Macedon Ranges LandOwners Committee Inc

ABOUT US

MACEDON RANGES LANDOWNERS COMMITTEE

Mission Statement

The Macedon Ranges Landowners Committee was formed in 2006 in response to large scale, hostile and unwarranted extinguishment of Landowner rights by the Victorian government and local government in that State

As a Rights Defence Group, we hold that all Australians were explicitly granted rights by the Founding Fathers of the Australian Nation and that these rights arise from the force and effect of Sec51 xxxi of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia.

The States, who devised and developed the Constitutional document, are each, signatories to this Constitutional provision in the act of formation of the Australian nation and yet, despite this, have all comprehensively failed to give effect to their own creation; instead, whittling landowners' rights to little more than a name on a deed of title, accompanied by a handful of privileges granted by, or to be sought from various State and local authorities.

Our group is fired by a determination to restore rights in the ownership of land to the concept of the Founding Fathers as a:

FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLE of a FREE AND OPEN SOCIETY.

We reject absolutely, the marxist notion that the State should be the owner of all land and we, the occupiers, its tenants. This concept was justly abolished in Western Society during the second millennium. We must not allow it to creep back and take hold by stealth.

 Planning Schemes to support and strengthen Property Rights

In a decent FREE SOCIETY, individuals should be protected from the "tyranny of the majority" no matter that the "majority" is the State or the mob.
Thus, the rights of individuals must not be sacrificed to the community, unless the community, as represented by the State restores, to individuals so affected, the value transferred or extinguished.

All planning schemes should be required by Law to recognise the long established Principle of Ownership as being in FEE SIMPLE .

Landowners adversely affected by unwanted or unbidden changes to a planning scheme must be able to compel restoration of rights vitiated or extinguished by such changes or,

any such changes should statutorily trigger a claim for compensation from the Planning Authority or,

land title deeds should contain an instrument constituting an indefeasible pre-emptive veto over any such changes as may be proposed.

Eminent Domain

We do not deny the doctrine of "Eminent Domain" as a prerogative of the State to be used in pursuit of the greater public good provided that:

The prerogative, when invoked,

does not act to cause a net loss or damage to an affected landowner,

does not infringe upon the privacy of an affected landowner or any other person,

does not act to cause an ongoing nuisance to an affected land owner,

does not cause a degradation of the of the usability of the affected land

And provided that the prerogative is invoked only as a last resort;

it having been determined by an independent body (or jury) administered at arms length from the State, that no other option is available.

For this purpose, cost shall not be a factor; only the physical practicability of meeting an identified public need.

Compensation

In any case involving the exercise of the State prerogative of Eminent Domain, the affected landowner shall enjoy a prerogative as to which of the following options apply:

1) compensation for full transfer of title to the State plus solatium*

2) Retention of land title with compensation for loss of beneficial use registered as an encumbrance on title.

*this often comes into play where there is emotional loss and is more often unrelated to compensation for land acquisition. However, it is applicable where there is a quantifiable relocation cost or other dislocation caused to an affected landowner and in cases where there is an identified intangible effect of which emotional loss is one.

Separation of Use by Zone

The zone concept in planning practice originally came about to protect the right to use land and achieves this by a trade off in uses by gaining the agreement of landowners, whose land uses are mutually incompatible, to each give up the right to the unwanted use with each retaining the absolute right to the wanted use on separated sites zoned accordingly.

Zoning can be an effective means by which conflict arising from incompatible but legitimate land uses being in close proximity is reduced or eliminated.

For this system to be effective it must be driven by landowners themselves, perhaps, at most, mediated by a government agency.

The problem zoning in the modern era is the tendency for government to debauch the concept in practice by using it as a social engineering tool.

The theory surrounding the application of zones, as well as the Law and regulation (in the State of Victoria) purports to encourage and allow landowner input into processes for applying and changing them, while the practical reality is that, with governments empowered to initiate zoning changes as well as administer planning schemes, the ability to micromanage and interfere in peoples lives through direction of their land use, creates a temptation governments and bureaucracies do not seem able to resist.

The problem of Zones is compounded when the relative simplicity of a zoning system is lost by adding a multiplicity of schedules to each zone along with a complex system of overlays. These arrangements, as often as not, come together to nullify the initial purpose of the zone which started out with the intention of enabling a:

multiplicity of uses that exist, AS OF RIGHT, though not in conflict and therefore, not requiring approval by a responsible authority.

 

 

 

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