Community

Background

The City of Melbourne has a diverse population of ages, ethnicities, abilities and interests. This diversity is a strength which enriches our community, and which Council has a responsibility to promote and support through well designed community services and infrastructure.

Principles

1. Community services provided by the City of Melbourne must be broad, and targeted demographically, to remain appropriate to the needs of its diverse population.
2. A sustainable approach to community services acknowledges Melbourne’s forecast population growth, and accepts that capital investment in community services is required now to enable the City to meet its obligations to future generations.
3. All Governments must take a holistic approach to health and wellbeing.
4. Members of the Kulin Nation have a strong cultural and spiritual connection with the area now known as the City of Melbourne, and their rights as traditional custodians of the land must be respected.
5. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples must be included in the development and implementation of public policies, programs and services.
6. The City of Melbourne’s communities are richer for understanding and acknowledging the history and cultures of Aboriginal Melbourne.
7. Multiculturalism is a great strength of Melbourne, and the City of Melbourne has an important role in welcoming and supporting new communities whilst continuing to recognise the heritage and cultures of established migrant communities.
8. People who are homeless have the right to be treated with respect and understanding, and government has a responsibility to care for homeless persons whilst providing sustainable pathways out of homelessness.
9. Council policies for ageing residents should be focused at all times on the principles of ‘healthy ageing’.
10. Government has a responsibility to address the root causes of anti-social behaviour and not just its symptoms.
11. The diverse use of public spaces, particularly at night time, fosters community, improves safety and should be encouraged.
12. Government has a responsibility to address gambling addiction, which is a particular cause of suffering in the City of Melbourne.

Aims

Aboriginal Melbourne

1. Ensure a whole-of-administration approach to awareness and understanding of Aboriginal issues through comprehensive Reconciliation Action Plans, including training for all Councillors and staff.
2. Establish regular formal meetings between the Council’s representatives and Traditional Owner representative bodies.
3. Respect and support Traditional Owner representative bodies and Aboriginal peoples in their self-determined path towards treaty with the City of Melbourne.
4. Ensure a high proportion of new public spaces created by Council are given local Aboriginal names.
5. Ensure that at all Council events and Council-sponsored events there is respectful public recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
6. Increase the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people employed by the City of Melbourne.
7. Improve the management and maintenance of Aboriginal heritage places across the municipality, including through stronger coordination with the Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Register and a more systematic approach to the acknowledgement of previously unrecorded or unknown sites.
8. Improve all Melburnians’ knowledge and understanding of Melbourne’s rich Aboriginal heritage including through accessible arts projects, interpretational signage and better resourced online communications.
9. Ensure Aboriginal Heritage at the Queen Victoria Market site is fully respected and integrated into the market renewal project.

A City for people of all ages and abilities

10. Support and promote healthy ageing, independence, and social inclusion for older people.
11. Work with older people and leaders in the field to ensure that central Melbourne provides aged-care services that are appropriate to the diverse needs of the community.
12. Respectfully work with people experiencing homelessness to develop strategies to ensure that no one sleeps in Melbourne without shelter.
13. Make all parts of Melbourne’s public realm truly accessible to everyone regardless of ability.
14. Promote disability access awareness among businesses and community stakeholders.
15. Work with young people, ensuring that they have access to public spaces where they can feel safe, welcome, and engaged, particularly in the CBD.
16. Ensure that residents of the City of Melbourne are provided with affordable, quality child-care places, including by maintaining a critical number of council-owned, community-run not-for-profit centres.
17. Directly provide, and advocate for the provision in private centres of, flexible care options, including affordable occasional care, flexible care and sessional kindergarten.
18. Work with local businesses to encourage new or expanded workplace childcare programs.
19. Advocate for stronger State resources to enforce and support the safety, amenity, and privacy of boarding and rooming houses.
20. Ensure meaningful participation by, and consultation with, intersex people and community organisations in all issues and policies affecting them.
21. Work with international students to identify and support their wellbeing needs.
22. Advocate to and plan with the State Government to ensure adequate provision of new State Schools for future populations.
23. Advocate on behalf of residential renters in the City of Melbourne for legislation that requires rental properties to provide a minimum level of amenity and security of tenure.

Programs to promote and support community

24. Maintain and promote a register of government-owned properties suitable for leasing to local community service providers at a very low rate.
25. Maintain and extend strong council support for not-for-profit groups that facilitate and build community, including by providing free or subsidised meeting spaces, and supporting multicultural and community events and neighbourhood houses and community learning programs.
26. Ensure an adequate supply of accessible and free significant civic meeting spaces in the municipality, including in urban renewal areas as well as in established areas such as North and West Melbourne.
27. Work to improve the integration between Council’s community service plans and existing City social enterprises.
28. Provide all residents with easy access to library borrowing services, public computers, and the internet.
29. Facilitate greater community interaction through the programming of Melbourne’s public spaces, particularly at night.
30. Ensure that sporting clubs and other associations and groups using Council facilities or resources develop social inclusion strategies.
31. Ensure that no venue lockouts are introduced inside the City, which prides itself on its nightlife.
32. Seek a restoration of funding for local services where reduced by State and Federal Governments.

Community Health and Wellbeing

33. Implement environmental design strategies for public spaces that foster crime prevention through improved visibility, lighting and safe pedestrian movement.
34. Resist the introduction of architectural and design strategies which discourage rough sleepers and skateboarders from public land.
35. Improve the safety and lighting of night time pick up points for commercial passenger vehicles.
36. Work with the State and Commonwealth governments and service providers to develop programs to further the protection of the victims of domestic violence.
37. Promote and support violence prevention programs that target high risk groups.
38. Create more free fitness opportunities including Green Gyms in outdoor spaces.
39. Facilitate regular and formal dialogue between the City of Melbourne, State Government, Consumer Affairs Victoria, Victoria Police, and stakeholders including bar-owners and relevant groups of local residents, to regularly and consistently cooperate on safety policies.
40. Minimise the number of permits granted to oversized licensed venues in areas with a history of alcohol-induced violence.
41. Work to reduce the number of electronic gaming machines in the City of Melbourne, including through retiring existing gaming permits through attrition rather than allowing their transfer to other venues.
42. Review the local ‘Policy for Licensed Premises that require a planning permit’ in the Melbourne Planning Scheme, following a participatory process involving residential communities and existing and prospective liquor licensees.
43. Work closely with public housing communities and the State Government to develop specific strategies to address safety concerns of public housing tenants and to collaboratively plan a safe and welcoming public realm.
44. Continue to expand smoke-free areas in the City of Melbourne.

New Communities

45. Continue to support new communities through programs which focus on employment, leadership, the empowerment of women and connection to place.
46. Continually review community, business and precinct grant programs to ensure Melbourne’s migrant communities are fairly supported and celebrated.
47. Improve the way Council considers the needs and desires of our diverse communities when planning new public spaces.
48. Actively welcome refugees to our community.