Our Policies
- 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.
Transport and Traffic Management
While main roads through Darebin are a state responsibility via the Department of Transport and Planning, Council manages all other roads. The percentage of Darebin households owning one car (44.6%) is high by comparison with Greater Melbourne (35.6%), though less for two or three car households. This means that Darebin residents are significantly invested in car ownership. This method of commuting is used by 38.5% of people who travelled to work on Census day in 2021. By comparison, only 7.1% used public transport and 4.1% cycled or walked. Perhaps due to the pandemic, 36% worked from home.
It is obvious that more needs to be done to attempt to reduce use of fossil-fuel powered vehicles, although the role of Darebin Council in offering incentives for behaviour change is limited by comparison with other levels of government. In the meantime, Darebin Council must do everything it can to make access to and use of public transport attractive.
A further perennial issue is for Council to continue to keep residential streets free from speeding traffic at all times, and especially during morning and afternoon peaks.
When elected, Darebin Progressive Independents Network (DPINs) Councillors will:
General Measures
Continue to support appropriate active transport initiatives with demonstrable community benefit.
Ensure continued provision of services to all transport users such that current mobility can be maintained, while continuing to reduce negative impacts such as carbon emissions and other pollutants.
Eromote and ensure newly designated walking routes are capable of incorporating increased vegetation cover to improve their attractiveness and to lift usage rates.
Support the use of rail corridors, where viable land is available, for increased vegetation cover and continue to support volunteer Stationeer groups.
Seek to develop an outlook and options plan to address the increased use of autonomous EVs and their impact on car ownership, traffic volumes and the need for parking provision, so that Council is well prepared for a potentially radical change to private transport and can move proactively with what could potentially be a positive transition.
Work with other Councils and Department of Transport and Planning to investigate vehicle congestion pricing and how it might work and apply across Melbourne and in the City of Darebin and how socio-economic disadvantage issues could be addressed if such pricing was introduced.
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
Waste Management
As easily accessible and viable landfill sites reduce, all Councils and the State Government are committed to diversion of waste going to landfill. However, over the last 30 years, improvements to waste management have not kept pace with volumes still going to landfill. Darebin and regional Council partners need to do more along with the State Government. DPIN supports charging by weight for household landfill waste.
When elected, Darebin Progressive Independents Network (DPINs) Councillors will:
General Measures
Employ principles of the circular economy to guide and assist re-use and recycling of materials to avoid waste and high reliance on virgin materials in packaging.
Support additional educational and other initiatives and programs to inform the community further regarding waste management, especially the need to keep unused food out of landfill and ensure food scraps go to composting via assisting and subsidising composting for households and especially those living in apartment blocks.
Support State and Federal initiatives to improve processes for recyclable material to extend its life and give it additional uses.
Support purchase of recycled materials that have been re-created for additional uses (e.g. plastic bollards, outdoor furniture etc.).
Specific Measures
Advocate for and work with other Councils and levels of government to restore soft plastic recovery with convenient drop-off points for Darebin residents.
Investigate the potential for weekly food waste collection for items not suitable for composting instead of fortnightly collection in green waste, because these items attract flies and fruit flies.
Review charges for waste with a view to the introduction of a waste by weight charge for collection of landfill bins to incentivise reduction of waste volumes going to landfill.
Investigate the usefulness of separate glass recycling collection in light of the State Government’s Container Deposit Scheme and the advantages for recyclable separation.
Investigate the opening of an additional Resource Recovery Centre, preferably in the southern part of Darebin, to ensure travel to Kurnai Avenue, Reservoir is not a disincentive to use.
Investigate the employment of additional litter officers to better cover the whole of Darebin to deter and prevent dumping of waste and reduce the incidence of litter.
Appropriate, Community-Oriented Development
The State Government’s announcement of a large number of activity centres that will be targeted for more intense urban development has caused significant unease across areas of Thornbury and Preston, due to the prospect of high-rise development in low-rise residential areas. One of the groups that has emerged to critique these State Government proposals is Fair Growth Thornbury (FGT). DPIN seeks to support FGT in their efforts to ensure that development proposals are matched by appropriate and adequate provision of necessary services to support increased population density and create the liveable circumstances that new and current residents will need and reasonably expect. These services are broad ranging and cover areas well beyond basic water, sewer, road and telecommunications infrastructure and include all health, welfare and educational services as well as open space provision and opportunities for contact with nature to help address mental health. Darebin, like all middle ring suburbs in Melbourne, can’t have development at any cost imposed upon them by other levels of government pre-occupied only with housing supply and showing little regard for provision of necessary wide-ranging services that must accompany more intensive development.
DPIN rejects the myth first put about in the 1990s that all middle ring suburbs have under-utilised capacity that will readily cater for more intensive development and increased population. Forty years of gentrification of middle ring suburbs have already stretched their services and infrastructure to near capacity.
All areas (outer, middle or inner ring areas) subject to increased development require additional or upgraded services and infrastructure. Middle ring suburbs do not present a free pass for governments wishing to avoid provision of additional or upgraded services and infrastructure. Some additional development can be accommodated in middle ring suburbs, but only with these additional or upgraded services and infrastructure.
When elected, Darebin Progressive Independents Network (DPINs) Councillors will:
General Measures
Ensure that Darebin remains a highly desirable and inviting place to live, work and recreate because of its recognised liveability attributes, thriving retail strip shopping centres and café precincts, human-scale, walkable street environments, climate adaptation and preparedness and well-maintained tree and vegetation cover in parks and elsewhere.
Reject excessive and poor development that erodes liveability, creates proverbial concrete jungles devoid of greenery, constrains opportunities for community contact and contact with nature and negatively impacts local urban character, identity, the streetscape environment and walkability.
Reject development that is unable to be matched by demonstrated necessary infrastructure and services (e.g. transport, health care, child care, education provision, recreation, open space etc.), to meet the needs of a proposed increased population.
Ensure that all intensive, medium and high-rise development is required to make provision for greenery via use of green walls and roofs, as well as vegetated open space in order to facilitate heat mitigation and allow people to retain some contact with nature, as well as creating attractive spaces for community interaction.
Only support well-designed more intensive development where it is close to public transport and activity centres that contain all of the above attributes.
Plot a course between extreme YIMBY and NIMBY interests and lobby groups, recognising that neither fully represent broader community interests in making Darebin a more liveable city that will inevitably need to accommodate more people due to factors outside of Council’s control.
Specific Measures
Housing
Darebin is not immune from the housing crisis that grips the nation. A large sector of the Darebin population are renters, with just under 33% of Darebin’s households renting privately and 4.1% in social housing – both higher than the greater Melbourne average.
The State Government has given Darebin a target of 69,000 new homes by 2051, although population growth projections are not aligned with such a target. It follows that developers will not build new homes to which the State Government aspires if there is not the population to create the demand.
When elected, Darebin Progressive Independents Network (DPINs) Councillors will:
General Measures
Work with the State Government to arrive at an acceptable and achievable target for a housing increase in Darebin through to 2051, but only after the release of modelling that sets the draft target figure, and thereafter, detailed investigation of:
Continue to support current zonings and overlays in the Planning Scheme unless there is an overwhelming, well-researched case for change.
Ensure that the provisions of Heritage Overlays continue to be applied to afford protection for areas of documented and recognised heritage value and are not used in bad faith to unreasonably thwart proposals for new housing.
Support the basic premise that, while there could be significant qualifications, housing densification is best located in close proximity to public transport routes (especially trains and trams).
Specific Measures
Oppose excessive densification of development that turns key transport corridors (especially those with a north-south orientation, e.g. High Street) into high-rise, windswept, alienating concrete canyons, because of inadequate consideration of climate and street-scale, walkability/liveability issues that help retain and enhance street-life and make Darebin a desirable place to be.
Investigate the potential for contributions from developers of medium and high-rise buildings to assist efforts to mitigate the Urban Heat Island Effect.
Public Housing
Always advocate for everyone to have the right to be housed in safe, adequate and well-maintained housing.
Advocate for public housing to be the primary focus of new housing development in Darebin in recognition that successive State and Federal Governments have allowed investment in this sector to slide to unacceptably low levels over the last 30 years and that the homeless and disadvantaged must be housed in sound, safe, affordable accommodation.
Advocate to the State Government to cease the undermining of public housing by either the selling of government owned public housing estates to private developers, or allowing majority private housing to be developed on former public housing estates.
Preston Market
When elected, Darebin Progressive Independents Network (DPINs) Councillors will:
Support the application of the heritage overlay for the market in the Darebin Planning Scheme and promote the features of heritage significance.
Advocate to State Government for public acquisition of the market to better ensure the ongoing role of the market and bring it into line with other major markets in Melbourne (Queen Victoria, South Melbourne, Prahran).
Support necessary upgrades to market facilities to ensure it is clean and functional and restore valuable original features where possible.
Support a full occupation of all market stalls.
Promote the fresh food market to support community health.
Prioritise the ongoing role of the market as a community hub and an asset that must clearly benefit the community.
Work to preserve the functioning and primary importance of the market and its traders, recognising its role as critical to the social fabric of the local community.
Oppose development that brings a loss of market functions and an excessive focus on residential development that diminishes its role as an important gathering place and social asset for the community.
Advocate for ongoing consideration of the needs of traders within a competitive trading environment that draws people to the market and benefits shoppers.
Reservoir Leisure Centre
The re-development of the RLC is essential and a key priority for the northern part of the city. Moves to initiate its design have been far too slow.
When elected, Darebin Progressive Independents Network (DPINs) Councillors will:
Support Council budget allocations that provide for the design and construction of the RLC above all other priorities.
Support the full re-development of the RLC as a priority for Council, recognising that it is long-overdue.
Support re-development of the Reservoir Leisure Centre (RLC) to achieve a facility comparable to, and of a likeness with, the re-developed Northcote Aquatic & Recreation Centre, especially including a 50 metre outdoor heated pool capable of being used by the public year-round and a well-being facility, including a hydro-therapy pool.
Oppose attempts to characterise Reservoir as undeserving of a centre comparable to that at Northcote, when access to learn to swim, fitness and well-being facilities are much needed amongst the local population, with Darebin’s highest proportion of low income earners and migrant communities.