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Planning document search

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Planning application search

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Flowchart

I’ve put together a draft guide on the council planning process. Please don’t hold me to the complete accuracy of it. I’ve just done it to try to explain the quite complex process when residents object to a planning application.

Note that many times council refuses an application, yet the application is approved by VCAT, examples:

Each time council defends its decision to refuse at VCAT, it costs around $10K in legal fees.

Overshadowing

The September Equinox is the measure that is used in Victoria (ResCode) to determine overshadowing impacts in residential areas. It is used as it represents the ‘middle point’, between the worst case shadow scenario (winter) and the best case shadow scenario (summer).

Postal voting

All voters receive a ballot paper through the mail. They are required to complete the declaration and return their vote through the mail.

• Easier for mobility-impaired voters.

• Is $200K cheaper, more money can be spent in the community.

• Easier for multicultural English-challenged voters. They have day rather than minutes to seek advice and help from family and friends

• Increased window to vote. Some voters forget to return their voting papers.

• More likelihood of “dummy” candidates being used to direct preferences to main candidates. This has been mitigated somewhat by candidate preference lists no longer included in the vote pack.

• Public perception that votes are easier to manipulate than attendance elections.

Attendance voting

All voters are required to attend a polling booth on the election data. Other options are early voting (aka pre-poll), or voters can apply for a postal vote.

• More likely to be person-to-person contact. Candidate might be at polling booth (note that there are around 9 voting booths per ward).

• Local schools can run fundraising BBQs on election day, colloquially known as democracy sausage.

• More difficult for genuine grass-roots community candidates to run a campaign. Newer candidates find it hard to staff around 7 polling booths from 8am to 6pm on polling day.

• Some voters feel intimidated by having to “run the gauntlet” of people handing them how-to-vote cards outside the polling booth.

• Waste of paper. A lot of paper is used for candidates’ how-to-vote cards.

• Voters have to stand in queues on a Saturday.

• Voters generally make a quick decision after receiving how-to-vote cards from candidates.

• Bad weather.

References

Greater Dandenong attendance vote to cost more than $200,000

Election information