The suburban towers being green-lit without community approval
The Allan government has frequently wielded its strengthened powers to bypass local councils and fast-track developments, directly approving 11 major residential projects this year alone as it seeks to speed up new approvals and meet ambitious housing targets.
This and other planning reforms centralising power have drawn the ire of councils, who argue community needs are not being adequately addressed.
The Greensborough apartment project was green-lit through the government's Development Facilitation Program (DFP), which allows Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny to bypass councils if a project makes a significant contribution to the economy or includes affordable housing, under changes made in September 2023.
The minister can also waive mandatory planning requirements related to building height, setbacks and garden areas. Decisions made by the minister under the provisions cannot be appealed to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT).
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Kilkenny last month approved the tower, in Melbourne's north-east, which permits construction of more than 200 one- and two-bedroom apartments.
The homes, to be built above a Savers shop on Para Road, will be operated and managed by a community housing provider offering rental homes to people on low to moderate incomes.
'This project will ensure hundreds of Victorians will be able to live close to the things that matter to them – living in walking distance to the train station, buses, parks, schools, shops and services,' Kilkenny said.
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"I am not going to respond to the individual recommendations or the report as a whole through individual questions at a press conference. "That would not do justice to the years and years of work and evidence." Yoorrook held 67 days of public hearings, gathering the testimony of Stolen Generations survivors, elders, historians, experts and non-Indigenous advocates. It found there were at least 50 massacres across Victoria by the end of the 1860s, with eight colonists killed compared to 978 First Nations people. The mass killings combined with disease, sexual violence, exclusion, eradication of language, cultural erasure, environmental degradation, child removal, absorption and assimilation brought about the "near-complete physical destruction" of Aboriginal people in Victoria. The "decimation" of the population by 1901 was the result of "a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups". 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‘Woke' Allan government continues on ‘desperate path' towards Voice treaty
Sky News host Danica De Giorgio discusses the 'most woke government' in the country wanting to divide Australians by race. A report on Victoria's four-year truth telling inquiry has been tabled in parliament – and has delivered 100 recommendations for Indigenous Victorians, including cash compensation and a formal apology. 'We might just be about to find out what the Allan government is prepared to freely give away and give up – all at the expense of taxpayers – as part of its ongoing, desperate path to treaty,' Ms De Giorgio said. 'Let's be honest, if this big push for funding goes ahead, who is going to pay for it? The Victorian taxpayer of course.'
