By NOEL MURPHY
GREEN activists are seeking a total ban on new housing subdivisions along the Surf Coast and Bellarine Peninsula as well as Moolap’s saltworks, Point Henry’s Alcoa site and Lake Connewarre’s shoreline.
Victoria National Parks Association (VNPA) has released a report calling for a new Geelong-Bellarine wetland state park, a merger of Barwon Coast and Bellarine Bayside committees of management and a ban on further Alcoa power station activity at Anglesea.
The Coast is Unclear report also called for surfing and indigenous groups to have key management roles at Bells Beach and for the prohibition of wind turbines at Apollo Bay and Johanna.
New coastal subdivisions should be disallowed between Eastern View and Altona and Torquay’s controversial Spring Creek should be left undeveloped, the report said.
Other recommendations included:
* extension of the Bells Beach precinct;
* a 50 to 100-metre buffer around Lake Connewarre to prevent shoreline development;
* transfer management of Buckley Park and coastal reserves in Point Lonsdale and Queenscliff from Geelong and Queenscliff councils to a new Barwon-Bellarine Coast Committee;
* restore the Defence Department’s Swan Island and add it to the a new wetlands state park;
* reject Alcoa’s bid to sell energy from its Anglesea power station to the electricity grid and add Alcoa-leased heathland outside the station’s mine pit to Great Otway National Park.
VNPA spokesperson Simon Branigan said the report was the first of its kind to document coastal planning and management issues along the entire Victorian coastline.
“It finds that successive Victorian governments have contributed to the creation of a complex, disintegrated and ineffective coast planning and management framework that has been unable to stop the squeeze on coast nature,” he said.
“We’re going to need strong and comprehensive policies from all political parties ahead of the 2014 state election to avoid the impacts of a new wave of development washing over Victoria’s 2000km coastline.”
But Urban Development Institute of Australia state boss Tony Do Domenico warned the plans would create coastal ghost towns.
“Ninety-eight per cent of the Victorian coastline is in national parks already and can’t be developed,” he said.
“f you’re going to lock up the other two per cent what’s that going to mean? You can’t have a holiday home on any foreshore?
“Businesses will go broke – it’s just crazy,” Mr De Domenico said.
“Manufacturing is suffering but the development and construction industry employs 300,000 Victorians and turns over $50 billion a year. If we’re going to shut that down we might as well all go home.
“We can’t shut down all those little towns – they’ll stagnate, go broke and won’t survive. Local people will lose their jobs, go broke.
“Before anyone goes criticising so-called greedy developers remember that developers only develop where people want to live.
“If we stop development along the coastline, if there’s a lack of land supply in, say, Torquay, only millionaires will be able to afford to live there.
“What about other Victorians? Why are they being denied the right to enjoy the coast?”
