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June 13th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Better use of existing resources rather than extending Melbourne’s urban growth boundary would have been a smarter way to plan for future growth, a lobby group says.
But the state government insists the boundary needed to be moved to maintain housing affordability.
Melbourne’s northern growth corridor will now extend past Craigieburn up to and including Wallan, and will also encompass extra land at Melton.
The western growth corridor will be extended west of Werribee and more land brought into the boundary around Point Cook, while more land will be released for development near Pakenham in the outer southeast.
Six new suburbs will be created: Merrifield West, Lockerbie and Lockerbie North in the north, Rockbank North and Manor Lakes in the west and another suburb in the Sunbury growth corridor near Diggers Rest.
Planning Minister Matthew Guy said the new communities would house more than 100,000 people over the next 30 years.
“We are releasing new suburbs … so that people have the ability to buy a home in Melbourne whereas in places like Sydney and Brisbane, average Australians are being priced out,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
Committee for Melbourne acting chief executive Andrea Gaffney said the six new suburbs were welcome but development should be contained within existing urban growth boundaries.
Extending the boundary was economically, environmentally and socially unsustainable, she said.
“We cannot keep pushing the UGB (urban growth boundary) to accommodate population growth,” she said.
“Melbourne’s outer suburbs already have inadequate access to infrastructure and decreasing density in this way will only exacerbate the problem.”
Green Wedges Coalition joint coordinator Rosemary West said the decision to open up more land to development was the “antithesis to good planning”.
Good transport, health services and other infrastructure was lacking in the existing fringe suburbs and people needed open space maintained.
“Overwhelmingly, people want those green wedges preserved and there is every indication that we are not desperately in need of more land for housing,” she told AAP.
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