SAVE WILLIAMSTOWN
SAVE WILLIAMSTOWN
Report witheld to 'profit rich men', says Save Williamstown group - updated
Hobsons Bay Weekly
BY GOYA DMYTRYSHCHAK
30 May, 2012 12:00 AM
“THE Save Williamstown group has accused Planning Minister Matthew Guy of withholding a report for 18 months because he knew its contents would stymie Liberal heavyweight Ron Walker's residential development at Williamstown.
Mr Guy last week rejected a recommendation in the Ports and Environs advisory committee report to impose a ports environs overlay (PEO) over the Port Phillip Woollen Mill site.
Evolve Development, half owned by Mr Walker, is part of a company planning to build more than 400 dwellings (NOW 800) including four (Now THREE) towers at the site, which is near Mobil's fuel tank farm.
Mobil supplies about half of Victoria's fuel.
Last year, Mr Guy rejected another advisory committee's recommendation to cap building heights on the entire mill site.
State Williamstown MP Wade Noonan criticised Mr Guy's rejection of the Ports advisory committee's recommendation to put a PEO over the whole mill site.
"They're saying that there should be a more cautious approach taken in relation to simple things like how do you evacuate more than 1000 people, potentially, from a series of towers," Mr Noonan said. "It doesn't make any sense to me to put the biggest, most highly intensive development within an area that this Ports and Environs advisory committee report is now saying you should not do."
Save Williamstown spokesman Godfrey Moase said every day the report's recommendations weren't implemented was another day the community remained at risk. "Apparently the operations of the Point Gellibrand major hazard facility don't deserve to be taken into account in the decision-making process for a major development in Williamstown," he said.
"Never before have I seen a state government actually put the lives of residents at risk by ignoring the advice of its own experts so that a handful of rich men can make additional profits.
"The level of disregard for the safety of our community the minister has displayed is personally upsetting."
Evolve managing director Ashley Williams dismissed Mr Moase's comments as nonsense...
...He said Mr Guy had been forced to choose between two different recommendations for the site and had imposed a design and development overlay (DDO), which imposed "far more rigid and demanding controls than proposed under the ports environs overlay".
"[Mr Guy] quite clearly says ... 'I've acted on the advice of another advisory committee and put in place far more stringent requirements in a DDO.'
"The controls we've got on the site are quite cumbersome and respond to the extensive submissions made to both advisory committees.
"This is just more misleading anti-development propaganda from Save Williamstown......”
Note by SW
How are Mr Guy and Mr WIlliams going to explain what they said in 2012 if there is a catastrophic incident which ends up with community casualties and with a Royal Commission investigating why this planning went SO WRONG.... This requirement was NOT more stringent Mr Williams and is was NOT what the PPWM Advisory Committee recommended. In fact they said a skin of business commercial light industrial was more appropriate on Kanowna St under health and safety controls for workers but that is something else that you have ignored in briefing your architects. The Emergency Evacuation Plan (EEP) you had prepared spoke of construction worker evacuation policies NOT residents and you were supposed to get that rewritten. How can 4 bedroom houses and 9 storey apartment blocks were people are elderly, people are sick at home, people are sleeping, there are young children, there are elderly infirm... there are people who have drunk too much alcohol or taken a sleeping tablet and are very very fast asleep. People at work under Worksafe H&S regulations are not in any of the situations above. The EEP even said some had to wear red hats, some yellow and some white and they needed to update their training every 6 months. So the only way may be that Evolve/NP Development has to budget for staff to look after these dwellings for the next 50 years or more... unlikely when profit today is a motive.
MR GUY MIGHT ARGUE AT AN ENQUIRY THAT HE WAS JUST ANOTHER MINISTER WHO DIDN’T KNOW WHAT HIS DEPARTMENT WAS GETTING UP TO OR MAYBE HE WILL TAKE THE SAME KIND OF BLAME THAT HE LIKES TO ATTRIBUTE TO JUSTIN MADDEN FOR REZONING RESIDENTIAL WITHOUT COMMUNITY CONSULTATION.
MAYBE HE WASN’T AWARE THAT THE EMERGENCY EVACUATION PLAN WHICH WAS TO BE REQUIRED IN THE PPWM ADVISORY COMMITTEE REPORT FOR PEOPLE IN THE WHOLE SITE HAD BEEN WHITTLED DOWN IN A LATE CHANGE NOT SHOWN TO HOBSONS BAY COUNCIL (OR THE MINISTER FOR PLANNING) BY THE STATE PLANNING DEPT JUST 4 WORKING HOURS BEFORE SPECIAL ENTRY IN THE GOVERNMENT GAZETTE. THE PPWMAC’s EEP FOR THE WHOLE SITE WHICH EXTENDS ABOUT 200M FROM KANOWNA ST WAS CHANGED TO ONLY 25 M FROM THE KANOWNA ST EDGE OF THE SITE IN THE FINAL GAZETTED VERSION ie That was Planning Law now enacted 1 December 2011.
At a meeting with Mr Guy in December 2013 organised by Mary Drost an SW representative quizzed him about this very issue .. A set of documents was presented to the minister. He said “look at this” pointing to the highlighted text in the document below. He said he did include the recommendations of the Port Phillip Woollen Mill Advisory Committee required reports in his review of the Ports and Environs Committee recommendations
The Minister has accepted the recommendation of a separate advisory committee on a proposal for the site and has applied a Design and Development Overlay (DDO) on the land. There is a stringent list of requirements under the DDO that addresses the interface of the port without the need for an Environmental Significance Overlay. These requirements include noise attenuation measures to limit internal noise levels to a maximum of 45dB; specifications for development within the WorkSafe Planning Outer Advisory Area to ensure buildings can withstand appropriate overepressure levels; a Construction Management Plan; an Acoustic Report; an Emergency Evacuation Plan; a Wind Report, and a Traffic Impact Assessment Report.
So according to the Minister himself in May 2012 - an emergency evacuation plan was required... not some subset of an EEP but one across the site.
When shown what the PPWM Advisory Committee had recommended as published by the minister with the planning scheme amendment C86 on 25th November 2011 - he said “yes” the Emergency Evacuation Plan had been recommended by the PPWMAC
Only problem was, Mr Guy, after sending the draft DDO11 to Hobsons Bay Council and then saying it would be gazetted with no changes - someone made some pretty extensive changes the DDO11 just a few hours prior to Gazettal - after that consultation with council - to something which clearly benefitted the developer - certainly not the new residents of the dwellings or the existing residents whose safety would be compromised by large numbers of new residents living near a major hazard facility. Density may have been removed from the Planning Scheme but density of people is very much a factor in SAFE Working Conditions. Who authorised it? Mr Guy? Mr David Hodge of Ventnor issues who was still in the Planning Dept in 2011? Ms Jane Monk Executive Director who has delegated powers in the Minister’s absence? Mr Guy’s Chief of Staff Meg Bartels also involved with Ventnor issues? or someone else who had the power to write planning law. The Ombudsman’s office said we had to find out if the minister decided it or a staff member before they could accept a complaint as the minister is exempt.
We can see from its properties that the pdf change was on the afternoon of 30th November 2011 just in time for a Special Gazette publication with one item only on 1 December 2011. Another interesting fact because the Government Gazette usually includes several to many items.
Yet 5 months later in May 2012, the minister is giving his reason for not making a Port Overlay on the PPWM site and not including Pt Gellibrand in the decision from the Ports and Environs Committee provision Ministerial Direction 14, that he had included the recommendations of the PPWMAC in DDO11 for the PPWM site.
Ministerial-Direction-No.14-Ports-Environs-31-May-2012.pdf
The map of Port of Melbourne with the legend over Pt Gellibrand speaks volumes! Anyone who wants to research this will find all these bona fide documents show that the minister either knew what had happened and was misquoting his own advisory committee; or he didn’t know what had happened and was duped by bureaucratic process.
Whatever - we are actually talking about people safety and that is something which was discussed at length in the PPWMAC and PEAC and the decision that came out of the planning department after proper community consultation is VERY STRANGE INDEED
Saturday, 25 January 2014