THE Bass Coast Shire Council and the Victorian Planning Authority are both blaming each other for the imposition of hundreds of new Environmental Audit Overlays (EAOs) on the mum and dad owned homes and blocks of land in Wonthaggi’s north-east development area.
The sudden application of these highly restrictive overlays commits these home and block owners, many of them stretching finances to get into the market during a shocking housing crisis, to huge expense.
The VPA says the council didn’t act when it knew of the risk of contamination, as follows:
“Council continued to issue permits for residential subdivisions without including contamination-related conditions even after they were made aware of the findings in the April 2016 report and the subsequent contamination report commissioned by the VPA in 2019.”
The council in turn says they did act on the GHD report of April 2016, and proposed to put EAOs on the land identified as potentially contaminated and adopted an amendment in 2019 that did propose to apply environmental assessment requirements on four or five parcels of land, several in Oates Road and one fronting Korumburra-Wonthaggi Road.
The council didn’t support retrospective overlays.
But, ultimately, they say, the VPA assumed total control of the whole amendment process for the 632 hectare site (444ha for residential development) in 2020, aiming to fast-track it through to approval, and whatever happened after that time, is the VPA’s responsibility.
But that’s bulldust.
Successive councils under the management of CEO Paul Buckley until February 16, 2019 and CEO Ali Wastie from February 18, 2019 to July 28, 2023, failed to keep the community informed, as part of a policy of overall secrecy, and even when 250 properties were listed in the approved amendment on January 18, 2024, as being hit with these new overlays, the council said nothing.
Despite having a list of all of these properties impacted, including street names and numbers, they didn’t even do those homeowners the courtesy of sending them an email to alert them to the problem. Many still don’t know they’ve been caught up in this horror story.
But the accusation from the VPA remains, that the council continued to issue subdivision permits, and the developers went ahead and sold those blocks, without applying environmental assessment conditions to the permits… how does that even happen?
The councillors, and they should all be named at this point, claim they didn’t know anything about it until last week, for God’s sake!!
What the administration of the council is concentrating on doing now is (finally) getting the best outcome for the homeowners and building block owners, in negotiations with the VPA and the State Government.
But what they need to do straight away is communicate directly with ALL of the people involved, and by the end of this week, in an effort to avoid litigation, to commit to paying for the retrospective assessments, environmental audits and if necessary, remedial work to be carried on the blocks they already authorised to be subdivided and sold, without conditions.
You can join the shire's direct update newsletter group by emailing the council on planningapplications@basscoast.vic.gov.au
If our nine councillors can’t complete this task to the community’s satisfaction, they should all be sacked at the October 2024 council elections.
New shire CEO Greg Box only took up his role on January 29, 2024 but aside from ensuring the 250 property owners were informed directly of their predicament in a timely manner (which he did not do), his role now is to peel back the pall of secrecy that has hung over this council for more than a decade.
The councillors say they knew nothing about this scandal, until a couple of weeks ago, which is an indictment on their performance and the attitude of past administrations.
Honestly, the local netball committee has better governance practices than the Bass Coast Shire Council. Each person there on those committees is there to work. They are allocated portfolios; one doing finances, one match day management and operations, others planning, league delegates, publicity and leadership.
Incredibly, that's not how the Bass Coast council works.
Given how big and how important the 600 hectare residential development area in Wonthaggi is to the town and the whole shire, as taking the pressure off our popular coastal areas, it needed a dedicated councillor (or two) to keep up with all the changes, the draft C152 amendment of August 2022, the submissions, the final amendment and all the rest and provide monthly reports to council. The same with the budget and all the other important areas of responsibility. Michael Whelan, David Rooks and Leticia Laing were the obvious ones to provide regular updates on progress with the shire's Climate Change Action Plan if needed.
When diplomacy failed, negotiating with the Victorian Planning Authority on Council's preferred position, that EAOs were only needed in a few discrete areas, the problem should have been escalated to the council and the community in order to bring political pressure to bear. The community of Wonthaggi would never have put up with the wholesale application of retrospective, highly-restrictive overlays on existing homes and titled blocks. No way. We would have campaigned on that until a better outcome was found.
But secrecy prevailed, the councillors say they never knew about it, and the community sure as hell didn't.
Yes, the information about the VPA's intentions, to cover their own backside by covering the North East precinct with environmental audit overlays, was "in the public domain" as they say, from August 2022 when the draft amendment C152 was published on the VPA website.
But who could have waded through the 40-plus documents to get to the problematic recommendations about the wholesale application of overlays - answer no one other than the most directly involved officials, including members of the shire administration. They would have known of the implications from August 2022, time enough to raise a political campaign if the VPA still wouldn't listen, but they failed to escalate it to the council.
To give them their due, and envoke a Rumsfeldism, it was an unknown unknown for the council but if they had a system of portfolios in place, like a local football or netball club, they would have known and could have made it political if all other avenues had closed. But the other problem for this council is they won't work together. There's a faction of five councillors against four; typically Crs Whelan, Rooks, Laing, Ellis and Le Serve against Crs Halstead, Larke, Tessari and Bauer making for a highly disfuntional operation.
The fallout for the community has been huge with crucial projects lacking the prioty and effort needed, including the Sunderland Bay-Surf Beach Special Charge Scheme, and millions wasted in other areas simply because the council wouldn't get together to discuss these issues, or even call for feasibility reports to be done.
But finally, what this planning disaster does do is call out their preoccupation with a woke agenda for what it is, including whether the Cowes cultural centre should be called Berninneit or Mogarmarlarly Murk, whether they’ve dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s on their Gender Equality Action Plan, made enough progress on the Climate Change Action Plan, convinced people to vote ‘Yes’ or given enough priority to the former mayor’s favourite community organisation, Totally Renewable Phillip Island.
Ticking off on compliance, transparency of governance and getting the shire’s planning settings right are first-order priorities. You can get on with leading the national debate on gender equality, reconciliation, climate change, the flag, the national anthem and all the rest when you’ve discharged your statutory responsibilities to the people.
