Madden-ing

Last week, the Honourable Justin Madden, Minister of Planning for Victoria, wrote an article in The Age "Opposition to a bigger Melbourne smacks of cultural snobbery", in which he railed against cultural elites, claiming only he had the knowledge and power to determine what was right for Melbourne.

I took umbrage, as did many others including Michael Leunig, and wrote him the following:

"Dear Mr Madden

I recently read your article "Opposition to a bigger Melbourne smacks of cultural snobbery" and thought that, since you basically represent the people of Victoria when it comes to planning issues, you might like to hear my diatribe in response to your own diatribe.

First, apart from the standard (and lame and lazy) tactic of accusing anyone who disagrees with them of being a latte-sipping, champagne*-swilling "cultural snob" (presumably because said antagonist might have a University degree and some intelligence), since when did the childhood experiences of one politician suffice for a justification of Government policy?

You also state that "Planning policy should be about the aspirations of individual Victorians." Really? I aspire to have an iPhone - is the Victorian Department of Transport going to help me out with that?

Instead, shouldn't planning policy be about ensuring that the city of Melbourne, indeed - the State of Victoria, operates in the best way for Victorians as a whole, irrespective of individual aspirations?

An idea I've been trying to put forward for a while - and I'm pretty sure I stole it from someone else, so I know I'm not the only one - is that the Government should start putting money into our regional cities, like Ireland apparently did with cities like Galway. The fact is, Melbourne is sprawling - it's a-sprawling! - and the planning answer shouldn't be "newly arrived people should have a choice to live on the city fringes". By all means, provide more services to the city fringes, but someone has to draw a line in the sand and say enough is enough. In fact, someone did do that: your Government, with the "Melbourne 2030" planning boundaries your Government now wants to get rid of.

The Government should realise that it is unsustainable to simply let more and more people move into Melbourne's surrounding countryside. In particular, where are these people going to get their water? And no-one has been fooled into thinking that removing Connex will fix the public transport system.

An obvious alternative is to invest in Victoria's regional cities - especially ones that can be self-sustaining. I'm thinking here of cities or towns on or near the coast, which can get their own water supply going. Since you also seem fond of making policy decisions on the basis of looking at a map, an ideal candidate would appear to be Wonthaggi. Assuming the Government's other bad policy of installing an enormous desalination plant near Wonthaggi gets up, Wonthaggi will have a great water supply right next door. Rather than burning more coal to pipe that water to Melbourne, how much easier and more efficient to pipe it to Wonthaggi a few kilometres down the road? Get some jobs and infrastructure going down there, and similar places, and you've got yourself a sustainable and popular planning policy."

I forgot to mention to Justin that, while he may have his Airport West experience to identify with the proletariat, my great-grandfather, from a mining family in the area, was killed in a drunken fight outside a pub in Wonthaggi. That's cred.

But for now, I'm thirsty, so I'm going to get myself a latte.

* Since it's now illegal to refer to any sparkling wine as "champagne" unless it comes from that particular region in France, I reckon we should start calling our sparkling "shampain". Different as. Spread the word.