WANGARATTA Council’s contentious plans to change how farmland can be developed may be abandoned after one of its key recommendations was ruled out and panned by the Victorian Planning Minister.
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Yesterday the council was asking for an urgent meeting with minister Matthew Guy to see what else in their draft plan was now off the table.
Mayor Anthony Griffith said as recently as Monday the state government’s planning department had endorsed the proposal.
More than 300 people called for the council to scrap the plan at a meeting in Moyhu this week.
One of the chief concerns was a ruling that would have taken the minimum farming land subdivision from 40 to 250 hectares.
But Mr Guy has ruled that out altogether.
“It would have been helpful if the Wangaratta Council had informed me of their intention for 250-hectare minimums before embarking on this flawed approach to rural planning,” he said.
Cr Griffiths says the minister’s ruling “short-circuited” what was likely to be council’s decision.
“It had become blatantly obvious at the three public meetings that it was simply not going to work in our area,” he said.
“But his statement now has us questioning what else has changed.
“It certainly caught us by surprise.
“As recently as Monday we had been talking to the state planning department and there were no issues.
“And we are still to receive any formal direction from the minister.
“Had we known beforehand we would have taken the whole section out of the draft plan and avoided all this heartache”
Cr Griffith still expects a big turnout at the fourth and final public consultation meeting over the plan at Wangaratta on Monday night.
“I still expect there will be plenty of people there,” he said.
“Obviously we will be saying the 250-hectare issue is off the table but there is also great concern with the rural conservation zones.
“Many farmers believe they will have a negative impact on productive land.”
