Collected letters

Another truckload of letters!

22/8: Concerns about food security and foreign investors buying up Australian farmland, and on proposed development in national parks by a greedy Liberal government.

Tenants in our own country

THE sale of agricultural land to foreign investors is helping to kill off family farming across Australia (“Concern as foreign buyers secure agricultural land”, The Saturday Age, 20/8). Family agricultural businesses contribute to the economic and social well-being of rural communities. Corporate agriculture by its nature cannot be as involved in rural communities as family farms.

And family farmers cannot match the deep pockets of corporate investors. The $415 million paid by the Canadian pension fund for the failed MIS property, once a number of family farms, was beyond the reach of ordinary people.

It is said that foreign investment will inject money into Australia, but by and large this is a one-off event. It is the equivalent of digging up our minerals and selling them overseas. Once the resource is gone, it is gone, with subsequent profits heading out of Australia.

Increasingly, Australians will end up working on corporate farms as employees. Foreign investment will help turn into reality the saying that we will be “tenants in our own country”.

– Linda Brownstein, Benalla

Food security is key

BILL Shorten says the buying-up of agricultural land by foreign investors poses no threat to Australia’s food security. This shows an ignorance of history. Many famines, such as the Irish famine and the Bengal famine of 1943, when 3 million people died of starvation, were caused not by a lack of food being grown in the famine areas, but because it was exported by the foreign power (Britain in both these cases) that owned the land. The protection by a government of its national food sovereignty should be paramount.

– Vicki Swinbank, Northcote

The true custodians

THE complaints from some farmers over “rural raiders” appear more to do with xenophobia than any rational concern. And the idea that farmers, after a few generations, have insights that make them custodians of the land is risible when you consider the devastation farming has wreaked on Aboriginal culture over two centuries.

– John Wallace, North Carlton

Short-term benefit

A PEAK horticulture group, Growcom, recently warned Australians not to be complacent about food security. Up to 34 per cent of fruit and 19 per cent of vegetables consumed in Australia were imported. Our food export figures are skewed by Australia’s high exports of meats and grains.

The world’s main source of phosphate rock for food production is declining in quantity and quality. Peak phosphorus is anticipated in the coming decades, after which demand will exceed supply. Our agricultural system is increasingly dependent on imported phosphate.

Predictions show global food production must double in the next 40 years to keep pace with population growth. Australia, a dry continent, has limited arable land. Contrary to what Bill Shorten says, selling off our agricultural land is about caving in to the lure of short-term benefits, and a denial of the multiple global and domestic threats to something as vital as food security.

– Ilan Goldman, Mirboo North

Some see beauty, others dollar signs

THE state government is seriously considering private development of facilities in national parks (“Cruises, hotels and huts …”, The Saturday Age, 20/8).

The proposal outlined by Mark Stone, of the Victorian Employers’ Chamber of Commerce and Industry, is an attempt to privatise national parks by offering long-term leases and removing regulations that protect natural values.

Developers and operators will no doubt be encouraged that it is the Treasurer, and not the Environment Minister, who will be considering the proposal. They also have the sympathetic Mark Stone, who portrays private investors as being unfairly disadvantaged. After getting permission to operate on public land and aware of the protections in place, a “bunch of rules and regulations” unfairly minimises their profits.

With the reintroduction of grazing in the Alpine National Park and other recent moves on natural places, the Liberal Party and its backers again demonstrate that while others see beauty, wildness and poetry, they just see a few miserable dollar signs.

– Paul Sinclair, Thornbury

Nothing is sacred

WHAT next for national parks? Nothing is sacred when there is a buck to be made. And what about the small businesses already set up around the parks that provide accommodation, dining and other services to the many visitors? These small businesses are the ones that will be really hurt by the types of developments planned for the parks, but of course they don’t matter to politicians and developers.

– Joanne Owens, Churchill

23/8: Anger over planning decisions involving the loss of the green wedges – the Liberal party has donations from property developers.

Brompton Lodge illogical inclusion

LIKE the other 180 applications to rezone green wedge land described by Planning Minister Matthew Guy as “logical inclusions” for urban growth, Brompton Lodge is better described as an illogical incursion into the green wedge (“Lib donors poised to hit paydirt”, The Age, 19/8).

This is the only property recommended for urban rezoning by the Casey Council, which to its credit opposed the 2010 rezoning of rich market garden land. The council has applied for its food bowl to be rezoned back into the green wedge but has been told this is not part of the current process, despite Mr Guy’s commitment to consider logical inclusions in both directions.

Brompton Lodge is separated from urban areas by a golf course and by land owned by a nature conservation group. It is in the path of a proposed bandicoot habitat corridor from Cranbourne Royal Botanic Gardens to The Pines Flora and Fauna Reserve in Langwarrin.

This land cannot possibly be needed for more housing: the government said the 2010 rezoning provided enough land for 25 years. The only “logical” reason for this land to be “included” is to reward political donors.

– Rosemary West, Green Wedges Coalition, Edithvale

Whatever it takes

THE call for an investigation into the government’s planning process is justified (“Watchdog to probe Libs’ rezoning”, The Saturday Age, 20/8).

Entrepreneurs have long understood the value of doing whatever it takes to achieve land rezoning. In periods of rapid growth, massive profits are guaranteed. The community has the right to expect zoning changes to be based on sound planning, environmental and social policy.

We have government departments whose job it is to advise our political leaders accordingly, but it seems they are increasingly being sidelined in favour of a rewards-based program.

While legislation won’t prevent frank corruption, it can curb the opportunity for legal but improper influence on the decision-making process. Doing away with all political donations would be a good start, but a stronger planning framework is also needed. This cash-for-favours approach is an indictment on our government and a blight on our society. It must be stopped.

– John Counsell, Dandenong

Threats to state’s food

FOLLOWING revelations that foreign buyers are securing agricultural land, readers raised fears of loss of food security (Letters, 22/8). No mention was made of the loss of 40 per cent of our fruit and vegetable-producing areas on the outskirts of Melbourne, which the Brumby government zoned residential when extending the urban growth boundary in 2009, or of the decision by the Baillieu government concerning the “logical inclusion” of green wedge land, some of it agricultural, in the “growth areas”, which will see more areas of food production morph into residential gulags.

These changes to land use pose palpable threats to Victoria’s food security as well as to our environment and biodiversity while chiefly profiting developers and the construction industry. The situation is being exacerbated by the huge population boom. Will we see food wars break out when overseas landowners begin shipping off food supplies to their homelands?

– Julianne Bell, Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc, Parkville

27/8:

Short memories

POLITICIANS have short memories, it seems. The opposition’s Brian Tee accuses Matthew Guy of riding roughshod over communities and setting a precedent for “wall-to-wall high-rises” (“Green light for St Kilda tower”, The Age, 26/8), a move that brings to mind Justin Madden’s similar contemptuous treatment of planning processes. And when in opposition, Guy said the 38-level towers planned for Box Hill would set a precedent for super high-rise development in key suburban centres from Frankston to Footscray. Now he is fulfilling his own prophesy.

While we continue to have a socially engineered “booming population”, “planning” departments will continue to use the resulting “housing shortage” as an excuse to continue to stonewall community concerns.

It’s all a circular cause and effect, and the only beneficiaries are the developers, planners, mortgage lenders and builders who have the financial power to influence processes for their own vested interests.

– Jennie Epstein, Little River

2/9: Suggestions that Australia should withdraw from the outdated Refugee Convention, which I would agree with, as the current ludicrous situation encourages people-smuggling; and more environmental vandalism from the Bailieu Government.

And the smugglers?

THE High Court decision represents an appalling failure on the part of a government which, until now, I have supported. Highly skilled and determined advocates have achieved another milestone in their long-running campaign to enable the setting up of an informal and lucrative immigration system to operate in parallel with Australia’s official and very successful program.The next step will be to make it very difficult, if not impossible, to prosecute captured people-smugglers.

Michael Pearce (Comment, 1/9) sums up the reality of the situation today (not 1954) and his suggestion that Australia withdraw from the long-outdated Refugee Convention has merit.

– Bruce Stillman, Fitzroy North

Judges way out of step

JUDGES are out of touch with reality and the community. They should be held responsible for the consequences of their actions such as: deaths as a result of illegal immigrants undertaking dangerous sea journeys; endangering naval and Customs personnel responsible for border protection; thrashing the Migration Act and destroying the sanctity of our borders; hindering orderly migration; encouraging people smugglers; depriving genuine refugees unable to pay smugglers an opportunity to resettle; and encouraging a lawyers’ picnic costing taxpayers thousands of dollars. No wonder judges have lost community respect.

Fred Menzies, North Dandenong

Act of vandalism

I WAS appalled by the Baillieu government decision to abolish fees for collecting dead trees and fallen logs in state parks (The Age, 1/9). This decision was made despite expert opinion that this will threaten 19 native bird species and some threatened reptile species. This so called “firewood” is home and habitat for native wildlife; you remove the homes, the wildlife can’t breed or shelter. Untold damage will be caused by this environment vandalism.

– Penny Guilfoyle, Newport

Growth not a must

LIKE Elise McGarvie (Letters, 1/9), I am of the generation who are unable to move out of their parents’ homes due to unaffordable and inaccessible housing. However, the solution is not increasing the density of residential suburbs. Backyards and living spaces are shrinking, and urban sprawl is threatening green wedges, coasts and farmland, under the political smokescreen of addressing the “housing shortage” in Victoria.

Successive state governments have caused, promoted and profited from manufacturing the housing “shortage”. The Melbourne 2030 plan is designed to increase our population to 5 million, and beyond. This growth causes pressure on land and housing costs, rates, and utilities. Governments create the problem and the public neatly complies by accepting population growth as inevitable – it isn’t.

– Beatrice Ortega, Heidelberg Heights

3/9: Where to house asylum seekers, when many Australian citizens can’t afford housing, the unwelcome change from houses as homes to investments, and the ugly new houses blighting many suburbs.

Asylum seekers with money to gain most

WHILE many people, including myself, appreciate the advocacy for asylum seekers by David Manne and the Legal and Immigration Centre, I suspect they have not thought through many implications of their successful High Court challenge.

Since there will now be a vastly increased number of asylum seekers, just where will they be housed if allowed into the community? I have had experience of trying to find housing for new migrants, and there is an acute lack of affordable and public housing. There is also a considerable likelihood that the number of humanitarian visas will be cut for many refugees from countries at least as deserving as Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, which appears to be where most of the “boat people” are coming from. It will again be a case of those with the money (to pay the people smugglers) who will get the greatest advantages from the new situation. Does David Manne think this is fair?

– Nigel Hungerford, Hawthorn East

Place to call home

WHEN did residential property change from being somewhere you live, love and feel secure in to being a money-making venture, inflating prices and disenfranchising future generations?

The government must remove incentives to invest in residential property – remove the 50 per cent capital gains tax exemption and the deductibility of losses against other income, limit foreign ownership, and keep superannuation money out of the residential property sector.

It is trying to encourage younger generations to invest more in superannuation but they are too busy saving for or paying off large mortgages. A gradual withdrawal of incentives would see prices remain stable and allow younger generations to buy a place to call home.

– Alan Andrews, Malvern

Architectural ulcers

MICHAEL Beahan’s call for Carbuncle Awards (Letters, 2/9) is well overdue. I agree with his example of the Princes Park extension, which looks even more ugly from within the stadium.

My suburb of Port Melbourne has been infested by big and little carbuncles over the past few years, providing many candidates for such an award. These architectural ulcers often erupt in the most beautiful places so would be easy for judges to identify.

I’m sure other neighbourhoods could provide equally sufficient numbers of deserving carbuncles; local councils could be called on as experts to assist the judges.

– Michael Hutchison, Port Melbourne

12/9:

Trees good for us

HEALTH experts are calling for more trees to be planted across Melbourne to improve air quality (The Age, 9/9). The retention of indigenous vegetation provides many benefits such as improved health and well-being, as well as supporting life. Other benefits include reducing erosion, provision of buffer zones, improving soil and water quality, retention and provision of habitat, food and water for native fauna and biodiversity. The benefits are numerous; hence the need to keep our green wedges.

I do not agree that encroachment into our green spaces is irreversible (Opinion, 10/9). If vegetation has already been cleared then replanting upper, mid and ground-storey flora, in linkages, would be ideal.

The community expects the state government to render a balanced approach to governance, making informed decisions based on current policy.

– Sandra Simpson, North Melbourne

Good work undone

NOW that we have Planning Minister Matthew Guy working on a new strategy for Melbourne, we should fear that it is not about improving our city but undoing the good planning of former Liberal premier Dick Hamer. Councils have ominously been asked to nominate changes to green wedge boundaries. The only changes should be to enhance and affirm their original purpose. What “other purposes” could be superior to the original conservation intentions of being biodiversity buffer zones so we don’t end up with an urban sea of concrete infrastructure and housing?

A review of “logical inclusions”, for landowners who think their properties should have been included in the expanded urban growth boundary of 2009, is developer logic. Tearing down and cashing in on what was holistically planned and has been an integral part of keeping Melbourne marvellous, is opportunism and myopia at its worst.

– Jenny Warfe, Dromana

14/9:

More than money

WHEN the rivers run dry, the forests are gone, the sky is always grey, the oceans are dead and the land is just a bunch of holes, is it true that we can survive on money, Gina, Twiggy and Clive? I think not.

– Lionel Arnold, Frankston

Developer’s dream

THE proposed Raw House development for Rose Street, Fitzroy, isn’t about 2030, urban densification or saving energy (“It’s just Commons sense to be green”, The Saturday Age, 10/9).

It’s about developers moving into a low-rise, residential street and imposing a six-storey building, with 12 apartments and two levels devoted to a licensed venue open until midnight seven days a week.

This isn’t a plan for a green, anti-car, urban paradise. The developers don’t want on-site car parking because they’re into cost-cutting. Their own plan anticipates the venue would attract at least 15 cars a day.

A piddling 5000-litre water tank would be installed – insufficient for a small family, let alone this commercial and residential behemoth.

There have been 26 objections so far. The development would plunge homes and gardens into darkness and escalate alcohol-fuelled violence outside Rose Street homes.

– Jill Singer, Fitzroy

15/9:

Keep city liveable

MUCH of Melbourne’s liveability status is intimately bound up with its bushland areas and green spaces. I hope the people of Melbourne can make the state government understand the importance of the woodland of the suburban fringe areas. The outer Melbourne region’s dams and weirs provide the unpolluted water the people of Melbourne drink.

Trees and other vegetation act as a natural water purifier, with the forest floor filtering mountain water that runs into the dams, keeping our water clear and pure. The region’s trees also give Melbourne its good air quality, inhaling carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen. The region provides habitat for wildlife, places for rest and leisure activities. And most importantly its forests store carbon and reduce the effects of climate change. These are just some of the myriad valuable ways green wedges assist Melbourne, the nation and the planet. We need to treasure and protect these precious natural assets.

– Steven Katsineris, Hurstbridge

21/9:

Investors favoured

THE group Australians for Affordable Housing is correct in claiming that efforts such as the federal government’s $7000 first home owner grant are “often contradictory and not effective” (“Government needs to make housing more affordable”, theage.com.au, 19/9).

However, per year, first home owner grants cost taxpayers around $1 billion, whereas negative gearing costs several billion. Negative gearing and halved capital gains have been around since 1987 and 2001 respectively, and these two nanny state “wealthfare” tax breaks are prime reasons why housing is unaffordable. Why governments prefer the interests of those who already own a first home over those who do not is beyond economic, social and utilitarian reasoning.

– John Mason, South Melbourne

Health benefits of gardens

I WAS astounded to read that some councils penalise people using spare land to grow food (“No vacancy: council’s rocketing rates sow seeds of frustration”, The Age, 20/9). The purpose of the rate increase is reportedly to discourage “land banking” and to increase the supply of housing. Surely there is a case for recognising the value of using blocks of land for growing healthy food, be it in private hands or for community groups?

Australia has the highest average house size in the world, with very limited space provided in new developments for private gardens. The mental and physical health-giving benefits of gardens and gardening are recognised around the world – hence the growing interest in school gardens, community gardens and home vegie patches.

– Richard Barley, Open Gardens Australia, Woodend

24/9: Planning issues. I now loathe Matthew Guy as much as I did the Labor Planning Minister Justin Madden.

Planning philosophy of state must change

VENTNOR is saved. Confronted by an unexpectedly savage backlash to his intervention, the Planning Minister has relented (“Baillieu hit by island debacle”, The Age, 21/9).

But this will be a real victory only if it translates into a change of philosophy by the Baillieu government, which promised an improvement on the Brumby government’s unbridled pro-development approach but gave us more of the same and worse.

We should probably be glad Matthew Guy so blithely attempted this sleight-of-hand rezoning. By riding roughshod over Bass Coast Shire’s extensively researched coastal strategy and trying to rush a decision through Parliament with only a week’s notice, he left little doubt that provision of more land for affordable housing was not the real motive.

Because The Agepublicised the issue (“Coastal council, minister at odds”, 16/9), the public had just enough time to galvanise into action. Other municipalities faced with similar threats may not be so fortunate. All communities deserve consideration. All adopted planning policies deserve to be respected.

– Rosalie Counsell, Green Wedges Coalition, Harkaway

Getting out of a jam

LET’S hope Matthew Guy has a similar change of heart regarding his decision to allow an increase in parking spaces for the Salta development in Burnley Street, Richmond (“Minister accused of meddling”, The Age, 21/9).

Unfortunately residents in our neck of the woods are neither well-heeled nor famous actors. The minister’s decision simply enables the developer to get out of a jam he created for himself by pre-selling units as having car parking spaces when they had nothing of the sort.

The developer had assumed he would get approval at VCAT for his amendment requesting approval for an increase in parking spaces. However, Yarra Council and VCAT both refused to grant the amendment. A stoush over a few car parking spaces is hardly something that warrants ministerial intervention – and further adds to the uncertainty in planning processes.

So why did the minister intervene in this trivial matter?

– John Belfrage, Richmond

Help from “well-heeled”

NOW that “well-heeled residents” able to call on support from “major Liberal players” can get planning decisions reversed (“Planning yes, but little forethought”, The Age, 23/9), it is clear we need some in the Shire of Nillumbik.

The environmental value of the area and the liveability of Melbourne are threatened by a campaign to move almost 300 hectares of green-wedge land between Diamond Creek and Eltham North into the urban area.

This land was allocated to the green wedge in 1971 after a comprehensive and wide-ranging investigation of the entire metropolitan area by the Board of Works. Before that, it was zoned as rural.

– Chris Curtis, Hurstbridge

Libs’ legacy trashed

AS A former chairman, under Coalition and Labor governments, of the National Parks Advisory Council, I am concerned that the minister would consider changing the National Parks Act 1975 to accommodate the wishes of a local member of parliament (“National park protections ‘weakened’”, The Age, 23/9).

The objects of the act are clear – areas reserved for nature conservation allow recreational use (but not extractive uses such as firewood collection) if such recreational uses are consistent with the primary objective of conservation.

National parks and other reserves come under this act of parliament precisely so that governments cannot, on a whim, change conservation and management practices.

We have had long-term bipartisan (Liberal and Labor, but notably not Nationals) support for the sanctity of the National Parks Act, which has given this state the best park and reserve system in the country.

It must be disturbing for Liberal Party supporters to see the fantastic conservation legacy of Sir Rupert Hamer and Bill Borthwick “trashed” by a government supposedly led by their liberal successors.

Associate Professor Geoff Wescott,

– Deakin University, Burwood

28/9:

We are addicted to unsustainability

THE Planning Minister is, like his predecessors, in a spot. While he probably knows he is not doing the right thing when overriding the wishes of local councils and the community, he also knows the state relies on more and more developments – high-rise, low-rise, low-density, high-density, just keep building.

Without this continuous stream of brick, concrete and glass, Victoria’s economy would look very bleak. Until we get a government with the fortitude to reshape Victoria’s economy to a more sustainable industrial and knowledge-driven export powerhouse, along with a stable population, our planning ministers will have to obey the masters in Treasury.

Meanwhile, the community has to put up with ill-considered developments all over our paved-over Garden State.

– Bernard Ellis, South Yarra