GROWTH PLANS (Weekly, October 15)
If the inevitable population growth places pressure on Moorabool Shire Council to improve its performance, then I’m all for it.
As a newcomer to the town, I quickly learned that long-term residents like the old ‘country’ way of doing things and are easily threatened by expectations.
A lovely high school ready to go in Bacchus Marsh is currently occupied by the council. The school infrastructure is all ready to go; it just needs to be recommissioned. Council offices should be rebuilt back in the main street of Bacchus Marsh, near former mayor Pat Griffin’s library.
BRUCE SEYMOUR \ BACCHUS MARSH
Plan Melbourne is not a grassroots movement and any ‘consultation’ with the public will be limited, assuming that the growth plans will go ahead whatever the public says.
The plan ignores the fact that people might want to live in regional and peri-urban areas because of their lifestyle choices, and for open spaces and village-like communities.
Unfortunately, the rat race of Melbourne’s sprawl will catch up. The only beneficiaries are the banks, big businesses and property developers.
Our population growth is not inevitable, but a political choice. With Tony Abbott’s “open for business” plans, and Labor leader Bill Shorten’s “big Australia” policy, our immigration rate is set to rise. What the public, and voters, want gets squeezed out of the picture against the lobbying of the elite.
MARY G \ VIA WEB
Plan Melbourne doesn’t ignore population growth, but it assumes that it will continue until mid-century.
Rather than accommodating projected growth, it’s actively promoting and ensuring it will happen.
Once land is subdivided and houses and apartments are built, people will come and buy. It’s based on continuing high levels of population growth, driven by increasing immigration levels. People and industries are banking their profits and superannuation funds on all this ‘growth’.
Back in the 1990s our immigration levels averaged about 80,000 people per year, but now it is well over 200,000 a year and set to increase. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that 60 per cent of our population growth is from net overseas immigration, not asylum seekers.
Victoria’s budget ‘surplus’ is because the government has failed to invest in the services and infrastructure needed for all the growth that it worships.
It condemns more and more people to live in deprivation.
VIVKAY \ VIA WEB
BYE BYE TO BUY BUY (Weekly, October 15)
Thank you to the Weekly for the opportunity to promote ‘upcycling’ in the community. Should anyone want to know more about basic refashioning of garments, please contact me. Melton Bowerbirds is a closed Facebook group where members inspire and encourage each other online to live sustainably.
KAREN \ VIA WEB
