Wonthaggi planning fiasco to be debated in parliament

THE Wonthaggi planning fiasco, where more than 600 homes and building blocks in the town had highly-restrictive environmental overlays retrospectively imposed on them in January this year, will be debated in State Parliament.

The issue qualified for debate after 2264 people signed a hard-copy petition and 2050 signed an online petition calling on the government, as a matter of urgency, “to immediately rescind the decision to retrospectively blight the properties of hundreds of owners in the Wonthaggi North East Precinct Structure Plan locality with the newly introduced Environmental Audit Overlay”.

The petitions were presented in the Legislative Council on Thursday, June 20 by Eastern Victoria MP Renee Heath.

Speaking in parliament while presenting the petitions, Dr Heath called on the government to agree to debate the issue, as the threshold of 2000 signatures had been met.

“As this is a petition qualifying for debate under standing order 11.03, I give notice that I intend to move ‘That this petition be taken into consideration’ on Wednesday of next sitting week,” said Dr Heath.

Council President Shaun Leane agreed.

“The petition will be listed on the notice paper for debate during petitions qualifying for debate,” said Mr Leane.

It could be that the debate will be held as early as Wednesday, July 31, in the next sitting week for the parliament.

However, by then all of the EAOs may have been removed after the Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny agreed to introduce amendments to the shire’s planning scheme, to remove the overlays from all affected blocks once they were cleared of the risk of contamination by the Preliminary Risk Screen Assessment (PRSA) process presently underway.

While the first of these overlays was removed on Friday, June 21, Ms Heath asked her question in parliament on Tuesday.

“After I asked this question in Parliament yesterday (Tuesday, June 18), the government have today just announced that they’re removing the Wonthaggi North-East precinct overlay from 114 properties,” said Dr Heath.

“It’s a great start, but they need to go further. They need to entirely remove this environmental audit overlay now.

“The families living here need to be unburdened from this unfair and unjust blight on their properties which has the potential to cost them tens of thousands of dollars in unnecessary permits and is costing them untold amounts of stress.”

Here’s the question Dr Heath asked in the Legislative Council last Tuesday, June 18:

Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria): My question is for the Minister for Planning. Minister, my constituents in Wonthaggi north-east precinct have been traumatised and dismayed by the government’s placement of a retrospective environmental audit overlay across 5000 blocks of land and 500 occupied properties. Since being made aware of this overlay, around 114 properties have undergone preliminary risk screen assessments, and those undertakings have been done at their own expense. Every single one of those 114 properties has been cleared, with no further action required. Minister, will you remove this blight from these properties immediately and provide some certainty to the owners, and will you commit to acting in a similar manner toward any properties that are assessed as not requiring further investigation?