Tuesday, 22 February 2022

Country Fire Authority South Warrandyte station

Mr R SMITH (Warrandyte) (19:09): (6220) Tonight I want to raise a matter for the attention of the Minister for Emergency Services. The action I seek is for the government to gift the local community with the former South Warrandyte CFA station on Brumbys Road. The former station has recently been listed for sale for close to $1 million, an exorbitant mark-up from the Manningham council evaluation of $120 000 in 2017. I have been campaigning for the past six years for the government to allow the community use of the building, ever since the multimillion-dollar integrated station in South Warrandyte was completed. Every time that I have raised this issue with four former emergency services ministers, the Treasurer and the head of the CFA, I have been told that the station continues ‘to meet internal needs and will do so for the foreseeable future’ and that there are no immediate plans for the CFA to vacate or dispose of these premises, with the latest assurances given in August of last year by the then acting Minister for Police and Emergency Services. Locals were rightly angered by this response as the station has stood empty and has not been used to any great extent over the last six years. In April 2021 the acting minister for emergency services wrote to me stating that:

Should CFA determine in the future that the site is no longer needed, there will be an opportunity for the local Council to purchase the property for community purposes …

Four months later, in August, the minister wrote again stating that if the land was deemed surplus by the CFA, it must be offered through a first-right-of-refusal process to Victorian government departments as well as to local government, whilst again reiterating that the CFA would still require the South Warrandyte station for the foreseeable future.

Through conversations with Manningham council and volunteer CFA members, it appears there has been no offering of the former station for community use as promised by the acting minister. So I guess that the government’s only vision for community assets is to try to sell them in order to fill the bottomless black hole of state debt. This is just another example of the difference between what this government says and what they do. Each minister I have written to was aware of the various community organisations that would have been interested in using the space, including a permanent base for the Warrandyte Men’s Shed, the Warrandyte scouts, or a dedicated ambulance station for the Warrandyte area or even for the volunteers at South Warrandyte to return home.

This is another disappointing result for the communities of the Warrandyte electorate who have continued to be let down by this government. I will be pursuing this matter further to ensure that all proper processes were followed by the government, and if they have not, my community will be made aware that this government continues to ignore community needs and expectations. I would seek that the minister withdraws the property at 12 Brumbys Road, Warrandyte South, from sale and ensure that Manningham council are either gifted the property for community use or at least—at the very least—offered the property at a properly valued price as was promised.