Melbourne electorate
Ms SANDELL (Melbourne) (14:51): (6202) My question is to the Minister for Education. Over the past months I have heard from many residents with questions about the redevelopment of the site on Abbotsford Street and Molesworth Street in North Melbourne. The site is soon to become home to the new North Melbourne Primary School campus. No-one is questioning the benefit of the school or the social housing on the site, but residents feel like they are being totally overlooked by the government agencies working on the developments, especially the Victorian School Building Authority and the Department of Education and Training. They are being given very little information about the height and form of the proposed buildings, the impact of shadowing on their homes, traffic modelling, what the landscaping will look like, how the asbestos is being dealt with and several other issues. Residents are raising very reasonable questions. They are often raising them through the proper consultation channels they are given, but they are given virtually no information or answers back; they are just shuffled from contact to contact. So my question is: will the VSBA and/or the department of education join an urgent meeting with residents to enable them to ask and also get answers to the questions that they have?