Sunbury split: Town’s 20-year fight for independence from Hume Council
More than a quarter of a century after semirural Sunbury joined Hume Council, the residents are continuing the fight to split from the metropolitan municipality. Here’s what has — and hasn’t — changed in the decades since.
PAUL Keating was Australia’s Prime Minister, Friends had just made its television debut and 78 new local councils were created in Victoria.
While a lot has changed in the decades since 1994, one constant that remains is the push by Sunbury residents to split from the metropolitan council of Hume.
Sunbury became part of Hume City Council during Kennett Government amalgamations, and residents have since been fighting to reverse the decision, arguing the semirural town’s demographic is aligned more closely with regional areas to their north.
“A Local Government Review Board at the time said (Sunbury) shared more interests with Gisborne or Woodend than with Keilor or Broadmeadows,” The Weekly Times reported in September 2000.
Sunbury Historical and Heritage Society president Peter Free has been involved in the campaign from the start and says like many in the town he is still keen for the move to go ahead.
“The push for Sunbury out of Hume is still on the minds of many people in Sunbury. Sunbury is a community that has very little to do with the rest of Hume,” he said.
The issue has been a point of contention at local and state elections for the better part of 20 years, with multiple reviews into the financial viability of the council and surveys of resident’s opinions.
A voluntary plebiscite of the Hume City Council was conducted in 2013, with 60 per cent of respondents in favour of the split.
The move looked promising in 2014, with a Labor Government promise to form the new council by July 1, 2015. It was delayed a further 12 months and then announced in October that year that it would not go ahead following independent research into the financial viability of the stand-alone council.
It was said that Labor backflipped on their word after submitting to pressure from the Australia Services Union.
“The reason it did not happen was that the Victorian Labor Party reneged on their word and stopped it from happening, also the union had too much influence. Their reason for stopping the process was they said that Sunbury would not be able to support its own council, even though the previous Liberal Government had two accounting firms who said they could,” Mr Free said.
The 2016 local council election that followed saw more candidates continue to fight for the split but ultimately those candidates lost.
The issue resurfaced during the 2018 election, with Liberal Candidate Cassandra Marr promising a split if she was elected. When Labor won the issue was dropped.
Sunbury community member and council candidate Trevor Dance said a split now made more sense than ever.
“It was always viable and even more so now with the extra dwellings in the area that have been approved and commenced,” Mr Dance said.
“It would make sense as the demographics are so different to the rest of Hume, like Broadmeadows etc and we are considered semirural.
“A council focused on its region has a better understanding of what is needed.”
But those in favour of the move still have a few financial and political hoops to climb through.
“We are still hoping a split will happen, but it will not until we have a Liberal Government,” Mr Free said.
CARDINIA’S DIVIDED NEEDS
ANOTHER council that is feeling the divide between country and city residents is Cardinia in Melbourne’s east.
Member for Narracan Gary Blackwood has been advocating for towns such as Garfield, Bunyip and Tynong to be exempt from strict coronavirus lockdowns imposed on metropolitan shires in Victoria.
“Since Stage 4 was imposed in Cardinia, I’ve been calling for a review of what constitutes a metropolitan and regional area,” he said.
“The Stage 4 restrictions don’t work in rural Cardinia communities. Many are more than 5km from their nearest essential service, petrol stations and parks limiting their ability to get off their property at all.”
Mr Blackwood said the rules determined by local government area didn’t account for the difference between households on the outskirts of the city.
“State Government Electoral boundaries or Local Government township boundaries could have been used effectively, given the remote and small population in these farming areas.”
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