Submission to Infrastructure Victoria
All Things Considered – Exploring options for Victoria’s 30-year infrastructure strategy
21stJune 2016
Contents
1.Introduction
2.Innovative Kingston City Council Initiatives
2.1Integrated Stormwater Management
2.2ASPIRE - an Advisory System for Process Innovation and Resource Exchange
2.3Kingston’s Family and Children’s Centres
3.All Things Considered
3.1Address infrastructure demands in areas with high population growth
3.2Address infrastructure in areas with low or negative population growth
3.3Respond to increasing pressures on health infrastructure, particularly due to ageing
3.4Enable physical activity and participation
3.5Provide spaces where communities can come together
3.6Improve accessibility for people with mobility challenges
3.7Provide better access to housing for the most vulnerable Victorians
3.8Address expanded demand on the justice system
3.9Provide access to high-quality education infrastructure to support lifelong learning
3.10Meet growing demand for access to economic activity in central Melbourne
3.11Improve access to middle and outer metropolitan major employment centres
3.12Improve access to jobs and services for people in regional and rural areas
3.13Improve the efficiency of freight supply chains
3.14Manage threats to water security, particularly in regional and rural areas
3.15Manage pressures on landfill and waste recovery facilities
3.16Help preserve natural environments and minimise biodiversity loss
3.17Improve the health of waterways and coastal areas
3.18Transition to lower carbon energy supply and use
3.19Improve the resilience of critical infrastructure
1.Introduction
The City of Kingston appreciates the opportunity to make this submission to Infrastructure Victoria in response to the All Things Considered Options Paper. As a general comment, Kingston is strongly supportive of the overall framework, objectives and guiding principles.
Kingston recognises the sheer breadth and scale of the task that Infrastructure Victoria has been charged with in identifying and prioritising the hundreds of infrastructure options available to meet the 19 identified community needs. Kingston also acknowledges that the very tight timeframes afforded to Infrastructure Victoria to develop Victoria’s 30 year infrastructure strategy has meant that many options have not yet been fully explored.
The City of Kingston welcomes the opportunity to work collaboratively with Infrastructure Victoria and other agencies to ensure that the potential for a long-term sustainable infrastructure plan is realised.
In this submission, Kingston has endeavoured to take a holistic view across the sectoral / needs matrices but to restrict our comments to those areas where we feel we can add value by providing evidence that either supports or contradicts the proposed option.
The City of Kingston would also like to take the opportunity to highlight some major infrastructure initiatives being developed and led by Kingston that have the potential to deliver major benefits if rolled out across the state.
2.Innovative Kingston City Council Initiatives
2.1 Integrated Stormwater Management
Improve the health of waterways and coastal areas:
Stormwater harvesting and re-use for non-potable purposes (SRH) – Harvest stormwater in Melbourne and regional cities for use in a range of non-potable purposes such as watering of public spaces and meeting water demands at urban and industrial sites.
Stormwater quality management (SRQ) – Collage, coordinate and implement a suite of measures to improve stormwater quality prior to drainage in waterways or coastal areas. These measures would include all development types and investigation of suitable mechanisms for existing developments.
The City of Kingston is widely recognised as a leader in integrated water management in local government and is committed to ensuring fit for purpose water use in the municipality. Kingston is also a pioneer in the stormwater reuse space and has been a key supporter of a number of regional wetland projects constructed over the last decade. Kingston has a significant track record in managing and delivering State Government Agency (Melbourne Water) and Commonwealth funded capital/planning projects. Kingston’s Integrated Water Cycle (IWC) Strategy won the 2012 National Stormwater Industry Association award for Excellence in Strategic and Master Planning.
Kingston’s well thought out ‘whole of catchment master plan approach’ to stormwater management can provide a significant cost benefit and augment site reliant/opportunistic approaches implemented via localised tailored on-site solutions. Research undertaken by Council has found that on-site solutions on their own will not be sufficient in achieving Kingston’s stormwater quality objectives.
Kingston’s proposed in-lieu contributions scheme would ensure that alternate pathways to meet stormwater quality obligations are available to different types of development and that there are effective economic incentives to mitigate the impacts of runoff. This is an innovative funding model that will support intergenerational liveability outcomes.
Kingston is in the process of developing mechanisms to align water outcomes with urban land use planning instruments and standards. In the coming months, in collaboration with Melbourne Water, steps will be undertaken to implement the voluntary stormwater quality in-lieu contribution scheme which involves developing an internal operational policy to guide governance and administration of the funds and a Stormwater Management Local Policy to formalise Kingston’s on-site stormwater requirements for developers.
Kingston acknowledges water’s essential role in supporting resilience and liveability outcomes through more integrated and strategic approaches to urban water service provision and urban land use planning. This has been demonstrated through a number of initiatives that seek to diversify sources of supply to deliver multiple benefits and improved community outcomes including the Edithvale Recreation Reserve (see below) and the Keeley Park projects currently underway.
Figure 1: Edithvale Recreation Reserve
2.2 ASPIRE - an Advisory System for Process Innovation and Resource Exchange
ASPIRE is an online marketplace for registering and exchanging industrial and commercial material resources to be reused or remanufactured as an alternative to a landfill destination. Business to Business (B2B) exchanges are facilitated by matchmaking software to initiate new processing of waste streams. The tool intelligently matches a business with potential purchasers or recyclers of their waste by-products. It saves on disposal costs and cuts the amount of waste going to landfill. ASPIRE is run by the CSIRO in collaboration with local councils and business networks.
ASPIRE has been developed in response to manufacturing companies talking to their local councils about high waste disposal costs, particularly those associated with increasing landfill levies. ASPIRE leverages CSIRO's expertise in industrial engineering and industrial ecology, operations research and information retrieval to build a software tool that identifies potential business to business (B2B) resource exchanges. This typifies the common term “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. ASPIRE is also connected with the concept of the circular economy and adoption of this and industrial symbiosis in the European Union and World Economic Forum.
How does ASPIRE work?
ASPIRE users enter details about the type and quantity of their substitutable inputs and waste materials (outputs). Using this data, ASPIRE’s Supply Chain Options Model determines optimal sources and destinations for the materials, including options for aggregation with other local businesses, appropriate investment opportunities such as compactors for low density wastes, and local recyclers.
The profile information for the users associated with these suggestions is then provided to the user. The model results are then used in combination with profile data, resource and technology libraries, to present a rich content environment where the user can explore the suggestions in context with both specifically developed case study materials and information retrieved from the broader internet.
ASPIRE is deployed using existing established council and manufacturing business networks, and supports local government business sustainability programs. It captures and codifies businesses material inputs, outputs (waste and by-products) and processes and has a powerful optimisation model that takes this data and provides the business user with three things:
- Suggested B2B resource matches, both substitute inputs or sources and output destinations
- Personalised search results to support the suggested matches
- Case studies for related resource matches
For information can be obtained at
2.3 Kingston’s Family and Children’s Centres
The City of Kingston has undertaken the construction and delivery of 4 x integrated Family and Children’s Centres strategically located across the municipality to achieve a range of enhanced outcomes for the Kingston community.
The services delivered from each Centre include child care, kindergarten, maternal child health and immunization, play groups, parents groups, and other allied services as needed. The fourth Centre presently being constructed in Westall on a school site will have other enhanced elements in addition to those noted above including a library, community health services and flexible community spaces such as meeting rooms, seminar spaces and an industrial community kitchen.
The enhanced outcomes that can be achieved by integrated Family and Children’s Centres include (but are not limited to) the following:
- Improved service access for families, children and the broader community.
- Provision of high quality infrastructure and services with a focus on the provision of early years education in the context of other support services to provide a holistic approach to children and families.
- Streamlined referral and application processes to multiple services – thus making more user-friendly and easier to access a range of services (families not engaging with duplicate forms/professionals/services).
- Economies of scale are generated enabling increased efficiency by achieving more from the use of limited resources.
- Enhanced effectiveness, resulting in superior outcomes for communities and funders.
- Families and children are able to access assistance more effectively in ‘one-stop family centres’.
- An integrated model benefits particularly vulnerable children and families. Instead of a family being referred to / sent off to other external services when a need is identified (creating a risk that the referral is never actioned), the family can receive the support of that service in the existing location.
- The synergies from an integrated approach lead to innovation and a streamlining of service delivery through information and skill sharing.
- At a community level, the construction of flexible use multi-function family and children’s centres enables Council to scale the services delivered up and down over the years to match demographic changes and the changing needs of residents. Thus the supply / demand balance for services can be more effectively managed over the many years of operations.
Effective governance is essential to achieving the intended outcomes of an integrated Family and Children’s Centre, and thus requires careful consideration. Kingston Council elected to operate the Centres and its services directly in order to ensure the objectives and vision for the developments remained prominent and would be delivered.
A significant focus from the physical design stage to the actual delivery stage has been the establishment of effective integrated relationships, objectives, processes and communication structures.
For a more in depth analysis of the value of integrated Family & Children’s Centres, there are a range of resources and research available. A useful resource to use as a starting point is the following literature review:
3.All Things Considered
3.1Address infrastructure demands in areas with high population growth
- Better Use
Centralised planning scheme (CPS1) – Deliver a centralised planning scheme with aligned governance that is controlled and delivered by a central authority.
The City of Kingston is strongly opposed to a centralised planning scheme. The establishment of a centralised planning scheme for all local government areas would not be in the best interests of local government or their communities, and is already appropriately provided through the current Victoria Planning Provisions.
The infrastructure demands in areas with higher population growth should equally include the higher density growth requirements for established areas in addition to areas on the urban fringes.There are different challenges to be overcome when promoting higher density in established suburbs some of which will require State intervention. For example, increased capacity for public transport (including car parking at stations) and community facilities. There is an opportunity to leverage of existing infrastructure to provide better outcomes across many of the need categories.
- New and Expanding Issues
Arterial road network employment centre enhancements (ARN) – Improve the road network surrounding major employment centres to meet growing demand, such as the Westall Road extension from Princes Highway to Monash Freeway, which aims to improve connectivity and support the Monash employment centre.
This option is strongly supported. The City of Kingston is a major employment destination with a strong manufacturing base. Enhancements to the arterial road network are essential to ensuring the competitiveness of local companies. The Westall Rd extension has been clearly identified by the Metropolitan Planning Authority as important for the growth of the Monash Employment Cluster.
This approach is supported however is considered to require additional infrastructure guidelines, standards and processes to clearly state what infrastructure is required, when it is provided and what this looks like. Additional work is required on community infrastructure which is something the MPA has done some significant benchmarking on.
- Further Develop
International airport in the south-east of Melbourne (IAS) – Construct a third international airport in the south-east of Melbourne.
Kingston supports the construction of an international airport in south-east Melbourne and would urge the early investigation of a suitable site so that land can be set aside to avoid the issues faced by Sydney.
3.2Address infrastructure in areas with low or negative population growth
No applicable comment.
3.3Respond to increasing pressures on health infrastructure, particularly due to ageing
- Change
Health education programs (HEP) – Deliver preventative health education programs targeted at the 15-25 years old age group to reduce future demand for health care.
Kingston supports the investment in health education but considers that it should be across all age groups and be age appropriate.
- Better Use
Aged care and mental health residential care investment (ACM) – respond to the growing need for residential aged care and mental health faciltiies by supporting people to remain in their homes and when this is not possible, providing new purpose-built facilities.
The South East Councils Climate Change Alliance (SECCCA) recently completed the Energy Saver Study which engaged and supported 320 households in Melbourne’s south-east to improve the energy efficiency of their homes and reduce energy costs, while possibly increasing the comfort and health of their homes. The combination of home retrofit and behaviour change interventions achieved statistically significant energy efficiency outcomes (compared to control group) including averages of 10-11% reductions in total energy use, 13-18% less gas use and similarly cheaper bills and increased living room temperatures by 1.6°C in winter. This study demonstrates that improved living conditions in the home can improve health outcomes.
- New and Expanding Issues
Health care smart facilities (HCS) – Invest in the renewal of health infrastructure to remain fit for purpose and be flexible to respond to innovations in technology and models of care
Investment in new technologies for medical consultations over the internet ought to be considered as well. This will enable the early detection of disease, treatment options and reduction in patient travel. Thus, HCS ought to be lifted as a higher priority and highlight the potential internet option
Kingston also considers that health programs should encourage physical activities and be linked to the need for strategic decisions to be made on open space provisions.
3.4Enable physical activity and participation
- Change
Active lifestyle infrastructure regulation (ALR) – Amend planning regulations to require that principles of ‘active design’ are incorporated into the construction of new residential developments. This would involve providing cycle ways, parks and pedestrian infrastructure.
Amendments to regulations should consider all cohorts of the community including those who are older or who have disabilities. The current options are very much focused on people who are able bodied despite the fact that the largest cohort of people into the future will be considered ‘aged’.
- Better Use
Integrated shared use community and recreation facilities (RFC) – Improve coordination and governance processes to encourage the co-location and/or integration of arts, sporting and recreation activities in multi-purpose, shared-use facilities.
Integrated shared spaces, both internal and outdoor areas, bring broader opportunities for social connectedness. Planning which provides these opportunities and encourages socially isolated persons and persons from a cross section of the community to enjoy a space is welcomed.
Outdoor areas that are linked and designed in such a way that enable residents to move safely and more easily through open spaces will encourage higher usage and build a healthier community. Perceived safety is just as an important factor as demonstrating an area is statistically safe to visit therefore better area lighting and improved visibility lines are welcomed and will encourage usage in local residential developments.
Communities are demanding more access opportunities to enjoy outdoor activities, both passive and active options and want to utilise such with their pets, as pets are more commonly being integrated into an owner’s life style. It is well recognised pets enhance social connectedness and social skills and are great conversation starters, therefore better designed local spaces will assist to promote health within our community.
Shared use should include use of existing Education Department facilities out of hours.
- New and Expanding Issues
Bicycle and walking path separation (BWP3) – Modify existing road, bike and walkway infrastructure to separate cycling and pedestrian use. In some places this may require widening of paths or providing additional footpaths or cycling infrastructure.