BendigoWeekly www.bendigoweekly.com.au
ISSUE 1065 FRIDAY, APRIL 13, 2018
LAND GRAB DEFIANT: Max Carter. Photo: BRENDAN McCARTHY
Farmers set to lose 300 hectares
By SHARON KEMP
A 16-year battle over 311 hectares of Marong farmland this week became a classic Australian movie plotline featuring compulsory acquisition and a land owner defiantly withstanding pressure to sell. But this time the City of Greater Bendigo dramatically raised the stakes by declaring central Victoria’s economic future was at risk if it failed to convert land the Carter family has farmed for more than
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100 years to industrial use as a business park. Chief executive Craig Niemann said local manufacturers were telling council they were ready to plough in millions of dollars in capital investment, and they wanted to spend in Bendigo, but there was no suitable land available. He said they had been patient
for 16 years but they may have to look elsewhere to expand. Councillors will vote next Wednesday whether to apply to planning minister Richard Wynne for an overlay that will start the process of compulsory acquisition of the land. Landowner Max Carter said he was fairly sure councillors would
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do just that, making it another step in the process that had failed to treat him and wife Pauline fairly. “They haven’t done the right thing at all, they have done the wrong thing all the way,” Mr Carter said, referring to the four sets of councillors he had dealt with through the years. He said he had heard from none
of the existing councillors and had attempted to contact them by email but had received no response. “It looks like councillors who are only in for one term are going to take down a 100-year business,” Mr Carter said. Mr Niemann said the council had acted with integrity when it sent by letter in early 2018 a monetary offer for the land based on an independent valuation.
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