The only things Kingswood, Rossdale and Keysborough golf courses have in common are being targets of profiteer developers and places where you hit balls.
The synergies claimed last week (Golf-housing projects’ ‘synergies’ claim, Star Journal, 2 June 2025) are a myth.
Kingswood is in the Urban area and Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny is simply exercising powers held by all our planning ministers.
That doesn’t affect Greater Dandenong.
Keysborough Golf Club is in the Greater Dandenong Green Wedge Zone where residential developments are prohibited; no windfall sales there.
The hare-brained scheme of trying to get both Houses of Parliament to move the UGB for a developer to build some houses is just a developer’s dream.
To pull this off a developer would have to move the club to our Green Wedge zone in Bangholme which would take valuable farming land out of Melbourne’s food bowl area.
Protection of agriculture in the Green Wedge zones was enshrined into our Planning Scheme regulations in 2023.
One slip in any of this and the whole scheme becomes a messy collapse.
We commend Minister Kilkenny for steadfastly rejecting inappropriate development which is detrimental to our farming areas.
Alan Hood,
Bangholme Rural Land Holders Association president
