Wednesday, 7 February 2024

Extractive industries

Richard RIORDAN (Polwarth) (19:10): (505) My adjournment matter this evening is for the Minister for Planning, and the action I seek from the minister is for her to write a letter to me explaining recent amendment VC219, which is a planning scheme amendment that was prepared by the minister and altered again last year for extractive industries. What I would like the minister to write in this letter is what provisions she has made – or the Department of Transport and Planning has made – for existing households and landowners who are currently adjacent to an extractive industry site.

We all know that we are in a bit of a resource crisis here in Victoria and that we very much need building materials, whether it is rock, sand, gravel or whatever it may be. In this case it is actually an important sand mine in my electorate. The matter that is now affecting my community is that while these homes and houses have been in place for 30, 40 or 50 years and have coexisted quite well with the sand mining operation, the residents are now aware that there is a new overlay process, and these overlays are becoming a little bit of a weapon of choice of this government. Rather than dealing with issues of the day, they put overlays on them. These overlays across my electorate have affected people adjacent to wind farms, they have affected people adjacent to the Big Housing Build homes and now they are affecting people adjacent to extractive industries, and in this case the sand mine.

The question that, hopefully, the minister will answer when she writes her letter to me is: if there is a bushfire – and in this case the sand mine is in a bushfire-prone area – and these homes are affected by fire and people suffer the loss of a home, will they in fact be able to rebuild their home? This is an important question, because as it currently stands the sand mining company has the ability to override and refuse a permit for any building works whatsoever within 500 metres of their boundary. This affects some 65 homes in my electorate immediately adjacent to this.

It is really important to know, and in the letter that the minister will write I hope she can highlight to me what planning has been made for this and what advice the minister has received on how to deal with events that are beyond the control of the neighbours but that will greatly affect them, because it is an untenable situation that someone could lose their home through no fault of their own and then have no capacity to rebuild because a third party then wants to stop them. So I really look forward to receiving that letter for my constituents.