CORRECTED VERSION
OUTER SUBURBAN/INTERFACE SERVICES AND DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
Inquiry into sustainable development of agribusiness in outer suburban Melbourne
Melbourne—12 May 2009
Members
MrG. Seitz / MrK. SmithMrM. Guy / MrD. Nardella
Chair: MrG. Seitz
Deputy Chair: MrK. Smith
Staff
Executive Officer: MrS. ColeyResearch Officer: MrK. Delaney
Witness
MrD. Isola, Chief Executive OfficerHume City Council.
MrIsola was sworn in.
TheCHAIR—It gives me great pleasure for our committee to be here. My parliamentary colleagues are Ken Smith who has come a long way from Wonthaggi to down here. He is the deputy chair of the committee. Matthew Guy is again from the other side of Melbourne.
MrGUY—No, Preston.
TheCHAIR—Yes, but the area you cover—
MrGUY—Here.
TheCHAIR—It covers here. That is how much I know of the north-west Upper House region, they are that big, they are all over the place. Don Nardella is an apology, he will be late, he is on his way down here. Firstly, I will introduce the mayor, Jack Ogilvie. He will give us a talk here on Hume City and we will take it from there with the CEO with the submission. Over to you, Jack.
MayorOGILVIE—Thank you, very much, George. On behalf of Hume City Council I would like to warmly welcome you all to Hume City today. I would like to acknowledge the presence of my fellow councillor who will be here very soon, before I finish my speech, my deputy major Ros Spence who is representing the Honourable Liz Beattie MP. I would also like to welcome George Seitz the chair of this committee, the Honourable Ken Smith, the deputy chair; also, I believe, Don Nardella is an apology.
TheCHAIR—He is on his way.
MayorOGILVIE—Also to Matthew Guy, and I believe we have some other apologies that you will probably read out, George. Hume City is the home to 162,000 residents. We have 503 square kilometres and it is one of the fastest growing municipalities in Victoria. For example, Craigieburn's growth rate is sixpercent, an enormous growth rate through the Craigieburn, Roxburgh Park area. Sunbury is under threepercent. So we do have quite a lot of growth in our municipality. Our city is home to a diverse range of land users comprising established and new residential development; major industrial areas, including large manufacturing and logistic companies; developing commercial centres, an international airport, sustainable areas of rural land.
Rural land in Hume City is identified as land within the Hume Green Wedge. This rural land plays a key role in separating our growth areas from Broadmeadows in the east, across to Sunbury in the most western part of our municipality. The Hume City rural land area is comprised of land outside the existing urban growth boundary and covers approximately 35,485 hectares. It is also home to over 1800 rural landowners. The land uses and the ownership in the rural areas are considered to be great diversity. These rural areas have also continued to evolve over the past century, as has the nature of our cultural pursuits. This has resulted in a number of challenges, as well as opportunities for those living on the land.
Some of these obstacles will be touched on in council's presentation today by our executive officer, MrDomenic Isola. I am confident that our landowners presenting this morning will provide further insights into the many current issues facing agribusiness within the rural areas of Hume. This morning you will also hear from speakers representing our agricultural, manufacturing and processing industries. We believe that the extensive transport infrastructure in Hume, as well as new land available for development, provide a competitive edge to support emerging clusters of agribusiness.
Before we get started, I would like to also briefly touch on the recent state government announcement to review the current alignment of the urban growth boundary. Whilst council welcomes a review of the urban growth boundary, this review, combined with a future outer metropolitan ring road transport corridor, is also likely to result in reduced amounts of land for agribusiness and other rural activities. This will require careful planning and perhaps new strategic approaches to the way we consider the rural areas in our outer suburban Melbourne.
After lunch, I believe the committee will have an opportunity to enjoy a tour of the rural areas of our municipality. I hope that you enjoy your tour and find it a positive chance to view the challenges and perhaps the opportunities for agriculture and agribusiness within Hume City. Thank you, and I hope that you enjoy this morning with the residents of Hume City Council. Thank you.
TheCHAIR—Thank you, MrMayor, and thank you for welcoming us. Domenic, I had better explain, the Parliamentary Committees Act and the Constitution Act, the evidence we are taking here is under oath or affirmation, so it is your choice. I will ask the staff—I think Marita is over there to assist you in your choice, whether you make an affirmation or the oath so that the committee can use your statement in our report and, secondly, you cannot be sued whatever you say in here, but if you say it outside it is a different matter, so you have parliamentary privilege to take the evidence under oath or affirmation, and that applies to everybody that presents today. Thank you. Could you state your address. We have your name but we need your mailing address so you can get a copy of Hansard.
MrISOLA—Personal address?
TheCHAIR—No, the council office will do.
MrISOLA—The council office, 1079 Pascoe Vale Road, Broadmeadows.
TheCHAIR—Thank you.
MrISOLA—Can I say thank you as well for the opportunity to speak and make a submission on behalf of Hume City Council. Welcome to the members. I hope the day is fruitful for yourselves and you get to hear a lot about what is happening in Hume. What I intend to do today with the submission is talk a bit about Hume and the industries that are in and around Hume, talk about agribusiness in Hume and, I suppose, I would suggest a lack of agribusiness in Hume as compared to other like municipalities, and then talk about some of the conclusions that we made in our submission that I think you have all received a copy of.
Overheads shown.
MrISOLA—Firstly, about Hume itself: you have already heard from the mayor about how large we are, over 160,000people growing at a fair rate; 250,000 people expected by 2030; we are close to the city and we have large areas of land that are green wedge or rural type; 70percent of the municipality is rural but this is changing rapidly, and I will go through some of those things throughout the presentation.
Just a bit of what happens in Hume day in and day out: we believe and we know that we are a thriving business centre. Many internationally and nationally recognised businesses operate in our municipality and some of those are listed there. I do not intend to go through the wide range of those. There are about 11,000businesses that operate in Hume, and I think everyone would know that manufacturing is the backbone of the industries that reside in Hume—food and beverage, automotive, plastics, metals and general manufacturing plants are the things that reside in Hume over and over again. We have places like Ford, CSL and other places.
Hume City Council is home to over 60 food manufacturers and those specialise in a wide range of goods—confectionary, cheese, milk, bread, fruit juices, beverages. We are a major supporter of the Plenty Food Group. What that group does is it looks after a cluster of 120 businesses all related to food manufacturing throughout the city. For all of us obviously who have travelled in and out of Melbourne, internationally and domestically, we know we have Melbourne Airport and the advantages that brings to the city, not just Hume but the city overall. It is curfew-free, 24-hour access to domestic and international markets. It handles 350,000tonnes of airfreight per annum and it has dedicated freight services right throughout that operate in and around Melbourne Airport. As well as that we also consider we have competitive advantage around our road infrastructure. The Hume Highway, the Calder Freeway, the Western Ring Road are all advantages that we see make Hume the place that if you want to do business and you want to rely on transport and other infrastructure, then this is the place that you would have it set up.
In terms of agribusiness, we have to say that farming has generally become a secondary activity for those who choose to live within the green wedge, mainly because of its lifestyle and the landscape values. We consider from what we have seen and the analysis that we have undertaken, that agriculture undertaken in a green wedge is a lifestyle choice, rather than it being economically viable. Our productivity in the green wedge is poor, and we say it is poor by the standards that are reflected in other councils. For example, our agricultural production in 2004 was $4 million; the Yarra Valley $640 million; Casey $105 million and Melton $85million. So in terms of what agriculture means to Hume, it is a small comparative nature when you compare it to other like municipalities.
That $4 million comes from the main business sources of beef and cattle farming, sheep farming and grape growing. Some of the reasons for that are well documented in Hume, and we have raised those through our submission. They relate to the climate and the lack of availability of water; land and soil conditions; high land maintenance cost; fragmentation of land and weed management. Those are listed for you in our submission. They are some of the reasons why we believe agriculture in Hume and in our areas is at a very low level, and low level in comparative terms for other councils.
Our submission, albeit it brief, does talk about the agricultural business in Hume and its limitations, and at the end it talks about some key conclusions. I will outline some of these and they are listed for you. There is a need to better understand the opportunities and needs to foster sustainable rural living which may include elements of agricultural activity, and to support sustainable rural living it is considered that substantial investment and resources are required in order to gain a better understanding of the needs of this emerging sector and we believe some of that might be around education and training.
We believe our rural areas may also be able to play a larger role in agriculture, particularly around winery, winery related tourism, but again requires significant investment. We believe the green wedge area within the planning framework, in order to support sustainable rural living and tourism related activity, requires reassessment. The planning framework is far too restrictive and does not support the trends towards rural living or the opportunities of other uses, apart from agricultural, to support better land management outcomes.
A couple of weeks ago at a council meeting we rejected an application for a winegrower to add some other commercial elements to his property. The reason why we had to reject it was because he was two hectares short of the requirement of land to have that facility under planning guidelines, so for two hectares of space—and I cannot remember how big his land was—an $8 million investment we had to reject because the planning framework restricted his use of the land to operate functions of that nature. We think there are great opportunities to have that investment in our green wedge to support the activities that groups of people might want to undertake. Whilst we rejected it we noted that we would lobby hard to support the application because we thought it had merit and it had an $8 million investment potential.
MrSMITH—Can I ask a question on that. You said it was two hectares short. What was his total land?
TheCHAIR—No, we are going to have a problem—we cannot go that way because we will not be able to record it in Hansard. You will have to repeat the statement, please.
MrISOLA—We had to reject the application because the person did not have the available hectares and in order for him to have the land requirements he would have to purchase the neighbour's block, and I think the land requirements are 80 hectares, and he did not have 80 hectares. There was great potential for that to be operated as a commercial viable option to support his olive-growing business.
TheCHAIR—Please continue.
MrISOLA—Finally, the existing planning framework also does not promote the colocation of tourism activities within the green wedge setting. We believe in order to support agribusiness or other commercial activities, tourism and the like, or make full use of potential of this area of land, that there needs to be some changes to the planning framework that allows potential of investment, potential of development, potential of making use of the land to a greater level through better planning processes. There is significant potential for Hume City to support agricultural processing and manufacturing industries. The strategic location of Hume City, combined with existing freight infrastructure and the availability of employment, land, provide real opportunities for investment in this industry within Hume City. We see ourselves as a big generator of those types of industries that are about freight and logistics, about storage and warehousing, about movements of manufacturing items to and from Melbourne and through other areas.
Melbourne @ 5 Million also provides some issues around this area because a lot of that land is now in the investigation areas and that will have a significant impact on land within those rural areas that I have mentioned before and we await the outcomes of those investigation areas to see what potential there is for those land areas to be used for other than rural purposes. That is the end of the presentation. Thank you for your time.