Refugee Week in Brimbank
Sun 14th June - Sat 20th June 2009
Council celebrated Refugee Week with a lunch in Sunshine and lots of useful information from council officers about services for newly arrived families.


Unleashing Melbourne's sprawl - Brumby-style
Plans to contain Melbourne’s urban sprawl are effectively stone dead and the city’s cherished green wedge zones are in danger. I learnt that Planning Minister Justin Madden had plans to seize control of sections of suburban Melbourne and Geelong to speed up development. The Minister's intentions were exposed in Parliament when a key piece of his planning legislation was defeated last week.


RMIT Associate Professor Michael Buxton, a prominent urban planner who has worked closely with the State Government on the 'Melbourne 2030 Plan' (October 2001) has slammed Premier Brumby’s plan to expand 23,000 hectares into the green wedges. Strangely, Premier Brumby said that the blocking of the legislation by the upper house was “the height of irresponsibility by the opposition", and he is planning to reintroduce his legislation to the parliament unchanged.