Farmer Ned Powell expresses his concern about farmland being used for residential development.
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00:00 My name's Ned Powell, I live on the farm here.
00:03 So Ned, what's your concern about this planning changes that Hepburn Shire is proposing for your land?
00:10 Look, my main concern is that the Shire are proposing to use perfectly good, really good quality farmland for development, for residential development.
00:20 And I think there are alternatives, better alternatives, so that we don't need to use our farmland.
00:26 They want to rezone part of this block, don't they?
00:29 Yep, so their proposal is to rezone this entire strip along the street here, 14 hectares, into residential, and the paddocks to the north of our house into industrial.
00:42 It seems a little bit of a strange decision.
00:45 Well, they keep talking about how their highest priority is to protect agricultural farmland, and that's outlined in their rural strategy.
00:54 And then in the same raft of plans, in their Dallas for the Structure plan, they're recommending to rezone farmland.
01:01 So it's very inconsistent. It doesn't make sense.
01:05 [BLANK_AUDIO]