A Melbourne developer was fined for illegally clearing native vegetation on a property he owned in Campbellfield.Stakeholders are calling for an overhaul of some of Victoria's planning laws after a developer illegally cleared endangered native vegetation on his property, and then won permission to build a multi-million-dollar development on the site.
But after the land was illegally cleared, the developer separately applied to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal for permission to clear the rest of the land of native vegetation, subdivide the block and build warehouses, which was approved in April. Hume Mayor Joseph Haweil said he worried about the message the case sent to other developers considering this kind of behaviour.
In that hearing, the prosecutor also compared the case to the Corkman Hotel, accusing the developer of factoring in the criminal fines as part of "the cost of doing business". "In this VCAT hearing, the developer had already received a penalty, they suffered a criminal sanction for removing vegetation so there wasn't any need for them to go and seek retrospective permission for them to remove that vegetation," he explained.
"Our planning laws are now 35 years old and there been incremental changes over those past three decades but it is probably time for us to have a more wholesale look at those laws and to make sure they are serving the purpose that they are suppose to serve," he said. A Victorian government spokesperson said the County Court decision about the Campbellfield site reinforced "the importance of abiding by the planning system".