City Schools for City Kids

The State Government announced on Tuesday, October 11 that it is going to buy land to build a primary school in Docklands and also to build new schools in North Melbourne and Fishermans Bend.

At last the government has decided to act. Families throughout the greater Melbourne area (including Docklands, the CBD and Southbank) have been waiting for years to have desperately needed schools in the inner city.

Whilst on the surface this announcement seems to be great news, local families and residents must now keep up the pressure on the Andrews Labour Government to quickly get on with purchasing land and getting these schools built.

A tireless campaign run by the City Schools for City Kids group and supported by the We Live Here movement has been conducted over a long period of time.

It shows that ongoing pressure by these groups is working. These ongoing efforts appear to be now reaping the rewards that inner city residents deserve and that their voice is at last being heard.

You the resident have a voice and are a voter.

Council elections

On Friday, October 7 the We Live Here movement had a meeting with Mr Phil Cleary, a candidate for the Lord Mayor’s position at the upcoming City of Melbourne council election. Mr Cleary was also given a tour of a residential building.

We would like to thank Mr Cleary for showing great interest and taking time out of his busy schedule to see for himself and understand the problems that residential buildings across the city have with unregulated short-stay operators.

The We Live Here movement supports and embraces Airbnb and the mum and dad investors embracing sharing economy ideals.

We do not support the unregulated commercial short stay industry and their operators. They are not part of the “sharing economy” but of the “taking economy”.

The We Live Here movement encourages all residents, before voting, to carefully consider what the candidates are going to do for residents and what their policies are on short-stays in residential buildings. Make sure your voice counts.

Survey of candidates

To canvas the opinion of candidates on the issue of short-stays we sent a short questionnaire to all 58 candidates for lord mayoral and councillor positions.

The questions asked were:

Are you or anyone or entity associated with you engaged in commercial short-stay operations?

If elected would you support amendments to the Melbourne Planning Scheme to insert the requirement for a planning permit to be obtained before apartments in residential buildings can be used for commercial short-stay operations, including those using Airbnb?

Would you support the regulation of short-stay accommodation in residential buildings so owners’ corporations have a right to determine the use of their building and to create a level playing field for the accommodation industry?

Summary of the preliminary findings:

A total of 11/14 teams (85.7 per cent) responded to the questionnaire; and

1/3 of the ungrouped candidates also responded.

A partial response (1/4 candidates) was received from The Light on the Hill and this team was excluded from the analysis. No response was received from The Heritage Agenda, or An Indigenous Voice for Council.

Results:

10/14 teams said no to Q1 and yes to Q2 and Q3.

One team (Together Melbourne) said yes to Q1 and one team (Melburnian Voice) gave a qualified yes to Q1 because short-stays had infiltrated the building where they lived. Both teams said yes to Q2 and Q3.

One team (Animal Justice) said yes to Q1, was not sure how to answer question 2, but said yes to Q3.

One team (Stephen Mayne: Transparency, Independence, Accountability, Experience) said no to Q1, Q2 and Q3.

Conclusions:

We Live Here is delighted with the response to the questionnaire: thank you so much to everyone who took the time to participate.

We were also very gratified to see the level of support shown for one of the major aims of We Live Here, which is to see regulation of the short-stay industry in residential buildings. It was, therefore surprising and disappointing to see that just one team - Stephen Mayne’s - did not share those views.

Detailed results, including additional comments provided by some of the teams, will be posted on the We Live Here website in due course.

Supporters of We Live Here

The supporter base of We Live Here continues to grow. As at August 31, a total of 141 buildings (see diagram below) and more than 350 individuals had registered on our website at www.welivehere.net.

Supporters are the first to hear breaking news and details of forthcoming events. We also welcome your feed-back and suggestions about issues that can be aired in this column or on our website. Please send to [email protected].

Contributions are also very welcome and can be made online at www.welivehere.net