Recently BSFG and ESD member Howard Bartlett made submissions to several Victorian Government enquiries on Housing; Housing In Regional Victoria, and the Homes Victoria Benalla West Consultation.   My impression is that Howard is making progress on getting recognition for Sustainable Design concepts in housing and is submitting a separate AGM report on his work.
​
An important aspect of housing is firstly having available housing you can afford to buy or rent then being able to afford living there.  Many new homes seem to cater for narrow economic and generational sectors of our economy.  BSFG member Kate Holmes and the Benalla Homelessness Response Group Inc have also made a submission to the Housing In Regional Victoria Enquiry and the group should be congratulated on taking on this both local and national problem.

This year we had a sold-out screening of the 2025 Swanpool Environmental Film Festival which BSFG jointly partners with Swanpool Landcare. Themes covered at the 2025 festival included planetary boundaries, ecological economics, sustainable farming, protecting native forests and the oceans.  The festival program and a summary report of the festival are on the BSFG website.  This year we were most grateful for the local and well-known Ramey Hengen taking on the role of festival MC. Ramey filled the role with warmth, humour and diligence based on his prior research.

After the film Climate Extremes, Ecological Economist Dr Phil Lawn opened the festival with his renamed presentation "Climate change, degrowth, and saving the world to save us!".  You can download Phil’s presentation from the BSFG website, or listen to on Spotify, or Apple Podcast.  No need to sign in.  Audio recording by Shepperton's Robert McLean of Climate Conversations.

Phil mentions in his talk the ecological footprint. As a scientific indicator of Ecological Sustainability, the EF shows that in 2025 humanity’s global Ecological Footprint exceeded Biocapacity by 1.8, needing 1.8 earths to sustain it.  While in Australia EF/person exceeds global BC per person by 4.9. See overshoot at https://overshoot.footprintnetwork.org/.

Following afternoon tea was Ep1 of the film Roots So Deep looking at regenerative cattle grazing compared to conventional agriculture in the US.  MC Ramey then led Local farmer and friend Mark Foletta through aspects of managing the family farm at Yin Barun.  After a short break we saw  Takayna- The Heart Of Lutruwita, a journey to the vast and threatened landscapes of Australia’s largest temperate rainforest in Tasmania.

Following the dinner break we saw the new David Attenborough film Ocean highlighting the damage bottom trawling is doing to the marine landscapes and ecosystems. David also pointed out that given a chance these ecosystems can recover rapidly, and he concludes that "If we save the sea, we save the world. The ocean, our final frontier". A fitting closing thought for the festival.  Let’s hope there is a chance for recovery of these ocean and other ecosystems.


Peter Maddock for ESD Action Group.

HOWARD BARLETT'S BSFG RESPONSE TO THE HOMES VICTORIA BENALLA WEST CONSULTATION, DEADLINE IS 4 JUNE 2025.
You can respond directly to Homes Victoria here
 https://engage.vic.gov.au/benalla-west-housing
The concept plan provides, (see plan concepts in the photo gallery below).
48 Dwellings:
One Bedroom Homes (25)
2 Bedroom Units (15)
3 Bedroom Units (8)
Plan 1 provide an outline of the site.
Plan 2 shows existing road access
Plan 4 shows the existing road reserve widths. The existing road reserves are 18m and 16m wide. They contain an 8.0m and 10.0m wide road pavements, footpaths driveways and power poles, leaving little room for advanced trees and the establishment of a tree canopy.

The Concept Plan provided does not comply with the BSFG position that all living room windows face north and be protected from shading at noon in Mid-Winter. 19 dwellings face east or west.

Houses overlooking Waminda Park
Lots 36 and 37 on the northeast side of a driveway have views across the driveway to the park.
Lots 27 to 35 (9 lots) back onto Waminda Park.
Four overlook the park from the second storey. (lots 29,30,31&32)
Five are single-story dwellings (lots 27,28,33,34 &35)

BSFG has submitted to the Inquiry into the  Supply of Housing in Regional Victoria, link to this submission.
This proposal is in line with the BSFG submission regarding the shortage of accommodation for single and couple renters.
The consultation does not clarify if any houses will be available to buy as house and land or as completed homes.
The concept plan does not reflect BFSG priorities regarding:

• Orientation
• Room for advanced trees and the establishment of a tree canopy.

Potential for advanced trees and the growth of a canopy is not possible in 8.5m wide laneway reservation. It contains a 5.5m wide pavement and driveways
The surveillance of Waminda Park is poor in this proposal. It is still hidden from the general public's view by side fences and houses. Only eleven new dwellings have a direct benefit. Most passersby will miss the narrow openings as they walk or drive past.
 
Suggestions
The road network is influenced by the existing sewer easement running northward through the back of the existing lots Plan 1
The result is lots running east-west with access from the laneway.
 
An alternative plan prepared by BSFG:
Provides two new roads running east-west.
Public Road frontage is provided to Waminda Park.  Plan 3
All road reserves are 18.0m wide. Plan 5
Existing road reserves are widened to 18m wide with two metre widening to existing roads provided by the new development.
18m provides indented right-angle parking and street trees.
It is noted that existing power poles on the north side of Ballantine Street and East side of Kelly Court will require additional road widening for mature trees not provided in the BSFG layouts below.

BSFG Layouts
It deletes laneways. Two new roads running east-west
Public Road frontage is provided to Waminda Park.
Lots with accessed from internal roads with a 6.0m wide road pavement, leaving 6.0m for driveways, which can count as visitor parking and advanced trees.
Footpaths, if required, should be on one side only.
Plan 6 provides 28 lots
Plan 7 Provides 39 lots
Provision of further refinements, including House Siting Policy for every lot, could improve the yield to the 48 provided in the consultation plans.

A house siting policy proposal
Party walls or touching walls on common boundaries running north-south.
Glass doors, windows, and private open space on the north side of the dwellings.
Ridge lines running east-west to support photovoltaic cells facing north.
Protection from overshadowing in winter by locating two-storey dwellings where they only shade road reserves.
Paired driveways.
Party walls for carports and garages.
Pedestrian access from the street to private open spaces for garden refuse and rubbish removal through carports (not through the house).
Garages and Carports to be structurally independent of the house for staged construction or never built.
Contact Howard Bartlett about Smart Block Design.
0409 504 420.

View Concept and Smart Block Design Plans Below.

 
The BSFG Ecological Sustainable Design and Development Action Group has made a submission to the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the supply of Housing in Regional Victoria, www.parliament.vic.gov.au/regionalhousing.

Its Report was adopted at the BSFG committee meeting on 27/03/2025.

The Executive Summary is a call to action to owners (Owner Occupiers, Landlords and Renters) looking to move, upgrade or downsize.

There is something for everyone including Designer / Builder Teams.

The report is in three parts (downloads below):

1. Executive Summary
2. Cover Letter and Report
3. Examples -  proof of concept for subdivisions and house designs built in the 1990s 
4. Attachments -  relevant extracts from the Benalla Planning Scheme.

Put our heads together and provide feedback before we address the Parliamentary Committee.
Contact
Howard Bartlett
Mobile 0409 504 420

Download Executive Summary.
Download Letter and Report.
Download Examples.
Download Attachments.

Our group has not been active for some time.

There has been some email activity related to subdivision developments in Benalla. I have contributed some articles published on our website, https://www.bsfg.org.au/ecologicalsustainable-design-and-development.  (Refer previous posts on this page)

The Goulburn Murray Climate Alliance may have progressed their work with Councils on the Sustainable Subdivisions Framework, https://www.gmca.org.au/sustainable-subdivisions.html.
This project could be looked into again.

BSFG member Howard Bartlett, 0409504420 has recently drawn our attention to a paper from the Municipal Association of Victoria, Shaping regional and rural Victoria: A discussion paper.

This paper could become a catalyst for further discussion by the group as the paper considers
greening of streets and reserves, solar farms, council resources, and affordable appropriate
housing.

There has been a focus on Sustainable Subdivisions as if the answer to Ecological Sustainability
is found in housing. Personally, I think we need to look well beyond housing to achieve
Ecological Sustainability. I have replied to a few emails I received from some environmental
organisations, commenting they are not going to get anywhere until both population and
economic growth are reduced and stabilised.

This morning, I received an email from Friends of The Earth Melbourne about their campaigns.
An interesting one is SKAT Updates + 'The Koalas' Documentary Screening in Melbourne in June.
The trailer for the film is on Documentary Australia. The trailer mentions the koala will be extinct by 2050 as habitat is threatened by new housing developments. (Link to trailer below)

​
Last night I attended a webinar on Sustainable Prosperity by Steven Hail from the Modern
Money Lab and speaker at the upcoming 2024 Swanpool Environmental Film Festival. His school at Torrens University of Adelaide is training Ecological Economists, economists who will consider the ecological impact of the economy and economic development. The pursuit of economic development with increasing GDP perhaps needs to be ameliorated by consideration of ecological measures, such as the Ecological Footprint, Carbon Emissions, and Planetary Boundaries.

​Peter Maddock

Interest in passive house design? What about as a retrofit? We can't recommend this case study highly enough. Builder Dylan endeavours 'to retrofit a draughty cottage into a modern sustainable passive house while his fiance, landscape architect Tylah's, plans for a garden oasis are battered with financial constraints. Dylan's reuse of timber from the house is driven by his concern about the embodied energy that goes into new building products ... "to be able to reuse what we can and then reinstall we're having a lot less impact". You just need to be registered for ABC I-view (free) to watch it..

"No activity for some months.  Waiting on outcome of Goulburn Murray Climate Alliance work on Sustainable Subdivisions Framework, Sustainable Subdivisions (gmca.org.au).  The GMCA ESD Advisor, Simon Blackwell, has commenced trialling the SSF in each municipality, not including Benalla Council.  Nathan Gasperoni is monitoring this.."

​Peter Maddock

"Our group has had discussions about Sustainable Subdivisions. Many Subdivision Planning issues were raised and discussed within BSFG following the Dr Greg Moore talk on ‘Trees are major assets as the climate changes’ Wed, 22 February 2023.

A key document guiding subdivisions is the Planning Scheme and while the Benalla Ordinance may touch on Environment and Sustainability there is little detail on how these values should be implemented in subdivisions.

It would be informative to see what other councils are doing in this area. The Bendigo Council has adopted a One Planet Living framework to guide Ecological Sustainable Design in Subdivisions.

The Goulburn Broken Climate Alliance is currently running a Sustainable Subdivisions Project and their Environmentally Sustainable Development Advisor, Simon Blackwell, has commenced trialing the Sustainable Subdivision Framework in eight municipalities in the Alliance. This project has led to a sustainable subdivision in Indigo Shire. Although Benalla Council is a member of the Alliance it is not a member of this project.  However, Councils Nathan Gasperoni has advised that Benalla Council will be getting feedback about this project.

Existing housing stock will have a substantial influence on reaching Net Zero by 2050 so improvements here need to be considered.

The Footprint Networks Earth Overshoot estimates that in 2022 we required 1.75 earths to sustain the population. We are maintaining our ecological deficit by drawing down local resource stocks, excessive disposal of waste materials and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Our group is listed on the BSFG website as Sustainable Development and that its name, purpose, and activities are to be agreed on.

Two possibilities from the BSFG Review were;

• Engage and Work with Council on Sustainable Planning and
• Development Engage and Work with Council on Sustainable Retrofits.

Hopefully, we can soon define the group and projects and activities to work on."

Peter Maddock
Report Presented to BSFG AGM on 25 May 2023

Find out more about sustainable housing design as developed at the prize winning 'The Cape' project at Cape Patterson in this podcast.featuring Jess Cuman from Adapt Design.  (There's a 10 minute or so 'chatty introduction', so be patient at the beginning.)   

The Ecological, Sustainable Planning and Development group has not had a formal meeting since the Review, however there has been some email discussion of ESD and Subdivision Development Planning.

I followed up with Council Environmental Officer Nathan Gasperoni the offer to arrange a
Planning Meeting with Developers to consider passive solar design principles. After his
discussions with Council Planning people Nathan reported at a meeting with him and Bronwyn
Bishop yesterday that Planning is reluctant to pursue this.

This reminds me of the paper I am reading on ESD in Australia, ‘Ecologically Sustainable
Development’: Success in Principle, Failure in Policy, Still in Prospect'.  I wonder if we need a
Target for ESD such as the Ecological Footprint, which shows that we are currently overshooting the carrying capacity of the planet. This year, Earth Overshoot Day fell on July 28.

See my article 'Ecological Sustainable Development and Planning' in BSFG Newsletter 33, August 2022 (previous post).

Peter Maddock
29/9/2022

I have been researching Ecological Sustainable Development since the formation of our BSFG Review Group and found a September 2018 PhD Thesis by Peter Bennet, 'Australia’s National Approach to ‘Ecologically Sustainable Development’: Success in Principle, Failure in Policy, Still in Prospect', https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/ handle/1885/156800.

‘The thesis concludes that, properly understood and incorporated into an appropriate policy framework, ESD is a coherent and viable concept, one which remains in prospect when and if society returns the problem of general environmental decline to the top of the public policy agenda.”

Ecologically Sustainable Development is an Australian approach to Sustainable Development. I am up to page 128 of 476!

Further ESD research has led me to the Victorian Government's Environmentally Sustainable Development of Buildings and Subdivisions, https://www.planning.vic.gov.au/policy-and-strategy/environmentally-sustainable-development-of-buildingsand-subdivisions where there is a download for a roadmap for Victoria’s planning system which looks at ESD in many areas related to sustainable buildings and subdivisions.

One issue we are often concerned about in new subdivisions is the apparent lack of consideration of house orientation. This roadmap outlines a program to introduce new ESD planning policies and standards that will help, for instance improve building energy efficiency and support the transition to a low emission future by ensuring buildings are sited and orientated to optimise energy efficiency and encourage the use of renewable energy.

The Council Alliance for a Sustainable Built Environment, CASBE, also has resources available for their related Sustainable Subdivisions Framework,  www.casbe.org.au/resources/sustainablesubdivisions-resources/ 

ESD assessment tools available include Green Star developed by the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA), EnviroDevelopment developed by the Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA), and BESS the Built Environment Sustainability Scorecard developed by CASBE. BESS is the only dedicated tool in Victoria for assessing sustainable design at the planning permit stage. CASBE membership is open to all Victorian councils.

My initial search about Ecological SD has led me to finding the encouraging development of Planning for Environmental Sustainable Development in Victorian subdivisions. I will continue to investigate Peter Bennet's thesis on Ecological Sustainable Development as the Ecological Footprint by the Footprint Network indicates globally we are exceeding the biocapacity of the planet.

This year, Earth Overshoot Day fell on July 28. A good reason for emphasising the Ecological in Sustainable Development.

Peter Maddock,
​Ecological Sustainable Planning and Development and Retrofits Group