Great Ocean Gulf
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Great Ocean Gulf The story of a strategic planning fiasco John Spencer Copyright © William John Spencer 2010 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher. First published 2010 This is an e-book edition Published July 2010 Great Ocean Gulf The story of a strategic planning fiasco John Spencer MRP Copyright © William John Spencer 2010 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher. First published 2010 Published by Marengo Rise Press, PO Box 185, Apollo Bay Victoria 3233 Printed by Pagination Design Services, Geelong West, Victoria 3218 National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Spencer, John, 1940- Title: Great ocean gulf: the story of a strategic planning fiasco / ISBN: 978-0-646-52789-5 (pbk) Notes: Includes index. Subjects: Apollo Bay Golf Club. Urban planning-Economic aspects-Victoria-Apollo Bay. Regional planning-Economic aspects-Victoria--Apollo Bay. State-local relations--Victoria--Apollo Bay. Apollo Bay (Vic.)--Economic conditions. Dewey Number: 307.34099457 Cover Photo Courtesy of Phil Lawson Waves breaking over the sand berm The large 2-3 metre waves created by strong westerly winds, plus a very high tide, meant waves entered the estuary with great force and at the same time built up a sandbar already blocking the river mouth. With the water unable to exit at the river mouth and a huge amount of seawater entering the estuary with the large swell, the estuary experienced its highest recorded sea flood. (p. 148) To our third generation – May they have the opportunity to wonder at the natural world Acknowledgements Nothing is written without support and encouragement. It can come from many sources and in many forms. I would say that the community at large, though clearly not everyone, encouraged me (and others) in the pursuit to have the Great Ocean Green project stopped or at least severely modified. I would like to start with my colleagues who assisted me in our joint submission to the first planning panel session of June 2006; namely Janine Coles, Russell Dawe, Allen Hokin, Ted Stuckey and Carol Wilmink. Others who contributed to our discussions over a period of many months included, Gary McPike, Murray Champion and Tony Webber. Reference must be made to those Councillors who opposed the development and particularly those who made a personal sacrifice, when they were dismissed. I am referring to Crs Brian Crook, Stuart Hart and Geoff Higgins. Later they were to be joined again with Cr Stephen Hart who had also opposed the project in an earlier Council. With the risk of omission I would like to mention the following folk who both supported and encouraged me: Cate Cousland, Carol Barnes, Andrew Buchanan, Peter Filmore, Dot and John Garrett, Robin Gray, Rob Kanngieser, Max Leorke, John Marriner, Fiona Nelson, Kurt Seeberg, Ngaira Smith, Clare Smith, David Smith, Terry Redmond, Robert Telford, and Dirk Verwoert. I would like to pay a special tribute to Dirk Verwoert, who passed away in October, 2009. Dirk was a fellow Civil Engineer who reviewed my opinions on the engineering aspects of the proposed developments, especially those expressed in Chapter 8. Finally and most importantly, I want to thank my wife Jill. Jill has shared the journey in many ways, certainly by sharing my views and also by tolerating the repeated argument against the development that I would raise with both friends and family (and anyone else who would listen!) John Spencer, January 2010 GREAT OCEAN GULF Contents Preface i Prologue: The Storm 1 Chapter 1: Apollo Bay and the Great Ocean Road 11 Chapter 2: The Preliminary Rounds 23 Chapter 3: The First Panel Session 45 Chapter 4: Intermission 73 Chapter 5: The Second Panel Session 97 Chapter 6: The Dismissal of Councillors 117 Chapter 7: Another Panel Hearing 143 Chapter 8: The Panel Report Conclusions–Analysis 159 Chapter 9: Coastal Recession and Climate Change 197 Chapter 10: The End Game 231 Chapter 11: An Alternative Approach 251 Index 265 List of Figures Figure 2.1 Great Ocean Green Landscape Concept – Golf Overlay 31 Figure 2.2 Summary of the Planning Scheme Amendment Process 42 Figure 7.1 Apollo Bay Structure Plan 147 Figure 9.1 Temperature Increases above 1990 levels… 217 Figure 9.2 Recent Monthly Mean CO2 …. 220 i Preface My wife and I moved to Apollo Bay in 1998. Two years later, the prospect of a large scale integrated housing estate and golf course on the flood plain of the Barham River began to be discussed around town. Thus began an involvement that would take me through the following ten years and lead me to write this book. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I can now say what an experience and revelation it has been. The pain has disappeared and now it is only pleasure. We won! The writing of course started well before I decided to commit to a formal record in November 2007. I now write this with a great deal of pleasure and I hope you will permit me some indulgence. There are still a few things I yet want to say. Firstly however, let me stick to the script of a preface. Those of you who are familiar with Apollo Bay and the local events of the first decade of the 21st Century can skip immediately to Chapter 8 and, if you are in a hurry, then read Chapters 10 and 11. Chapter 1 can be seen as scene setting and an introduction to Apollo Bay and its place in the scheme of things. Chapters 2 to 7 then take the reader through the chronological order of events up until the matter was in the hands of the Minister for Planning. Chapter 9 is (as is explained in its introduction) different from the others in that it takes a look at climate change in some detail, before considering how the proponents intended that the consequences of climate might have been dealt with. There is, as is sometimes noted, some repetition in the chapters. Largely this enables Chapters 8, 9, 10 and 11 to stand alone to some extent. In any event I don‟t think the repetition is a burden. This is not a book about climate change or sustainability, although both topics receive attention. The project was, in my opinion, rightly rejected on grounds not directly related to either of those topics. However in the course of events my attention was drawn to climate change and sustainability. I have now read two of Tim Flannery‟s books, The Weather Makers and The Future Eaters; Paul Kennedy‟s Preparing for the Twenty-First Century; Thomas Homer-Dixon‟s The Upside of Down; The Limits to Growth, by D.H. Meadows et al; Fixing Climate The story of climate science and how to stop global warming, by R. Kunzig & W. Broecker and, most recently and not yet entirely read, Heat by George Monbiot. Collectively ii and singularly these books have had a profound effect on me and this is where my indulgence comes in. You may now prefer to skip this and start with the Prologue. I want you to imagine that Great Ocean Green went ahead and was successful in the terms of the developer. I need to make quite a few assumptions here that anyone may dispute. Let us suppose that ten years have gone by and 400 homes have been built and sold. A 5 star luxury resort style hotel has been opened along with all the attendant facilities; and there is a golf course. The homes are 50 per cent permanently occupied with the rest being used as „holiday homes‟. Typically the homes have three bedrooms and two bathrooms, air-conditioners and many have spas. (At this stage you can accuse me of being a hypocrite since my home has four bedrooms and three bathrooms, a spa bath but no air conditioning. I will just have to take that on the chin.) Where am I going with all this? The underlying thread in all that reading I mentioned is that we are all living beyond our means, using up the world‟s resources and creating a deficit that will someday have to be met. We have all heard the figures or seen the references to images like: „If we all lived to the excesses of the rich western nations we would need the resources of four earths.‟ But we only have one! Did we really need Great Ocean Green? Do we really need all those homes just sitting there empty for perhaps 80 per cent of the year? Do we really need to continue to provide playgrounds for the wealthy? At a personal level, I believe that it is nonsense to suggest that we can adequately tackle climate change and still maintain an expansionist approach to our living standards. In fact I believe that we have to be prepared to drop our living standards; many will regard this as absolute heresy! We have failed in our stewardship of the earth and, as a Christian and as a human being, I am saddened by this. Genesis 1:28 (NIV) says: „…Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.‟ Then from my NIV Study Bible the following expansion was found: „He [mankind] is steward of God‟s creatures.