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Tuesday 13 January 2026
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Minister approves interim landslide overlay despite errors Brendan Rees brendan@mpnews.com.au
CFA’s from the peninsula have dispatched units to fight the fires raging across Victoria. At 5am Saturday (10 January) Mt Martha CFA sent four crew in their tanker (pictured above) to assist with the Longwood fire. Later that day they were deployed to Alexandra helping to protect the township. Picture: Supplied
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THE state Planning Minister, Sonya Kilkenny, has approved an interim erosion management overlay (EMO) for the Mornington Peninsula that critics say is deeply flawed, potentially misclassifying tens of thousands of properties as landslide-prone despite council acknowledging errors in outdated mapping and raising concerns about “anomalies”. The approval comes after a letter from Kilkenney in October, obtained by The News, gave the shire just 14 days to commence the implementation of the EMO, or face state government intervention. Described by some as a major “overreach”, the interim erosion management overlay (EMO7) targets land assessed as highly susceptible to landslides, affecting about 33,000 lots. Of these, roughly 27,000 are residential properties not already covered by existing erosion overlays. Many residents have expressed anger and confusion after their properties were suddenly included, with many believing they face no landslide risk at all. The News has been told the overlay extends to areas such as small 30cm retaining walls, flat asphalted residential streets, built-up piles of garden waste and otherwise flat land. Kilkenny approved the interim overlay after councillors voted in favour of it at an unscheduled meeting on 17 November. The planning control was a key recommendation of the board of inquiry into the McCrae landslide in January
2025, which saw a house slide down the escarpment. Kilkenny issued the urgent directive requiring the shire to amend the Mornington Peninsula planning scheme to introduce the interim overlay direction which applied to “land identified as highly susceptible to landslides in 2012 mapping and any additional area recommended by geotechnical engineers engaged by your council”, according to the letter from Kilkenny to mayor Cr Anthony Marsh dated 9 October, obtained by The News. “I request that your council act on recommendation 27 [of the board of inquiry report] to urgently implement an interim EMO and to commence this process by 23 October 2025, 14 days from the tabling of the report,” the letter stated. “Depending on your council’s response to recommendation 27, I will consider intervening using powers available to me under the Planning and Environment Act 1987 to ensure my responsibilities under recommendation 28 are met.” When the overlay was approved at the November council meeting, Marsh said the “interim control will help minimise the risks posed by development on landslide-susceptible land”. “While an erosion management overlay would not have prevented the McCrae landslide, which was caused by a burst water main, it was a recommendation of the board of inquiry. Council has accepted the inquiry’s recommendations in relation to implementing the erosion management overlay,” he said. Continued Page 8
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