Council leads on waterways

Council leads on waterways

The City of Melbourne (CoM) last month extended its advocacy for rationalisation of governance structure of the Yarra River.

The council included the issue as one of 15 questions to candidates in the upcoming state election.

Specifically, the council is asking: “Will you support rationalisation of the management of the Docklands waterways and Yarra River?”

The questionnaire is a first for the council and results will be published on the CoM website.

And on October 24 the council’s delegates councillors Stephen Mayne and Rohan Leppert will be asking the Municipal Association of Victoria’s (MAV) state conference for support on the issue.

On September 9, the council’s Future Melbourne Committee approved a proposal seeking support from the wider local government community to lobby the State Government for change.

The CoM’s motion reads: “That MAV State Council seeks support from the State Government for a rationalisation of the governance of the Yarra, Docklands and Port Phillip Bay.”

A report supporting the motion said: “The existing waterways governance model involves 16 agencies and a complex framework of 21 pieces of overlapping, non-hierarchical legislation. The intricacy leads to duplicated processes and a scenario where there are many hands on the wheel, but nobody steering.”

Join Our Facebook Group