In November 2025, Committee for Ballarat led a delegation of regional Committees for Cities to meet with the Minister of Planning, Sonya Kilkenny, to highlight the shortcomings of the State’s Plan Victoria policy. Central to our argument was the growth projections would result in an unhealthy divide between regional and metropolitan Victoria, further hampering regional development, do irreparable damage to Melbourne’s liveability, and apply another unwanted handbrake to the state’s productivity.
Government has shown little appetite for our argument, and yet, as we approach a State Election in November, the debate regarding the future growth of Melbourne is intensifying.
Current discourse sees Government, Opposition parties, the media and a range of advocacy groups challenging, defending and stress testing Melbourne’s growth trajectory. This includes the implications of designated ‘Activity Centres’ in key Bayside and metro suburbs and the impacts of these concentrated high-density developments, resulting urban sprawl, social cohesion and rising inequity. Our hospitals are stretched to the limits, crime on our streets, and the Suburban Rail Loop have become a lightning-rod of division in the state.
Plan Victoria, as it stands, sees Melbourne on the trajectory to be a megacity, home to over 8 million people, absorbing approximately 80-85% of the state’s population by 2050. This will forever change the balance of the state’s population and will see Melbourne crippled by congestion, increasing social division and low productivity.
Whilst this appears to be a Melbourne problem, the impact of 85% of the population living in one city is a problem for Victoria. The solution lies in further investment in our regional cities and towns and critical investment in Regional Development.
Plan Victoria needs to be underpinned by a population settlement plan with an infrastructure plan and investment strategies that incentivises growth across the whole state, and a greater emphasis on our regional cities and towns. Given its geographical advantages, by 2050, Victoria could be a state of well-connected, well-serviced, thriving and vibrant regional cities and towns and a liveable and alluring capital city.
Committee for Ballarat’s advocacy to government through our Ministerial engagements, including to the former Premier, to our local MP’s, and the bureaucrats charged with providing “frank and fearless advice”, has been consistent. We have acted collectively at state and national levels, including the Regional Australia Institute and through our submission to the Select Committee on Productivity in Australia in April 2026. We will continue to prosecute this position in every relevant engagement, and our advocacy will focus on what’s needed to realise the full potential for regional Victoria.
Victoria’s growth is inevitable, but there is a viable alternative to a state with a population of 10 million people and Melbourne home to more than 8.5 million of them. That alternative is greater investment in regional Victoria.
This investment must deliver sustainable growth in regional cities and towns that maximise our potential as a well-connected, well-serviced state. The solutions lie in strategies, policies and funding that ensures a diverse mix of housing to meet growing demand, the provision for new and relocated businesses and industries that create jobs, and integrated public transport including fast regional rail. It’s vital that we create ways to optimise innovation in energy generation, storage and distribution, water, digital connectivity, access to quality healthcare and education, and critical investment in the services we know will enhance social cohesion and allow communities to thrive.
There is, of course, a cost to this investment and we hear too often that government resources are stretched with little available funds to invest. That’s simply not completely accurate. Government has money, but it always makes choices on where to spend it. The Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) is one such choice, and is a decision that will see an estimated $34 billion spent to connect Melbourne’s eastern suburbs of Cheltenham and Box Hill. It has been pleasing to see the new Premier is pausing to rethink this investment, and we will wait with interest to see the outcomes, given the significance of the SRL investment.
In 2025, approximately 25% of the state’s population lived outside the boundaries of metropolitan Melbourne. Just imagine what would be possible for Victoria if 25% of the $34 billion SRL spend was invested into a state of well-connected, well-serviced, thriving and vibrant regional cities and towns.
It’s time to invest more in our state’s regional areas and re-think Plan Victoria before it’s too late.
This is a critical focus area for Committee for Ballarat, and this is a message that we will be relentless in delivering to Government and all sides of politics as we head to the most crucial election cycle we have seen for a very long time in this state.