Richmond electorate
Gabrielle DE VIETRI (Richmond) (14:43): (17) My constituency question is for the Minister for Housing. Last year public housing residents at 240 Wellington Street in Collingwood were told that their open space, basketball courts, playgrounds and picnic tables were going to be bulldozed and built over. Up the road, 800 metres away, is the Fitzroy gasworks site – 3.9 hectares of public land remediated at taxpayers expense. It is vacant. The vast majority of this will go to private developers for private housing. The small portion of it put aside for subsidised private housing is only guaranteed for 10 years. Residents of Collingwood’s public housing want to know: since public land is so scarce and the public housing waiting list so long, why is the government not building a significant amount of public housing at the Fitzroy gasworks site and instead allowing private developers to build over public housing residents’ communal spaces?