Thursday, 17 October 2024

Preston activity centre

Nathan LAMBERT (Preston) (17:21): (874) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Planning, and the action I seek is for the minister to join me in a visit to central Preston to discuss the Preston activity centre. As the minister knows, there is a strong recognition in our community that Melbourne needs over time to become a little less like Los Angeles and a little bit more like Berlin. It is a simple fact that we currently live in a city that is one of the most sprawling and car-dependent in the world, and we do not want a future in which the only affordable options for young people or young families are 70 or 80 kilometres away from their workplaces in the centre of the city. If we think about what we do want for the next generation, it is that we want them to spend less time commuting, not more, and ideally we certainly want them to spend less time commuting in their cars.

That brings us to Preston Central. It is on the Mernda line. It has good bus routes. It has the Northern Pipe Trail for those who ride into the city. It does have quite a number of local jobs, as many activity centres do, notably jobs in government – in the Darebin City Council of course and the state government offices on High Street – but also a lot of jobs in retail, education and other fields. And of course it is relatively close and is accessible to the very large Northland precinct, which is a major employment area in the north.

We support more housing in Preston Central for those reasons, noting that it will be entirely within the heights already set out by Darebin council through their structure planning process. There will be no change to them. They max out at 10 storeys at Woolworths and on the non-residential parts of Mary Street, just with the single longstanding exception at Preston Market, where there has been permission since 2017 to go to 14 storeys.

The only thing that could or might change on the height front is the proposal for six storeys in the so-called catchment area. On that matter I think it is important for residents to remember that heights in residential zones are mainly governed by the overshadowing and overlooking requirements, and they will continue to be protected by them. There will be no change to them. They typically limit heights to two storeys. The only way you could ever go to six would be if you had a huge block of 2000 square metres or something. I can think of only one in the entire area – that might be the Bell Motel, were it to be developed – but otherwise we will not see buildings beyond the heights enforced by the overshadowing requirements.

There has been some talk about notice and appeal rights. I understand the only likely changes there would be to stop people appealing things that would never have succeeded at VCAT anyway. Currently you can appeal a 1-metre-high shack on the property next door. Of course VCAT does not uphold those appeals, because that is fully compliant with the residential code. That is the only kind of appeal that would then be unsuccessful. There are other important matters to discuss, with regard to open space, green space, parking and other matters, and we look forward to, if possible, the minister coming out to hear community feedback on those fronts.