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Callout for art to help ‘save’ green wedge
No brush off: David Gill takes off his councillor’s hat in favour of an artist’s beret when he paints for “my own enjoyment”. His series of “geometric abstraction acrylics in flat plane style” is titled “Seasonal perspectives of the Mornington Peninsula Green Wedge”. Picture: Yanni
THE Mornington Peninsula can mean many things to many people. The 2016 census puts the peninsula’s population at 150,000, but the number on the ground is often much greater. Thousands visit on a daily basis all year and, over summer, the number of people staying overnight or for days at a time is in the tens of thousands. But what attracts these people - residents and visitors - is under threat. Planning regulations decreed by state legislators seem to regard the peninsula’s towns and villages in much the same way as that of Melbourne’s inner suburbs, allowing for higher buildings and more dense development. Outside of the towns and villages, in the peninsula’s so-called hinterland, the march of development over prime agricultural land is supposedly protected by green wedge zoning. But that too is under threat. Mornington Peninsula Shire last week held a “summit” to draw attention to the weakening of planning regulations and how this threatens green wedge-zoned areas, which are credited with being among the peninsula’s biggest attractions. As well as spending a day talking about the problem, the shire is looking for support from artists who draw inspiration from areas within the green wedge. Cr David Gill, who heads the art and culture community advisory panel, is urging “local artists, including students through to professionals”, to enter the 2018 Green Wedge Paint Out Exhibition. “We wish the world to know what a unique and important place the peninsula is and ask artists to showcase the many wonderful aspects of our green wedge rural and environmental areas of significance, which need to be protected from insensitive development,” Cr Gill said. Artists can register by Saturday 14 July and then take until early August to complete their work. Details are on the shire’s website under “art and culture” and Green Wedge Paint Out Exhibition or call 5950 1655. Keith Platt
Parties urged to reveal policies Stephen Taylor steve@mpnews.com.au POLITICAL parties have been called on to release their green wedge and planning policies to re-affirm the protection of green wedge zones well before the November state election. RMIT University’s Professor Michael Buxton told last week’s Mornington Peninsula Green Wedge Summit that planning and population management was a “hot issue impact-
ing on the community”. He said some of Victoria’s most important environmental assets, such as the green wedge zones, would face increasing pressures. “Greater Melbourne’s population explosion highlights the strategic value of the decisions taken in the 1960s to create the green wedges and, also, the importance of bipartisan support for strengthening long term planning controls,” Prof Buxton, who is regarded as one of Australia’s most respected planning commentators, said.
“Although green wedges are set aside as non-urban land through the planning scheme, they are subject to intense pressures for urban development and change.” Prof Buxton said these competing pressures included urban development, hobby farms, tourism, intensive agriculture and infrastructure, all exacerbated by the green wedge areas’ closeness to metropolitan Melbourne. “Green wedge zones are increasingly being recognised for their major contribution to community health and
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Shire – a quarter of those available – an automatic right to build new, or renovate existing, homes into three storey “McMansions” in low-scale townships and coastal villages. “The high use of general residential zoning in urban areas, at 76 per cent, will increasingly lead to multi-unit development with even greater impact on vegetation, road congestion and lowering of existing residential amenity and environment – the very reason people had made the location their home,” he said. Continued Page 5
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wellbeing as development pressures dramatically increase living densities in residential areas with the abolition of local planning laws,” he said. “In the case of greater Melbourne and Victoria, the Mornington Peninsula Green Wedge is a major health, agriculture, tourism and employment asset.” Prof Buxton criticised the state government for last year - “without any notice” - changing planning regulations to allow the owners of 24,000 housing sites in Mornington Peninsula
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