I can feel your eyes glaze over but please bear with me. Planning is important because it shapes the world we live in, how we live our lives now and into the future.
On Phillip Island, particularly over the last few years, we have seen an incremental and accelerating erosion of what makes living and visiting here special. Inevitably living in a tourist hotspot, there is conflict between residents who wish to maintain the ‘feel’ of where they live and developers’ demands for greater development and higher densities. Inadequate, or outdated, planning schemes can cause areas to lose their unique character until one place looks like any other and Phillip Island ends up looking like a Melbourne suburb. To put it bluntly, who wants to holiday in a suburb by the sea, except to visit the penguins?
To grow our tourist economy, we need people to come and stay and for that to happen Phillip Island must retain its unique beauty and character. Poor planning decisions will kill the golden tourist goose. Undoubtedly, planning in areas like Phillip Island is challenging, requiring a balancing act between looking after residents’ needs and the environment, while supporting a tourist economy.
A critical question that planning must address is how much can we develop and what type of buildings can we build without losing the character and charm of Phillip Island? As a consequence, Bass Coast Shire planners must have an overview of what the community should look like in years to come, how much development should occur, the location of services, social housing and open space and – most importantly – maintaining or enhancing, the quality of life for the ratepayers, the people who pay the planners’ salaries.
That is what a planning scheme should do, but I’m sure that there are many of us who feel let down. Patchy, piecemeal planning Without a coordinated overview, development happens in a patchy, piecemeal fashion and can lead to a loss of privacy, lack of services, homes being overshadowed, over-crowded roads, and inadequate parking. And much more. At the very least, poor planning leaves people frustrated with their council. At worst, it can result in people feeling unsafe in their homes.
Recently someone in Surf Beach felt forced to sell their home of many years due to the stress of a huge wind turbine (Click for more info) being erected next to them because the current planning scheme could not prevent it. This is not acceptable. In comparison to the planning schemes of Surf Coast and Mornington Peninsula, the Bass Coast Shire scheme does not appear to have been greatly tailored to address the special needs of areas of environmental and economic importance, but has tended to stay in close step with the State legislation.
But a one size fits all scheme is not appropriate for Phillip Island. Our planning scheme must be responsive to changes in demographics and embrace new technologies such as electric vehicles, while addressing climate change. The planning scheme should use clear and concise language, not only because it makes it easier for people to understand but helps council make quick and effective decisions on applications. Importantly if a council decision is challenged, clear language makes it easier to defend their position at VCAT, something Bass Coast has not been doing well over the last few years. Once a council decision has been overturned at VCAT, it sets a precedent that other developers can capitalise on.
Over the next few articles Island Voice will look at some of these issues and contrast how the Bass Coast, the Mornington Peninsular and the Surf Coast Planning schemes handle them. Our shire is due to review the scheme this year, following the release of the State Government’s last round of community consultation on the Distinctive Area and Landscapes (DAL) project – set for early 2022 – which will guide future land use. Island Voice wants to get you talking and thinking about these issues and what we can do about them to ensure we get the best outcome. Next week we will start with the issue of parking waivers.
