Out of bounds

By Melissa Meehan
GREENS Candidate Neil Rankine has slammed the State Government’s new suburban Growth Area Boundary describing it as an intrusion into what should be Melbourne’s Food Bowl.
The Bass candidate said the expansion of suburbia into prime, high yield, cropping country, was offensive to local farmers and the community’s ideals for liveable suburbs.
He said the government proposed to expand the Growth Area Boundary into an area bounded by Thompsons Road, Cardinia Creek, Ballarto Road, Manks Road and the South Gippsland Highway.
“This represents the longest new tongue of growth from Melbourne into an area that has no existing infrastructure and as such goes against the Government’s Melbourne 2030 policy,” Mr Rankine said.
“That policy involved maintaining Green Wedges to both protect agricultural and environmental land values and at the same time expand urban growth only in appropriate areas.”
After spending part of his youth living in the South Eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Mr Rankine observed the market gardens around Moorabbin being swallowed up by suburban housing and said he was concerned that suburbia was encroaching on what should be preserved.
“Farmers cannot run their businesses when rates are going through the roof due to land re-zoning and when residents of new properties nearby start objecting to noise, smell or other everyday operation of their businesses,” he said.
“Farmers once had certainty around what was going to happen on the land surrounding their enterprise, now they can’t be so sure.”
Mr Rankine said the answer to Melbourne’s growing population was to concentrate growth in areas that already had good transport.
“We need to sensibly develop the land in the suburbs where people are already happy to live in smaller houses, who don’t necessarily have a car,” he said.
“We could fit an awful lot of people in those areas for a couple of decades without needing to increase the growth area boundary.”
The State Government did not provide comment to the Gazette before going to print.