Campaspe Shire councillors will advocate for changes to be made to the renewables approval process, water recovery impacts, flood mitigation infrastructure and community housing at the upcoming Municipal Association of Victoria state council meeting.

At its August meeting, Campaspe Shire Council moved to endorse a series of motions that will be submitted to the MAV state council meeting, scheduled for Friday, October 10.

The MAV state council, made up of delegates from 79 councils, meets at least twice a year to discuss the role of local governments in Victoria.

The four motions reflect topics council sees as values and priorities for the Campaspe community, and include:

Mayor Daniel Mackrell said these motions were about standing up for our communities and ensuring Campaspe’s voice was heard.

“We want to see local voices respected in renewable energy planning, meaningful engagement in water reform, and real investment in housing and flood resilience,” he said.

The motion passed unanimously, led by councillors Tony Marwood and Paul Jarman, who moved and seconded the motion respectively.

Cr Jarman spoke specifically about the need for flood mitigation infrastructure and said council “needs help to bear the burden” of acquiring what is needed for the community.

Cr Zoe Cook spoke about the vital role public housing would take in fixing the housing and cost-of-living crises rurally.

“Public housing is what we need to help people who live here, who are low socio-economic and potentially being pushed out because there is nowhere to rent (or) there is nowhere to buy,” she said.

“(It is needed) to help middle-class people who cannot afford to buy in the towns that they grew up in or who cannot even afford to rent because the rent has become so high or there is so little available of private rentals that they can no longer find somewhere to live in communities they want to live.

“People want to live in the places they grew up; they want to move to new places for work — they cannot do that without public housing.”

Cr Rob Amos spoke about the need for change to decision-making on renewable projects.

“The independent umpire has been removed and decisions on renewable energy are effectively being made by one person — the planning minister,” he said.

“I think this needs to be seriously looked at so that we get a better outcome for our community.”

Cr John Zobec highlighted changes that needed to be made to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

“I think that our region has been impacted severely since the start of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan,” he said.

“More removal of water will create not only more issues for farmers, but it will also be our production systems, our factories, and everything will have a compounding effect that will pretty much create a massive loss of employment. Our shire will definitely suffer from this.”

Cr Marwood is Campaspe’s delegate and will attend the meeting in October.

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Sunday, 19th March 2023

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