Peter Rolfe reporting on the end of our 10-year bid to redevelop the Keysborough Golf Course, build them a brand-new course 2km away, and gift a 70ha regional sporting facility to the community.
As usual, I didn’t pull any punches…
Mr Shifman said the government had lost a golden opportunity to build new homes and sporting fields where they were desperately needed.
“You see all the politicians out there opening little upgrades, a tennis court or building a new cricket pitch or something like that,’’ he said.
“And you’ve got this once in a generation chance to build a regional scale facility at no cost to the state government … it became about planning ideology.
“It was as simple as ‘we will not change the urban growth boundary come hell or high water. We think it’s the perfect line on the map and all future growth for a city must happen within those limits as they were set 20 something years ago’.’’
The Herald Sun this year revealed the government had threatened to strip councils of their planning powers if they fail to meet ambitious 2051 housing targets.
But Mr Shifman said the government was turning away affordable housing because of its “obsession with an urban growth boundary’’.
“It’s based on a misunderstanding of what the urban growth boundary was there to do, which was to guidedevelopment rather than be a barrier to it happening anywhere else,’’ he said.
“It’s never succeeded to be held in this way in any major growing city in the world for as long as it has and I think Victorians are feeling the impact of that.
“One of the reasons we don’t have enough land is because we’re not unlocking any more of it.
“And instead of building new facilities to accommodate a very rapidly growing population, we’re trying to consolidate everything into the existing fabric.’’
If our friends in government they’ve protected something valuable, this is why #housingsupply and #affordability will never improve in Victoria.
The more nothing changes, the more things stay the same…. utter madness.