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Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has unveiled her full plan to transform Melbourne by permitting up to 60 high-rise precincts built around public transport hubs like railway stations and major road junctions.

Moreover, she has announced that to achieve this, developers will not be bound by existing restrictions on high-rise apartments imposed by local councils.

All this has been done without genuine consultation with either local government or residents.

There are important social reasons, particularly for families, for preferring homes rather than apartments, particularly when the needs of children are considered. This article will not consider these, but will discuss the way that the Allan Government is imposing high-rise living on Victorians.

Changing Victoria

The plan will allow buildings of up to 16 storeys in areas where most buildings currently have fewer than four. The plan is to build up to 300,000 high-rise apartments, turning much of Melbourne into what you see in places like Shanghai or Hong Kong.

Allan’s high-rise plan will ultimately change Melbourne from a city of stand-alone homes into one dominated by high-rise apartments, with all the social problems and anti-family characteristics of such an environment.

According to the Herald Sun, the government’s high-rise housing plan is “part of its target of having 800,000 new homes built in Melbourne within a decade”.

It added: “Eligible developments within new zones will be ‘deemed to comply’ with planning rules and be exempt from review at Victoria’s Civil and Administrative Tribunal.”

The developments must also include “social housing” for low-income people and the unemployed, creating a real risk that these high-rise buildings will become the slums of tomorrow.

It is ironical that the Allan Government that is pushing this plan is simultaneously in the process of demolishing high-rise apartment blocks in inner-city areas which are now deemed to be unfit for human habitation.

The Victorian Government is attempting to sell the project through its online consultative agency, called Engage Victoria. In the guise of “consultation”, it is trying to mitigate the widespread opposition to its plan by saying that it is consulting the community, councils, and the building and construction industry. But a reading of the relevant web page on the Engage Victoria website shows that the plans have already been made, and are now being implemented.

The Victorian Premier has described the plan to build massive high-rise apartments around major transport hubs as a solution to the problem of a lack of affordable housing. What she is proposing, however, will radically increase the population of the inner city, putting increased pressure on existing infrastructure, and make apartment living the only alternative for hundreds of thousands of people, including low-income families.

Existing planning laws, which protect both existing owners in the area and the residents of these properties, are to be bypassed, which will guarantee shonky construction and huge profits for developers.

Overspending

It is interesting to note that the Allan Government’s signature infrastructure project, called Victoria’s Big Build, is mired in allegations of overspending and corruption. The suburban North East Link, originally estimated to cost $10 billion, is now $10 billion over budget.

The West Gate Tunnel, linking the western suburbs with the city, was originally estimated at $5.5 billion, but is now estimated at over $10 billion. And the Metro Tunnel, involving new railway stations and lines in inner-city Melbourne, was estimated at $14 billion, and is now approaching $16 billion.

No one has been held accountable for this massive overspend.

One commentator said: “The response of Premier Jacinta Allan – who held the infrastructure portfolio under her predecessor Daniel Andrews – was limp beyond belief. She announced that a new taskforce would be ‘established’ – her word – to investigate the new allegations; it turns out the taskforce has been operating for nine months.”

He added: “Victorian Labor is incapable of effectively dealing with the entry of organised crime… which has managed to capture the Victorian Government and use it to deliver power and funding.”

There is nothing to stop the same thing happening with Labor’s planned high-rise apartments, and the inevitable escalation of land prices which will accompany it, particularly as these new projects are specifically exempt from existing building regulations.

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Republished with thanks to News Weekly. Image courtesy of Adobe.