How a ham and cheese toastie could upend the state’s planning laws

Amid the frenzied tempo of housing policy decisions variously dropped, dripped, announced and smuggled past us over the past few days, it can be difficult to see the bricks from the six-storey apartment block.

Perhaps that is the point of the campaign-style deluge of information that has filled our inboxes, websites, TV screens and newspapers.

The Allan government’s new Housing Choice and Transport Zone (HCTZ) plan has been dubbed “the ham and cheese toastie”, or “the toastie”, for short.Credit: Getty Images

Premier Jacinta Allan knows, like any good property investor, that the art of selling her government’s housing plan is not to dwell in the same place for too long. The trouble with this approach is that wholesale changes to Victoria’s planning laws are not a quick reno.

Within the government’s housing plan there is a serious problem that, so far, neither Allan nor Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny have been willing to acknowledge: the inherent conflict between the government’s ambition for greater housing density, and the value we have traditionally put on preserving the character and heritage of places that tell the story of this city.

The government’s rote response to questions about how its proposed suburban activity centres will affect heritage protection is to insist there will be no changes to the heritage overlay in local planning schemes, which protect buildings and streetscapes of significance.

This is how Kilkenny put it earlier this week: “There won’t be changes to heritage or heritage overlay, or the way councils take into account heritage and the way heritage is managed as we build more homes.”

This is partly true. It is also disingenuous. RMIT planning expert Michael Buxton goes so far as to call it a con. To understand why, you need to sift through not what the government is saying, but what it’s actually doing.

On Wednesday, the government gazetted a new set of planning rules titled the Housing Choice and Transport Zone (HCTZ). The acronym prompted one planning expert to dub it the ham and cheese toastie. We’ll call it the toastie, for short.

The toastie sets the ground rules for development in the residential streets surrounding the 10 activity centres the government has announced (and the further 50 it plans to map out in the coming weeks).

These are the catchment areas – nearly all within walking distance of train stations – that the government has staked out to meet its target of building 800,000 new homes over the next 10 years, with the aim of making housing more affordable for more people.

The Labor government wants to develop high-density housing in areas that are subject to extensive heritage overlays.Credit: Paul Rovere

Many of these areas are subject to extensive heritage overlays. But these overlays do not, on their own, determine which houses can be knocked down and what can be built in their place. To make those decisions, planning authorities must weigh heritage concerns against the broader objectives of the area’s zoning laws.

This is where the toastie comes in.

Before the government embarked on its epic house hunt for Millennials, most suburban streets in Melbourne were covered by the Neighbourhood Residential Zone. This set of rules and principles makes it clear that the existing character of a neighbourhood is something of value. It also makes explicit the need to accommodate more housing.

One of the guiding principles of the zone reads in part: “All residential zones support and allow increased housing unless special neighbourhood character, heritage, environmental or landscape attributes … exist.” In other words, we need more homes, but heritage matters.

This doesn’t mean you can never knock down a heritage home and replace it with a modern block of flats. To see evidence of this, take a drive past 1045 Burke Road, Hawthorn East. For more than 100 years, this was the site of Arden, a stately federation home. It is now the address of a four-storey building that contains 38 apartments.

In upholding a decision to grant planning approval, Victorian Supreme Court Justice Karin Emerton weighed the heritage value of the building against the need for urban consolidation and housing diversity in that location.

In that case, the judge came down in favour of the proposed development. In other cases since, courts and tribunals have ruled in favour of heritage preservation. It is a fine and complex balance of considerations.

The toastie upends this balance.

By replacing the Neighbourhood Residential Zone in the catchment areas of activity centres, the toastie provides the new rules decision-makers will weigh against heritage overlays – and it makes no concession to heritage or neighbourhood character. The gazetted material doesn’t even mention these concepts.

The toastie’s stated purpose is to provide increased density of housing within walking distance of local jobs, services and public transport, and to encourage more affordable and diverse housing options. The heritage overlays will remain in place, but they no longer have an ally – nor even a sympathetic ear – in the governing zone.

Depending on your perspective, the toastie is either a welcome change to the planning menu or a shit sandwich. Either way, we won’t know its full impact until years down the track, once planning disputes under the new regime make their way through the courts.

This is one of the reasons planning expert Buxton is frustrated with the government. He says the promise that heritage protections won’t change is false and the government’s message is deceptive. “The new zone’s density purposes are inconsistent with and will override the heritage protection measures in the heritage overlay,” he says.

Another planning expert – one who does too much government work to offer a public critique of their policies – is more sanguine. He agrees that if local councils are going to meet the housing targets set for them by government, it will come with the loss of some heritage and neighbourhood character.

“There is a price to accommodating people,” he says. “There is also an opportunity for a more honest conversation.”

Amid the flurry of announcements on housing, this is what we are missing.

Chip Le Grand is state political editor.

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