Residents who marched from St Andrew’s Anglican Church to Male Street in Brighton on Sunday argued the plans would overrun the populations of their suburbs without adequate infrastructure or their consent.
The protesters, led by Brighton Liberal MP James Newbury, chanted “Towers, no, Jacinta must go” and “We are Bayside, not the Gold Coast”. Federal MP for Goldstein Tim Wilson joined the march, as did southern metropolitan Liberal MPs Georgie Crozier and David Davis.
Volunteers passed around an eftpos machine to collect donations in the rain.
Newbury urged protesters to sacrifice one $150 dinner they would otherwise buy on Church Street, and instead put the money towards signs and advertising to aid the campaign against high-rise development.
The government has allocated 50 activity centres for higher-density development near transport hubs across Melbourne. Consultation on the zones, including Brighton and Hampton, is scheduled to finish early next year.
Businesswoman Tina Nettlefold, who joined the march, said: “In this Bayside community, we do not have the infrastructure to allow for these sort of tall high rises, and to ruin our community without our consent.”
Nicole Urquhart, who held a sign reading “Stop state Labor’s towers”, said she didn’t want Brighton “overtaken by massive towers”.
“We’ve put a lot of time, money and effort into our beautiful houses,” she said.
“Our daughters went to Gardenvale Primary School, and it’s full to the brim. Where are those children going to go to school?”
The Victorian government maintains that its overhaul of the state’s planning laws – the biggest “in decades” – will make the housing market fairer, while it has said the Liberals continue to fight to “block homes from getting built”.
“[Opposition Leader] Brad Battin and James Newbury need to explain why they want to lock generations of Victorians out of the housing market,” Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny said in a statement.
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