{"id":571136,"date":"2026-03-29T02:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T02:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/571136\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T02:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T02:04:09","slug":"victorian-government-ordered-to-compensate-landowner-27-million-over-rezoned-property","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/571136\/","title":{"rendered":"Victorian government ordered to compensate landowner $27 million over rezoned property"},"content":{"rendered":"

A court has ordered the Victorian government to pay more than $27 million in compensation to a landowner whose property was partially rezoned for public acquisition after initially making the man a formal offer of $0.<\/p>\n

The significant payout is detailed in a judgment from Supreme Court Justice Claire Harris, who presided over the civil case.<\/p>\n

In her written judgment, she explained that the landowner, Jeffrey Robert Barrett, first bought a property in Wyndham Vale in Melbourne’s west in 1981 when it was zoned for rural use.<\/p>\n

But in 2010, changes to Victorian planning provisions placed public acquisition overlays across that property and an adjoining property Mr Barrett owned.<\/p>\n

Those overlays signalled that the Victorian government intended to acquire parts of the properties as land to be used for a future transport corridor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The plan included a regional rail link and ring road, and the Western Grasslands Reserve, an environmental project designed to protect endangered native grassland in Melbourne’s west<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In June 2021, Wyndham City Council knocked back an application Mr Barrett had made to develop his land because of the public acquisition overlays.<\/p>\n

Later that month, the council granted planning approval for a different development proposal on one of the properties, which did not include areas covered by the public acquisition overlays.<\/p>\n

Justice Harris said Mr Barrett then lodged a claim for compensation to the Victorian government authority, Transport for Victoria, based on the initial planning permit refusal.<\/p>\n

“The authority did not respond to Mr Barrett’s compensation claim within the time period stipulated,” Justice Harris found.<\/p>\n

In 2023, Mr Barrett made a claim against the government authority with the Supreme Court of Victoria for more than $31 million in financial losses linked to his land being reserved for public use.<\/p>\n

“The authority in its formal response did not admit that Mr Barrett had suffered any financial loss,” Justice Harris noted.<\/p>\n

She said Transport for Victoria responded to Mr Barrett’s claim by making a “$0 offer for financial loss and $0 offer for professional expenses”.<\/p>\n

By March 2024, Transport for Victoria had amended its position, Justice Harris said, to “include an admission that the permit refusal was sufficient to trigger a prima facie right to claim compensation”.<\/p>\n

But Justice Harris said the government authority “continued at that time to make no offer of compensation”.<\/p>\n

Transport for Victoria acknowledged financial loss, court says<\/p>\n

After Mr Barrett revised his claim down to just over $28 million in March 2025, Justice Harris said Transport for Victoria acknowledged he had suffered a financial loss as a “natural, direct and reasonable consequence” of his land being reserved for a public purpose.<\/p>\n

The government authority then made “an amended offer of $18,650,000 as financial loss with expenses of $75,000” to Mr Barrett, Justice Harris said.<\/p>\n

When the case went to trial, Justice Harris said it was limited to determining what the appropriate amount of compensation would be.<\/p>\n

$92m case over Victoria’s grassland reserve<\/a><\/p>\n

The Victorian government is\u00a0ordered to pay $92 million in compensation to a prominent family after it added environmental protections to their land which reduced\u00a0its overall value.<\/p>\n

She said both parties agreed that without the public acquisition, one of Mr Barrett’s properties would have been moved within the urban growth boundary in 2010, while the second property would have been nearly entirely outside the urban growth boundary.<\/p>\n

But, Justice Harris said, there were other areas in which the parties disagreed, including a claim from Transport for Victoria that some of Mr Barrett’s financial loss was caused by his failure to obtain a cultural heritage management plan, rather than by the grassland reservation planning overlay.<\/p>\n

Justice Harris’s judgment ultimately came in close to Mr Barrett’s claim.<\/p>\n

She determined he had suffered a $27,925,000 loss because of one of his properties being reserved for public use.<\/p>\n

Both parties agreed to compensation for Mr Barrett’s expenses, which the court was told had already been paid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A court has ordered the Victorian government to pay more than $27 million in compensation to a landowner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1783,16553,43,280470,280468,44,41,39,42,40,280469,26693,280467],"class_list":["post-571136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-compensation","tag-development","tag-headlines","tag-land-acquisition","tag-land-rezoning","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-transport-for-victoria","tag-victorian-government","tag-wyndham-vale"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}