Branded fast food is a $30bn per year industry in Australia and growing 5% annually.

Increasingly, communities across the country are mobilising to stop its further expansion because they understand its harmful health and environmental impacts.

Many local governments stand with community opposition, but the planning framework is heavily stacked in the industry’s favour.

When powerful multinational corporations can and do ride roughshod over what communities want and ignore decisions made by their elected local representatives, we have a serious democratic deficit.

This Fast Food Forum will bring together community members, local representatives, and experts to discuss how Victoria’s planning system handles proposals for new fast-food outlets.

The Forum will explore tensions between local councils, communities, and multinational corporations such as McDonald’s, with a focus on the controversial proposal for a new 24/7 Maccas in the town centre of Castlemaine, opposed by thousands of local residents.

We will explore how planning laws can better protect local character, public health, and democratic decision-making. This will include consideration of legislative and regulatory reforms aimed at strengthening the power of local government to say 'No' to new fast food applications, specifically by incorporating public health criteria into planning decisions.

Who will be speaking?

The Forum will consist of a panel including:

Liza Shaw, Candidate for Bendigo West (Greens)
Professor Andrew Butt – Sustainability and Urban Planning RMIT
Jacqueline Brodie-Hanns, Chair, Business Mount Alexander
Trevor Budge AM, Strategic Advisor on the Victorian Goldfields World Heritage Nomination and former Strategic Projects Officer - World Heritage at the City of Greater Bendigo
Dr Ali Clark-Hakimi, Local medical doctor
Candidate for Bendigo West (ALP) (pending)
Candidate for Bendigo West (Nationals) (pending)

The panel will be facilitated by Dr Nick Rose, co-founder and Executive Director of Sustain.

Who should attend?

This Forum is for anyone concerned about the unrestrained power of the multinational fast food industry and its impacts on Australian communities. It is also for people concerned about our waning democratic culture and how it can be reinvigorated through campaigns such as that waged by the Castlemaine community against McDonalds, and similar struggles in many other communities across Victoria and Australia.

About the speakers

Contact the host of Castlemaine Fast Food Forum