Planning reform campaign

At this scale of housing delivery, choices government is making now will have consequences for generations. Victorians need confidence that decisions are being made properly and quality standards are not being severely compromised.

For example, winding back public notice provisions will eliminate a crucial quality control mechanism – local knowledge often identifies issues that centralised assessment processes miss.

More broadly, the ability to express a view about plans for the future of cities, towns and regions, and the right to be informed about individual proposals, are a key pillar that holds up public trust in the planning system. The Bill also removes Parliament's power to review statewide planning changes, concentrating unprecedented decision-making authority in the hands of a single Minister.

Fast-tracking simple applications makes sense – but only when it's designed with the people who have to make it work. Councils have done much of the local groundwork to get houses approved (zoned land, issued permits) but the tens of thousands of homes that have been cleared for commencement and which haven't yet started are proof that local government can't force market conditions.

Multiple barriers beyond planning will determine whether the target of 2.24 million new homes by 2051 get built: key non-planning factors include construction finance, skilled labour, infrastructure coordination, tax settings, and material costs.

The planning system does need comprehensive reform, and councils have been leading the call for change. But what we are seeing is not comprehensive reform: it's narrowly focused and piecemeal, and it's just creating new problems.

The planning reforms being rolled out and foreshadowed continue to ignore one of our greatest challenges: the need for genuinely affordable housing. There won't be any mandatory contribution mechanism in the upcoming Bill, despite the government promising to explore this in Plan for Victoria. The new housing supply objective now refers to social housing as well, but nothing in the Bill will support more social housing being built.

Right now, the state is fast-tracking the upzoning of 60 Activity Centres without allowing itself the ability to require that a fair share of new homes are affordable.

New one-size-fits-all residential codes require decision-makers to disregard known flood, bushfire, erosion and land contamination risks, as well as the stronger environmentally sustainable design standards adopted in 28 local government areas – and the Bill will lock these decisions in, just faster.

When homes are approved ignoring these risks, insurers won't cover them. In some areas, one in four regional properties are predicted to be uninsurable by 2030 due to climate risk – these reforms make that worse by waiving through planning approval in high-risk areas without adequate protections. Insurers are already pulling coverage from high-risk areas. More than creating environmental problems – this Bill creates uninsurable homes and financial traps for families who can't get coverage or afford the premiums.

We know we have to build more homes. But they have to be ready for the extremes to come.

When councils are genuine partners rather than perceived as obstacles, housing happens faster, better, and with community support. Far too many mistakes have been made because top-down decisions fail to consider what it takes to make planning decisions to the standards Victorians expect.

The Bill demands 10-day decisions for many applications or faces automatic approval – without providing resources, systems, or consultation on whether this is administratively possible. Rural councils without a planner on staff every business day and metropolitan councils processing hundreds of applications received all at once cannot safely meet these timelines. Meanwhile, other reforms have stripped councils of up to 40% of planning fee revenue – starving the system of resources while increasing its workload. This approach is making the planning system less efficient, not more.

It doesn't have to be this way. Partnership isn't optional – it's the only way to meet housing targets without creating communities that lack infrastructure, affordability, and protections against future weather extremes.