News
Nillumbik Council: our 2024 voting recommendations
The last election, in 2020, saw the election of five new councillors in Nillumbik, replacing much of the pro-development, anti-green wedge 2016 council. That council was dominated by Peter Clarke, and it imposed wholesale, reactionary change in the council...
One shire, thirty six candidates..
Local government elections are coming up. Thirty six candidates are standing in total for Nillumbik’s seven single-member wards
The last Council didn’t listen to the community. Let’s hope this one does.
Earlier this year, Nillumbik Council conducted its ‘Our People, Our Place, Our Future’ community engagement program. To the credit of our community, some 3,000 of us did engage. It asked us what was most important to the future of the Shire. Responses were related to...
A Plan for Nillumbik
Newly elected Councils are required by the Local Government Act to produce a ‘Council Plan’. We suppose the intent of this legislated requirement is to make councils accountable to their electorates. It can define a policy re-set...
The new Nillumbik Council faces a challenge
Having elected a Council with a majority sympathetic to responsible management of our green wedge shire, we anticipated that steps would be taken to immediately set to work addressing carried over problems and reversing the...
One shire, seventy nine candidates..
Council elections are coming up. Ballots will be posted out all over the State from October 6, and votes must be put in the mail by October 23. Candidate nominations are complete, and while there are regions in the State with electorates with zero nominations, that is...
Chapel Lane: it’s amateur hour..
he violation of the green wedge at Chapel Lane, Doreen continues, despite Nillumbik councillors unanimously agreeing that the fill dumping there is ‘illegal’. How can that be? This is a bad news story which has implications beyond the fill dumping...
Zone abuse: Clarke faction does it again
The story so far: Council receives an application for a permit to build a 150 seat restaurant at 103 Bannons Lane, Yarrambat. Council officers produce a recommendation that it should proceed. We previously wrote about this here. Cr Brooker ‘calls it in’ for...
Nillumbik Council agrees on failure..
In a rare moment of unanimity, last week all seven Nillumbik Councillors agreed that the Council had failed on Chapel Lane. You’ll recall we covered that continuing disaster in a previous newsletter, No need for a permit: Dump it in the Nillumbik Green Wedge. Brief...
150 Seat Restaurant threatened for the Green Wedge in Yarrambat
Nillumbik Council planners are recommending the approval of an application to build a restaurant at 103 Bannons Lane, on land zoned Rural Conservation in Yarrambat. Cr Grant Brooker has ‘called it in’, meaning Council itself will consider the application – at its...
No need for a permit: Dump it in the Nillumbik Green Wedge!
Development projects all over Melbourne generate large amounts of unwanted fill – soil of variable quality (who knows what’s in it?) – which must be disposed of. Ideally not too far away, preferably inside the Metropolitan area to reduce transport costs. Here’s a...
The Economy of Nillumbik
With the Corona virus first and foremost in our minds everything else seem less important, but that does not mean other things are not still important, and of course many of us now have more time to think about them. The Nillumbik Council has published a ‘Draft...
An important election year in Nillumbik
Council elections are held every four years in Victoria, and 2020 is an election year. They are due in October, by which time we hope and expect the Covid-19 crisis will have passed. There’s a lot at stake this year in Nillumbik. 2016 saw the emergence of lobby group...
GWMP Adopted, no cigar..
Nillumbik’s first GWMP was adopted in 2010 and was intended to serve as a basis until 2025. For reasons never explained the current Nillumbik Council decided to prepare a replacement, which after a year-long project was formally adopted by Council at its November...
Council v Nillumbik
Now that community comments on the draft Green Wedge Management Plan have been made and heard by Council we’re waiting to find out what the Council will decide to do with it. After such an extensive and public project to get us to this point, what has been achieved?...
A Wynne for the Green Wedge
Remember Manningham’s C117? This was the Planning Scheme amendment proposed by the Council containing a revised clause 21.07, aiming to facilitate more tourist development in the Rural Conservation zone. Poorly drafted, inimical to the green wedge and facing solid...
A plan that threatens our green wedge
After an extensive program of community consultation the Nillumbik Council has produced a draft replacement green wedge management plan (GWMP) for the Shire. Serious reservations have been expressed about this document, notably that it doesn’t actually reflect the...
Manningham rejects Planning Panel report
“C117 was a threat to the green wedge. The Planning Panel did a first class job of identifying its problems and flaws. The officers’ report continues to push it, in a wordy document the intent of which is clear but the arguments not. We will find out at the next...
Manningham persists with C117
We previously reported that the C117 Planning Panel properly supported the essential purposes of the green wedge in its treatment of the threat posed by Manningham Council’s amendment. The Panel rejected the problematic part of the amendment, namely the revised MSS,...
Council Contemplates Panel Recommendations
The GWMP Community Panel delivered its recommendations to Council at the November meeting of Council, on 27/11. The report containing the recommendations was presented by Panel members Yolanda Silveri and Wayne Kinrade. In receiving the recommendations the...
C117 Panel Report Stuns!
The C117 Planning Panel’s report has been released by the Manningham Council. It turns out to be a major win for community involvement and for the values of the green wedge in the face of the usual commercial pressures. It is also evidence that the system can work as...
Community Panel Supports the Green Wedge
The Nillumbik Council has put a significant community focus on its refresh of its Green Wedge Management Plan (GWMP). Following an extensive series of informal and formal community meetings the culmination was the employment of a ‘community panel’ in a process called...
C117: Magical Mystery Tour
Planning Panels Victoria conducted its hearing on C117 over three days from October 10th. Warrandyte was there in force, with six submitters, including four associated with the WCA. The WCA was also represented by resident barrister and friend of the green wedge,...
Community Panel attacked by councillor’s lobby group
The 43 Nillumbik residents selected to serve on the ‘Community Panel’ first got together on the evening of August 9, tasked with addressing the question: “What is the best way for us to manage Nillumbik’s Green Wedge now and in the future?” In other words, to...
Whose PALS are they?
PALS, for Pro Active LandownerS, is a Facebook group which was ‘set up by a local landowner Karen Egan, which originated from the lack of representation of landowners within the council of Nillumbik’ These people are not shy in putting themselves forward. Recently a...