About Us
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- Our Policies
Governance
When elected, Darebin Progressive Independents Network (DPINs) Councillors will:
Remuneration
Seek a review of salary structures based on a view that overly generous salaries have become an excessive impost on Council budgets, especially when compared with many others who hold high office in other government sectors and who bear much higher levels of responsibility and public scrutiny and accountability .
Transparency, Support and Fairness
Ensure, via a review of governance processes, increased transparency in governance to provide greater accountability to Darebin residents and ratepayers.
Ensure the annual budget process provides greater clarity for the Darebin public to be able to trace specific projects to see if funding has been made available and how funding may have changed from the previous year.
Ensure that Council decisions are seen to provide support to Darebin residents and ratepayers and that no decisions are excessively penalise sectors of the community.
Ensure that Council decisions are seen to provide and uphold values of fairness and equity in the distribution of resources across the municipality.
Sustain Darebin’s Reputation
Work to sustain Darebin’s reputation as a worthy organisation through promoting constructive relations between Councillors that reduces acrimony on the floor of the Council chamber.
Council Plan
Provide an increased role for Councillors in the drafting of the Council Plan to ensure increased community support and acceptance.
Ensure that the Council Plan contains actions for which Council can be held accountable and do not contain generalist actions expressed in waffle words from which accountability is difficult to discern.
Compliance
Lift the role and resourcing of compliance officers responsible for oversight of Council by-laws so that Council policies and regulations can have effect and ensure those officers are accessible to the community.
Consultation
Support steps to create opportunities (in line with section 55 of the Local Government Act), for deliberative democracy/citizen jury/citizen assemblies via appointment of an annual Standing Panel, especially where issues are longer-term and multi-dimensional (e.g. Community Vision, Council Plan and both of the 10 year Financial Plan and Asset Plan and other issues) and careful, considered advice from the community will be beneficial to decision making by Councillors.
Ensure community input to decision-making by setting up informal community forums, as required, to hear from the public on contentious but short-term issues.
Involve the Darebin community, via the above Standing Panel, in the development of the agenda-setting Council Plan in order to offer input directly to the Plan rather than through the funnel of consultants and officers.
Review the operation of advisory committees to Council to ensure that, where they are brought into operation, they can be shown to be part of the reform process and clearly input to, and influence, Council decisions and that Councillors are exposed to their advice via briefings.
Cease the operation of advisory committees that clearly fail to generate consistent, actionable advice to Council.
Introduce expert advisory panels to assist Council decision-making in key areas where this expertise is deemed to be valuable and available from the public.
City Presentation
DPIN members hold strong views about Darebin’s presentation, from the ubiquity of graffiti to the abysmal state of its parks and key road median strips. There is evidence almost everywhere that Darebin is poorly cared for. The subliminal message is that Darebin seemingly values grunge over well-maintained, healthy vegetation that promotes a sense of community well-being. This decades-old issue has failed to be addressed and is seemingly of low priority to many elected Councillors.
When elected, Darebin Progressive Independents Network (DPINs) Councillors will:
Specific Measures
Review the Darebin Nature Plan 2021-2025 and incorporate it within the above City Presentation Strategic Plan.
Develop, if required by the above Plan, a target for tree canopy cover that can be demonstrated to be feasible, does not diminish resources for achieving inclusion of mid and groundstorey plantings and offers demonstrable shade provision and heat reduction.
Ensure follow up of planning permit conditions requiring proponent to use indigenous species in landscape works are effectively implemented.
Investigate opportunities for employment of First Nations people in caring for sites with recognised biodiversity values.
Continue to support the management of Darebin Parklands as a key resource in the open space system and in recognition of its long history of rehabilitation.
Review the effectiveness of the cat curfew:
Continue to support programs (e.g. Gardens for Wildlife) that assist the community to better appreciate biodiversity and make private gardens wildlife friendly.
Biodiversity
It has become recognised that urban environments play an important role in biodiversity. These environments can become a refuge for species that can travel from drought-stricken rural areas to better-off urban areas, as well as a long-term home for species with an ability to adapt to urban conditions, or that might re-colonise areas subject to urban habitat rehabilitation. While Darebin has been active in biodiversity management, much more needs to be done.
When elected, Darebin Progressive Independents Network (DPINs) Councillors will:
General Measures
Ensure that biodiversity considerations are incorporated within city presentation works to elevate its importance.
Give recognition to the important role urban environments offer for preservation of biodiversity and seek to extend urban habitat to better accommodate that biodiversity.
Ensure native grassland, grassy woodland and other sites with recognised biodiversity values continue to be protected and managed to preserve their values and in recognition of their role in caring for country.
Give primacy to the use of indigenous plants in Council programs and works.
Support planning and works that extend and enhance biodiversity corridors across the municipality that offer linkage between key sites and to waterway corridors.
Continue to support works to rehabilitate all waterway corridors in Darebin.
Support the development of a program to reduce the number of environmental weed and other pest species across Darebin and their downstream impacts on waterways and other open space.
Climate Mitigation and Adaptation
Climate is a critical issue for Darebin residents. While Darebin Council has been active in addressing the climate emergency and has achieved more than a 70% reduction in Council’s emissions, it is the view of DPIN that the emphasis needs to increasingly shift to adaptation. This will be essential to prepare Darebin for an inevitably hotter and drier climate that will present significant risks to health and mortality. Heat is a significant killer of people across the world. Darebin and its environment must be prepared for this increased risk.
When elected, Darebin Progressive Independents Network (DPINs) Councillors will:
General Measures
Move beyond the virtue-seeking rhetoric and self-congratulation associated with declaration of a climate emergency and introduce practical actions that prepare Darebin and its residents for the climate extremities of the present and future, given the worsening of those extremities is now almost inevitable.
While continuing to support initiatives that reduce carbon emissions in Council activities and assist the Darebin public to reduce emissions, elevate climate preparedness in Council’s response to the climate emergency, especially given long lead times associated with tree growth for shading, the comparatively slow development of some components of mitigation programs (e.g. road re-design – see below) and the inevitability of a profoundly changed climate, especially summer heat.
Support climate preparedness as a required key outcome of the City Presentation Strategic Plan.
Support increased use of renewable energy as key to a transition away from coal and gas and continue to oppose nuclear as an option.
Specific Measures
Seek the preparation of an outlook plan that assesses the needs of the city in preparing for increasing climate extremes through to 2050 and incorporate its findings in the City Presentation Strategic Plan.
Ensure areas in Darebin that suffer high heat stress as revealed by thermal imaging (e.g. major transport routes with increasing housing density such as High Street, the southern sections of Plenty Road., and Bell Street), are given particular attention to mitigate urban heat stress.
Investigate the potential for contributions from developers of medium and high-rise buildings to assist efforts to mitigate the Urban Heat Island Effect.
Ensure plans and procedures are in place for protection of vulnerable populations in extreme weather events, including the opening of air-conditioned Council buildings such as libraries for extended hours during heatwaves.
Roads, Streetscapes and Car Parks
Darebin’s roads and streetscapes are still primarily considered to be a means by which motorised vehicles are conveyed. Every year roads are re-constructed throughout Darebin with no thought given to their wider function as a location for vegetation, treatment of stormwater and cooling of the urban environment. Little or no thought is given to how roads can play a role in the climate crisis. This must change with road re-construction being seen as an opportunity for re0design to achieve the addressing of these wider issues.
When elected, Darebin Progressive Independents Network (DPINs) Councillors will:
General Measures
Ensure a program is developed to re-design roads and streetscapes in areas where wide reserves are available that permit increased shading of road surfaces and increased stormwater retention in centre medians to support vegetation growth.
Ensure design and programming of street tree plantings have shading of heat absorbing surfaces as a primary consideration alongside tree performance.
Specific Measures
Ensure that all road reconstruction works and all Council asphalting works use light-coloured pavement materials capable of reflecting rather than absorbing heat.
Develop a program to replace any asphalt footpaths with concrete or light-coloured pavement materials.
Review small local traffic management projects to ensure they deliver cost and community benefit.
Require proponents of new car parks to use light-coloured pavement materials and design for 95% summer shading via trees or other means.
Review Council-owned car parks to program retrofitting trees in adequate soil volumes, re-surfacing with light-coloured pavement materials and increasing summer shading of impervious surfaces to 95% of surface area.
Work with private shopping centre owners to increase shading of car parks.
Especially work with owners of the Northcote Plaza shopping centre to restore tree cover and generally increase vegetation surrounding and within the car park.
Stormwater Management
Councils have generally not taken responsibility for the quality of stormwater running off catchments they manage and that are serviced by Council drains. While Councils often complain about cost-shifting from other levels of government, this is one case where the reverse applies, with Councils often arguing that stormwater treatment is best done at scale and exclusively by the regional authority (Melbourne Water). A more appropriate approach would be to work collaboratively with Melbourne Water to undertake partnership projects to improve stormwater quality discharging to local streams.
When elected, Darebin Progressive Independents Network (DPINs) Councillors will:
General Measures
Review the extent to which Council exercises responsibility for stormwater management (especially pollutant and volume reductions), in relation to its drainage system and in line with accepted legal and industry standards.
Review small stormwater treatment initiatives on roads to ensure there is a positive cost and environmental/community benefit and re-direct funds to larger road re-design initiatives if such benefits are lacking.
Ensure all stormwater management projects seeking budgetary support contain treatment, irrigation re-use and city presentation benefits as part of the linking of stormwater management to city presentation.
Support cost-effective stormwater capture and treatment projects from the local and Melbourne Water drainage systems for irrigation of open space and to reduce stormwater volumes and pollutants in waterways.
Elevate the role of stormwater as a key device by which vegetation in a drying climate can be sustained and a key ingredient in improving city presentation.
Review planning requirements that all stormwater from residential properties be connected to a legal point of discharge, to encourage more on-site detention and re-use and less discharge to waterways.
Support the introduction of stormwater into the landscape to help cool urban environments, provide visually attractive features and support diverse vegetation communities.
Continue to support works that reduce flooding risks for residents and seek to develop priority flood mitigation projects in Darebin with Melbourne Water.
Specific Measures
Continue to support initiatives to improve water quality at Edwardes Lake while recognising the constraints imposed by a large upstream catchment generating significant pollutant loads and the lack of space for additional treatment at the lake.
Investigate and introduce measures to trap increased litter volumes from the Council stormwater system.