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TAG's Opening Submission to Panel Hearing—10 July 2006

Boroondara Planning Scheme Amendment C70, Tooronga Village

Presented by Paul Kaufman

Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to present an opening submission on behalf of the Tooronga Action Group. My name is Paul Kaufman and I have the privilege to be the President of the Tooronga Action Group (TAG). I believe it would be helpful to the Panel if I first explained the nature and origins of TAG.

What is the Tooronga Action Group (TAG)?

While recently incorporated to present to this Panel, TAG was founded in 1984. TAG comprises residents from the inner Tooronga area bounded by Burke, Tooronga and Anderson Roads and the Monash Freeway; including the Kaikora Avenue area West of Tooronga Road opposite Tooronga Village; and with a secondary area extending to Riversdale, Malvern and Glen Iris Roads.

Our mission is to ensure that the primary character of our neighborhood is maintained. We have brought a great deal of purpose, energy and skill to this effort over the past twenty-two years. All members of TAG give of their time voluntarily and without payment. We encompass diverse occupations, including qualified town planners, private businesspersons, lawyers, historians, accountants, business planners, journalists, public relations and media professionals, engineers, teachers, social workers, librarians, and active members of both major political parties.

We stand by our professionalism in our dealings with planning authorities and private developers now and in the past. We have gained the respect of staff in the Ministry of Planning, local Councils, VicRoads, and the media. We have successfully fielded and supported candidates in local Council elections. It is our intention to maintain this high level of professionalism.

Accomplishments of TAG

Through reasoned debate, TAG has been the catalyst in initiating various reports, studies and research initiatives into the Tooronga area. These include:

In 1991 TAG presented a comprehensive submission of over 150 pages to the Panel Hearing of the Hudson Conway Amendment (RL 137) to the Hawthorn Planning Scheme. We were formally recognised by that Panel. In its Report, the Panel overviewed our submission, stating:

"...it represents the general expressions of concern which were placed before the Panel in both the presented and un-presented personal submissions....The group was well organised and articulate, drawing upon a wide range of expertise and highlighting local concerns. The standard of documentation was excellent..."

In 2001, two members of TAG participated with two other residents as community representatives on the Tooronga Village Working Group established by Boroondara Council to develop the Urban Design Framework for Tooronga Village & the Brickworks site. It is instructive to note that the Working Group included representatives of Coles Myer, who endorsed the framework. From the community's point of view, Coles Myer is an active player in determining the future use and dimension of development for the whole Tooronga site.

We cannot claim to speak for every person who lives in the area, but the long history of TAG and its diverse membership suggests that we embody a meaningful community opinion concerning the proposed Amendment.

Our Neighbourhood

We are not uncompromising, nor do we demand an end to any and all commercial development in our area. This is an essentially middle class neighborhood with a long history and established culture that embraces the virtues of residential zoning. We are not averse to reasonable development—but reasonable development that does not insensitively conflict with the values that brought us here in the first place.

And what are those values? These days family values have become a cliché, and certainly each family has a different set of values that are meaningful to them, but have no doubt, all of us invested a great deal in this area because it allowed us to raise our families in a quiet, welcoming and safe inner suburban environment, without the intrusions and danger of large traffic flows.

There can be no guarantee that an area will maintain its essential character, and of course we recognise the need for our neighborhood to evolve, but neither should it also be subject to a plainly inappropriate scale of development. Surely this is part of the tacit contract that one enters into with local and State Government, that residents will invest in an area of their free choice and in return have the security that it remains in essence what it is.

We understand that inner-suburban neighborhoods change through gentrification, but largely this results in urban restoration and renewal. The demographics of the neighborhood change and displacement can result, but residential amenity generally improves. What we face here is something entirely different. The proposed Amendment will result in:

Lessons from the past

It is important to explain that the formation of TAG was triggered by the development of the Coles office building at Tooronga in the mid 1980's. After an initial consultation and exhibition period, community and Council approval was attained for a 29,000 sq.m. low rise office building. The subsequent implementation of a Comprehensive Development Zone saw the building increase in size by almost 60% to 46,000 sq.m., including an increase in height. This brought us into conflict with the Hawthorn City Council and the then Department of Planning and Environment, as well as the developer Hudson Conway.

At the time the planning authorities argued that this would not create a precedent for the area, yet here we are today, now debating the height of the Tooronga Village site development in relation to the adjacent building tenanted by Coles Myer, which has now achieved a status as the norm.

I will not waste your time by cataloguing the many and divergent issues that were raised in our dispute with Hudson Conway, but suffice to say they exhibited a cavalier attitude to our concerns and a disdain for the decision making of local and State Planning Authorities. I mention this for two reasons: firstly, for its historical context; secondly, because we have taken lessons from this history and we would be negligent if we did not apply them where they remain relevant. Hudson Conway failed to honour commitments made by them and on their behalf, and refused to abide by successive planning determinations, introducing newer and bigger proposals each time. Is it any wonder that we have a jaundiced view of the planning process?

Nevertheless, and to be fair, I also mention our adversarial relationship with Hudson Conway to draw a distinction with the approach and demeanor of Stockland. They have adopted a markedly more consultative attitude to the concerns of TAG, although of course we take serious issue with the substance of their responses to those concerns. And certainly we are not naive about their corporate responsibility to shareholders and the commercial reality under which they operate.

However, an acknowledgment of commercial reality does not mean we are ignorant of the pressures that companies of the scale and influence of Stockland and Coles Myer can bring to bear on government. Though it may be their task to maximize returns, it is therefore even more so the task of governmental planning authorities to ensure a fair-minded result on behalf of citizens who cannot individually exert such influence. This is not a commercial reality, but the reality of representative democracy, which ensures a voice for those who are not shareholders of a company, or rate collectors, or land owners who will benefit directly from a development. As I said, we have been down this path before.

We understand that it is the task of this Panel to ensure that any development on this site accords to planning policy applicable to this area. As such, we ask that you recognise the very reasonable concerns of the people who have to live with the consequences of whatever development is approved for the site. It may be trite but it is worth saying here: when the participants in this development have long retreated back to their board rooms and homes, and the shareholders and land owners have taken every last dollar that can be wrung from this development, we the residents will still be here, living with the consequences every day.

What will it look like?

One of the lessons we have learned from past experience is that the planning process, from tender to actual development, is a twisting road filled with obfuscation. In this regard we are very wary of the lack of built form detail accompanying this Amendment application.

It is Stockland's stated position that development issues are extraneous to this hearing, which is restricted to a rezoning application. TAG cannot accept this. We view this as a tactic to limit the involvement of the residents and the Council and avoid the usual requirement that a development plan be lodged for approval at the next stage. Stockland should provide detailed development plans in order to obtain a permit to proceed with the development, and the Council should remain as the relevant Planning Authority.

Furthermore, the third party rights of the community to respond to a future development plan must be preserved and protected. Otherwise, what assurances do we have that further "behind closed door" negotiations and lobbying of the Minister will not diminish the determination of this Panel? What assurances do we have that the scale of the development will not increase or stretch the boundaries of the planning scheme during the long development process that follows the determination of this Panel?

We can see no logical argument that would favour a different course of action, other than a cost saving to Stockland achieved at the direct expense of an enhanced planning process and the community. A Stockland employee recently said to me, in relation to the company's best intentions, that "the proof will be in the pudding". If so, they have nothing to fear from an inclusive process.

TAG Submission

In our full submission we intend to present views and analysis of the following issues as they relate to the proposed Amendment:

Given that this is an opening submission, and only a broad sketch of our full submission to be presented, I will not elaborate on each issue at this time, with one exception.

It is important to us that the Panel understands our deep concern not only for the detail of the proposed Amendment, but also for the ways it will affect the lives of residents in its immediate aftermath, and crucially, in the future. We maintain that only the residents of the area can provide this perspective, indeed that it is unique to our submission and distinguishes it from the others that will be presented here. Perhaps it is difficult to comprehend amongst the mass of details, maps, blueprints and regulation that are essential to your deliberations, but for us this is less a legal or planning process than the process of our everyday lives.

We bring to this hearing an expectation of good government as well as good corporate governance. As a conscious choice we do not project our past disappointments with the planning process into the operation of this Panel. We believe that the Panel will fully appreciate that a determination of the present worthiness of the Amendment cannot be separated from its future utility, and that the Panel understands that the decisions it makes today will endure.

We believe that in part this Panel will place itself in our shoes, and that if you should visit our neighborhood in ten or twenty or thirty years time you will be able to do so with a spirit of pride in your work and your legacy. We believe that in all the talk of car park spaces and regulations and statutory interpretation—and make no mistake we are more than happy to enter into the fray of these matters—there is also room for what is in fact the bedrock of these proceedings, namely the lives of residents, the character of the area and the effects on its future character and amenity.

Perhaps it goes without saying, but I will do so nonetheless—in our submission the utility of the proposed Amendment cannot be separated from the context of its surroundings, nor its effect on those who live in the surrounding areas, nor its ability to dramatically alter the future characteristics of the area. Any argument that the Tooronga Village Shopping Centre and the proposed residential development can be viewed in isolation is wrong as it implies that they can be sequestered from their immediate neighbourhood—our neighbourhood.

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