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The latest: a State-led, DFP-facilitated rezoning process for “underutilised land”, with EOIs running for potential suitable projects starting immeditely.
⌛I can attest to the unnecessarily lengthy rezoning process in Victoria, with Intrapac having successfully rezoned land in Lilydale (5+ years) and Bundoora (7 years). Both sites being logical, high-priority, uncontroversial infill sites, simply weighed down by excruciating local Council and State referral processes and red tape.
We did not need another “process” to be invented to solve this issue. The Minister for Planning/Department of Transport and Planning have had the powers to do this for a long time, if they were of a mind to.
The announcement is also notable for what it covers as much as what it does not.
The media telegraphs this as being suitable for golf courses, race courses, excess university land, and the like, where already held up in long planning processes.
🚫It specifically excludes: • Land in identified precincts • Significant industrial land/land identified in the MICLUP • Green Wedge • Land already inside the UGZ, where a PSP is not completed • Land with major constraints (contamination, flood, bushfire, biodiversity, heritage etc.)/requiring an EES
The sum total: a tiny handful of potentially eligible sites.
My quotes from Sarah Petty’s article:
——- Developer Intrapac property chief executive Max Shifman warned the eligibility requirements and process were likely to limit the rezoning initiative to a small number of sites across Victoria.
“[It] would apply to a handful of sites within metro Melbourne, such as a few golf courses, given the extensive exclusions,” Shifman said. “Smaller industrial sites across Melbourne aren’t, for the most part, worth rezoning in Melbourne currently due to their high value, thanks to limited supply and the windfall gains tax.
“[It’s] an incremental positive, but huge opportunity lost to look more closely and critically at land supply for employment and housing purposes in well-serviced areas across greater Melbourne and regional areas.”
He added that this initiative showed the Victorian government wasn’t yet serious enough about moving away from the “status quo” and “actually delivering more new land supply for housing or employment uses in places people want or can afford it.”
🤔The cynic in me see this more as an attempt to receive Windfall Gain Taxes faster, rather than a measure to materially increase #feasible and #attainable housing. Thoughts?
Don’t worry, problem solved, everyone. 🙃