The Ministerial Advisory Committee for the Melbourne Metropolitan Strategy has published Melbourne - Lets talk about the future" and it raises the issues of two Melbournes: an inner core of opportunity and vibrancy, and a massive outer ring of relative disadvantage and exclusion.

Roz Hansen, the chairperson of the Ministerial Advisory Committee, says that:

We have an increasing number of people who are living on the fringe who have gone there for affordable housing but in actual fact are suffering from a problem of affordable living. So whilst the housing package might have been quite tempting and affordable, they are finding that because they don't have access to basic community-building facilities - schools, GPs, reasonable shops and public transport in particular - they are having to rely on the car to get the kids to school and to be able to access a job, and undertake their daily activities. That is putting huge pressure on the household budget. We're starting to see more people in mortgage stress. We're starting to see more people actually defaulting on their deposits on land and house packages in fringe greenfield estates, and we're starting to see a slowdown in housing development on the fringe.All of these are warning signals that allowing us to grow further and further out, to actually perpetuate the sprawl, is creating an incredibly unaffordable, unsustainable and uncertain future.