Current Advocacy Projects

Call to action on Activity Centre Zones

November 2024

The proposed changes would place much of Melbourne and many regional centres under the Activity Centre zone, extended by a new ‘Walkable Catchment Zone’, in which six-storey or higher development will be encouraged in every way possible way and in which heritage and neighbourhood character will take the back seat.

In these areas, the ‘Walkable Catchment Zone’ will replace the existing Neighbourhood Residential Zone, which has strict height controls in line with the conservation objectives of the Heritage Overlay and whose stated objectives include heritage and neighbourhood character. These are omitted from the new Zone! That will allow the objectives of the Heritage Overlay to be challenged at every turn in favour of any project that provides more housing. We explain the risks in the article for the December issue of History News (Attachment 1).

Yes, let’s support more housing in places where people want to live. But places will become far less sought after if we forget what makes them desirable in the first place. If we destroy heritage to build housing, Melbourne will become ‘Hong Kong without the view’, a collection of soulless high-rise buildings. Heritage makes Melbourne marvellous and makes our regional towns and cities attractive as tourist beacons and signposts to our history. Heritage enhances a neighbourhood’s soul and character, and provides focal points and historical perspectives. We need housing and heritage, housing that preserves, respects and is integrated with heritage.

Click here for more details, the full transcript of Charles Sowerwine’s letter and a template of a letter you could adapt and send to Minister Kilkenny

 

 

Renewed Threat to Sunshine Technical Buildings

April 2024

The threat of demolition of the former Sunshine Technical School buildings has come closer. In January 2024, Heritage Victoria determined that the two buildings were not of State-level cultural heritage significance and should not be included in the Victorian Heritage Register. The RHSV, the National Trust and the Brimbank Council have all opposed the decision, with the Heritage Committee of the RHSV and Brimbank Council making submissions to the Heritage Council of Victoria emphasising the significant historical and architectural  importance of the buildings and arguing strongly for their preservation.

Click here for more details

Another Challenge to the World Heritage Listed Royal Exhibition Building

In another challenge to the  integrity of the World and National Heritage Listed Royal Exhibition Building (REB) site, a proposal is with Yarra City Council to redevelop 1-9 Gertrude Street Fitzroy, near the corner of Gertrude and Nicholson Streets. Taken as a whole, the importance of this site, incorporating the REB, the Carlton Gardens and their surrounds, cannot be overstated. In the words of the eminent UK historian Professor David Cannadine ‘The expositional ensemble . . . is a unique, magnificent and outstanding survivor from this great age of great exhibitions. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world today’. [1] This significance was recognised in its nomination as a World Heritage site.

Click here for more.

28th June 2022: Statement on Queen Victoria Market “Renewal”

The CEO of the Queen Victoria Market, Stan Liacos, has been on a propaganda offensive, presenting a warm fuzzy on change at the Queen Victoria Market. As CEO, Stan has driven the process of change currently engulfing the market, change based on the proposals Robert Doyle made nine years ago, since overwhelmingly rejected by the people of Melbourne. The issue is not whether the market ‘should stay just as it is’. The issue is whether change will be driven by family business stall-holders responding to their customers in the canopy provided by the historic sheds and buildings, or by bureaucrats seeking high end stalls offering ‘value add’ products from hygienic, uniform fixed stalls, ‘a brighter, lighter, cleaner, greener more contemporary’ market.

Click here for more.