THE news, late last week, that the State Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny will introduce an amendment to the Bass Coast Shire Council Planning Scheme, removing the offending EAOs from affected Wonthaggi land each time they are cleared of contamination risk, is an important concession.
It’s an admission that the government stuffed up, through its statutory planning arm, the Victorian Planning Authority, in gazetting environmental overlays on more than 600 blocks of titled land in the town in the first place.
Many of those sites have long since been built on, cleared all the way through the planning and building process at the time, only to be pulled back into the abyss of uncertainty by a retrospective planning decision.
It’s mostly the government’s fault, so they should also pick up the tab for the environmental assessments, so far costing Bass Coast ratepayers $41,020 plus GST.
But the Bass Coast Shire Council also dropped the ball, in August 2022, when they didn’t go public after the draft Amendment 152 came out making it clear the VPA intended to introduce widespread overlays, and then again, in January 2024, when the council failed to act.
They didn’t even know what had happened for more than three months.
Distracted by everything from whether the Cowes Cultural Centre should be called Mogarmarlarly Murk, Barmewoon or Berninneit, to whether the council had given enough of a leg up to ex-Mayor Cr Michael Whelan’s favourite community group, Totally Renewable Phillip Island, or whether they’d made enough progress on their Gender Equality Action Plan or Climate Change Action Plan; they failed to attend to the basics of compliance.
But, unchastened by the experience, the council was at it again last week, setting up a private company that will “foster a sustainable legacy for future generations” and not necessarily within the shire’s own boundaries.
At the same day as they were setting up their public Environment Fund as an example for others to follow, none of the councillors we spoke to could say what changes, if any, had been made to the shire’s most important document of the year, the 2024-25 budget, in response to community submissions.
This present council may be in the twilight of its four-year term, but the radical climate change emergency activists amongst them, including Michael Whelan, David Rooks and Leticia Laing, can still make far-reaching decisions that will saddle future councils with costs and policy settings in the months that remain.
What the other councillors need to do is ignore their rhetoric, stay in their lane and make sure they are handing over a shire that is in the best possible shape financially, while ensuring progress has been made on all priority areas including but not limited to housing.
