Politics

Victoria

Planning

Opinion

Chip Le Grand State political editor October 30, 2025 — 5.00am

NIMBYs get a bad rap in Victoria. In Jacinta Allan’s order of villainy, they rank somewhere between the Kennett government and head lice.

As the premier challenges the fast-disappearing notion of one household lording it over an entire quarter-acre block, and presses ahead with her plans to subdivide and conquer middle Melbourne, NIMBYism has morphed into a catch-all pejorative for everything wrong with the suburban status quo.

It is quite the journey for an acronym which began its life in the late 1970s as a descriptor for people who, not unreasonably, opposed industrial waste being dumped close to their homes.

In announcing a substantial streamlining of the state’s residential

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