resident groups say the changes are now having significant a impact. In a fortnight, Save Our Suburbs will hold a specially convened forum in Bentleigh on the zones.

Residents are concerned because, in the year since the new rules came into the area, several single-level, post-war cottages that have long defined the character of suburbs such as Bentleigh have been bought by developers.

They are to be replaced by townhouses and apartment blocks to house some of the 1.6 million extra dwellings the government’s Plan Melbourne strategy says will be needed by 2050.

“Developers weren’t really interested in this area until they saw there was a set height limit,” says Tucker, who is watching in amazement as her neighbours houses sell for medium-density housing. Every day flyers come through Tucker’s letterbox from real estate agents.

She says there is “an annoyance at our local member because she has not been looking after the needs of her local community”. The zones, Tucker says, were “just imposed upon us without any engagement”.

That local member, the Liberal Party’s Elizabeth Miller, supported the zones for Bentleigh.

She argues the changes have meant councils are now truly the planning authority for their area, deciding where development is appropriate.

“Glen Eira Council has identified 80 per cent of the municipality is now protected from development under the council’s own planning guidelines,” she says. “Under the former Labor government of 11 years, there were no clear guidelines to planning, which was done on an ad hoc basis.”

Labor’s candidate for the area is Nick Staikos. He says the zoning changes have turned Bentleigh “into a honey pot for developers”.

Staikos is doing a lot of door-knocking and jokes that the zones have had an upside for him in the development rush: “I’m finding there’s a developer or a real estate agent who’s been here just before me – residents are relieved I’m a politician.”

Glen Eira is among a lucky few councils – Bayside and Boroondara are the others – that were major beneficiaries of the zoning changes, with Guy locking up all but 20 per cent of each of the well-to-do councils’ suburbs from developers wanting to build anything above two levels.

While other councils like Darebin, Moonee Valley, Darebin and others were less fortunate, Guy boasted last week on ABC Radio he had introduced the toughest zoning laws in the country.

“Around 80 per cent plus [is] in the most restrictive zone in Australian residential zoning history, the government’s new neighbourhood residential zone.”

Guy wasn’t so keen to talk about the small pockets in places such as Bentleigh, Moorabbin, Highett and Cheltenham now facing what is known as the “go-go” zoning – the Residential Growth Zone.

These are areas where residential streets near train lines and busy shopping strips have been, or are to be, rezoned to allow developments of at least four storeys. There aren’t many in the marginal Bentleigh electorate affected by this.

But across the rail line from Bentleigh is the far safer seat of Sandringham, held by Murray Thompson – son of a former premier Lindsay – by a margin of 15.6 per cent.

It is in the council area of Bayside. There, while the richest suburbs like Brighton and Sandringham have largely received the highest level of protection from “over-development” available in Australia, the less wealthy have been put into this pro-development category.

A drive around the streets affected by these proposed new zones in Cheltenham, Moorabbin, Highett and near the long-promised new Southland railway station shows why many residents are anxious.

Typical is Highett’s Major Street, a quiet dead-end so narrow the rubbish truck can’t turn around and has to reverse out each week. It has a few new two-storey townhouses, but most of its 20 houses are single level.

On one side of the street – the side to be rezoned for up to four-level development – every house bar one has a sign Melbourne has seen before: “We Will Oppose Inappropriate Development.”

Gary McCulloch bought in Major Street two years ago “because it was a very quiet, family-oriented street that was organically regenerating”, and now fears he will soon have an apartment tower looming over him.

McCulloch doesn’t know who to blame for the zoning that could soon be finalised on his street: Bayside Council or the minister. They blame each other.

But he’s sure of one thing: “None of this is based on sound planning principles, and it is a result of political interference from the state government – there are no votes for them here or in Cheltenham. They wouldn’t dare upset their blue-blood constituents in Brighton.”

Bayside mayor Laurie Evans says the council was forced to choose the high-growth zones after Guy’s chief of staff demanded the council select areas along the Frankston railway line.

Guy argues the zones have provided people with certainty, protecting large areas of Melbourne from inappropriate high-rise development.

He says Labor had never accepted responsibility for some of the problems created by the “anything-goes Melbourne 2030 policy”. He argues its push to consolidate Melbourne into its existing boundaries fuelled inappropriate overdevelopment.

Labor, for its part, on Thursday revealed that if it was elected it would complete a major review of the zoning changes.

“Communities right across Victoria are complaining that they were not consulted,” Opposition planning spokesman Brian Tee says.

“Outcomes have been forced on them with many residents believing the changes to what can be built in certain areas is political – some suburbs have been protected and development has been pushed elsewhere.”

Perhaps most surprisingly in the debate around the zones in the bayside areas is that, while residents are unhappy, developers are equally dissatisfied. A group of them, represented by high-profile planning barrister Nick Tweedie, SC, last month told a planning department committee considering the new high-growth zones that they would have preferred them to be in more affluent bayside areas.

James Larmour-Reid is president of Victoria’s Planning Institute, which backs the new residential zones as a means of managing growth and change across Melbourne. Larmour-Reid says the new zones, after a decade of debate, have provided a method of implementing “go-go”, “slow-go” and “no-go” areas in council housing strategies.

But he says that missing from the plan to push forward with the residential zones was “an overarching metropolitan housing strategy”. It was also unfortunate that the government’s Plan Melbourne strategy had been released only after the new residential zones had started to be rolled out.

Larmour-Reid says it is  “too early to make a call on whether or how the new zones are shaping development proposals in particular locations” because the housing market is constantly evolving.

Questioned over suburbs such as Bentleigh seeing a surge of applications for medium-density development, he says these sorts of projects were always possible under the old zones.

And, he says, medium-density development might just be something Melbourne has to start getting used to.

“Apartments are now being constructed at greater distances from the CBD in places like Mitcham, Glen Waverley and Preston.”

• The role of Planning Minister Matthew Guy and his office in that process
• • Departmental advice on zone application and what weight is given to heritage, local character and the housing needs of the state
• • The impact of the zone changes on our suburbs
• • Alternative ways to meet our housing needs
• • How the zones can better fit within the framework outlined in Plan Melbourne Quotes attributable to Mr Tee “The Liberals can’t say they support growth and development in Melbourne if they target suburbs based on their politics.” “Under the Liberals, local councils are getting trampled over, the community doesn’t have a say and some of our oldest and most vibrant neighbourhoods are facing the wrecking ball.” “Labor will take the politics out of planning. We’ll meet the housing needs of our future but we’ll take communities and councils with us.”
• Key Facts
• • Plan Melbourne, the Napthine Government’s vision for Melbourne to 2050, outlined the need for 1.6 million houses to keep pace with population growth.
• • The Napthine Government’s new zones were released before Plan Melbourne was released.