Wednesday, 29 November 2023

Bills

Land (Revocation of Reservations) Bill 2023

Second reading

Debate resumed.

Colin BROOKS (Bundoora – Minister for Development Victoria, Minister for Precincts, Minister for Creative Industries) (14:47): I think that members approaching this bill, turning to page 1 and reading the long title of the bill:

A Bill for an Act to provide for the revocation of certain permanent reservations of Crown land at Shepparton, Toolangi, Seaspray, Haunted Stream, Narracan South, Darlimurla, Mirboo, Wombelano, Geelong, Clunes, Melbourne and Walhalla, to revoke related Crown grants and to re-reserve certain land and for other purposes …

hoping that the bill was more exciting and controversial than the long title suggests will be greatly disappointed. But nonetheless these are important changes to the way that Crown land is managed across the state, particularly to local communities in many cases, to improve the way the land in those areas is used. They are commonsense changes, and often in particular cases of these sites they are changes that have been sought by adjoining owners or local councils – local communities – so they are a relatively uncontroversial tidying up of some of the sections of reserved Crown land.

It is important for people to remember that Crown land reserves is land that is set aside for a particular public purpose, such as education or recreation. The Governor in Council has the power to reserve Crown land for public purposes under the Crown Land (Reserves) Act 1978. These reservations may be temporary or permanent. However, while the Governor in Council may revoke a temporary reservation generally, a permanent Crown land reservation may only be revoked by, or in accordance with, an act of Parliament, and that is what this bill is doing today across these 13 locations. This bill revokes the permanent reservations over 13 areas of Crown land, and I will come to those sites in a moment.

I know that a number of speakers previously have already spoken to some of those sites and in particular focused on ones that were of interest to their community. The bill also revokes six restricted Crown grants to trustees – in four cases the entire grant and in two cases in part. The bill also repeals part 4 of the Land (Reservation and other Matters) Act 1999, which established a process to remove the relevant sections of the occupied section of land that relates to Stringers Creek as it runs through Walhalla. So it is an important piece of legislation. As I said, it is not super exciting, but it is important for the Parliament to consider. I do not think there is anyone opposing the bill, so hopefully it has a clear passage through both houses.

In relation to land at Shepparton, the proposed legislation changes part of the Victoria Lake caravan park area, which has been Crown land for some 60 years, and removes a reservation that will enable potential sale of the land to the Greater Shepparton City Council, which will hopefully facilitate an improvement to the caravan park for increased tourism in that area. That seems to be a fairly straightforward change.

The Toolangi potato research station, which closed back in 2008 – I think 44 hectares of that site were excised a few years ago, and that was reserved as state forest, and this is removing the remaining 105 hectares of the permanent reservation. There is a site at Seaspray, Merriman Creek, which relates to a private survey error, so it is cleaning up that issue.

Former mechanics institutes – five institute sites have not functioned for many years, and we understand there are no buildings or structures on those sites, so that reservation is being removed, potentially for those sites to be better utilised. There is a change in relation to the port of Geelong, which I know previous speakers have talked about – removal of the permanent reservation.

In Clunes there is a section of land that Wesley College has occupied at the borough chambers – Speaker, you are probably well aware of that facility, which is outside of your electorate but not too far away – and that will enable the potential sale of the land to the college for what is its existing use.

Alexandra Park in Melbourne – when the Swan Street bridge was expanded a few years back, a part of the bridge now occupies what was a section of Crown land at Alexandra Park, so this bill tidies up that section of land as well and ensures that it correctly reflects what is Crown land and what is not.

The Melbourne City Baths – it cleans up a piece of the reservation there that has been in place since 1878. That is a wonderful piece of Melbourne’s history, the Melbourne City Baths, and it looks like that section of Crown land that is being rectified has always been and will always be used as effectively public footpath. In a technical sense it is public road, but it is effectively a footpath out the front – a small piece of the tip of the triangle at that site on the corner of I think Franklin and Swanston streets from memory, and that is an important thing. The old city baths, which are now a modern aquatic and exercise facility, were built back in 1860, and then the more recent version of that, the heritage buildings that are there now, were built in the early 1900s. But of course they were not designed as a swimming pool solely. Back in the 19th century, I am informed from University of Melbourne research that I will make available to Hansard, Melbourne was dubbed ‘Smellbourne’ back in the 19th century because of the fact that waste and water management was not what it could have been and the system struggled to keep pace with the rapidly expanding population. So it would not have been a very nice place to be, I would imagine, and Melbourne built the baths there for people to actually take a bath, so that is a really important place. I will not go through all the different facilities there, but it is an important piece of our history here in Melbourne. I understand that in the 1930s it was nearly closed because it fell into disrepair from a lack of investment, and in the 1970s it was threatened with demolition again but was refurbished in the 1980s. Today, as I said, it has been refurbished to provide aquatic and fitness facilities for people who live in and around Melbourne and who work in Melbourne as well.

There is one other site that I mentioned, which is Walhalla. The bill excises just over 2 hectares of what have been long-term encroachments from Stringers Creek public purposes reserve, and that enables the sale of those pieces of land to the people who are occupying them at the moment – so again it is tidying up the relevant pieces of land.

This is, as I said, not a super exciting bill and not one that will change the world but certainly one that is important in terms of making sure that Crown land accurately reflects what it is used for. I commend the bill to the house.

Paul HAMER (Box Hill) (14:55): I rise to also talk on the Land (Revocation of Reservations) Bill 2023. It has been a wideranging and entertaining debate this afternoon. I was reflecting initially on the contribution of the member for Gippsland East, who waxed lyrical about the Haunted Stream and the mechanics institute down there. Certainly he did a very good sales pitch for coming down to East Gippsland for the wonderful hiking and trout fishing that goes on down there. I will not try my hand at trout fishing. I did not even catch a trout when I went to the trout farm, so wild trout in East Gippsland – as much as it does sound appealing getting away from it all, I think all that I will catch is a cold going down there.

As previous speakers have said, this is an important bill even if it perhaps for some is not the most stimulating. It is to provide for the revocation of certain permanent reservations of Crown land at Shepparton, Toolangi, Seaspray, Haunted Stream, Narracan South, Darlimurla, Mirboo, Wombelano, Geelong, Clunes, Melbourne and Walhalla, to revoke related Crown grants and to re-reserve certain land for other purposes.

I was reflecting on this legislation. It really provides quite an interesting social history of postcolonial, post-European settlement of Victoria and Melbourne. There are a couple of items that I wanted to draw out in that respect. The legislation proposes to revoke permanent reservations and related Crown grants at certain mechanics institutes land. That is at a number of sites; I think it is five in total, including at Haunted Stream, which the member for Gippsland East mentioned. It is interesting to reflect on the development of mechanics institutes and how they started. They really started as a form of adult education, particularly for working-class men who did not have the opportunities and avenues that more privileged members of the community had at that time to attain further adult education. I think there is quite a strong link to our own government’s policy, particularly when it comes to further education and the enormous investment we have put in our TAFE courses right throughout regional Victoria. Mechanics institutes were the TAFEs of their day. They were not only learning spaces but were often accompanied by libraries that were accessible to the working-class people of Victoria. They served a really important role. While they do not serve that role anymore, there are many mechanics institutes that still exist in terms of their actual structures around metropolitan Melbourne and in many of our regional cities and towns, and they still continue to serve an important community purpose, as the member for Tarneit was saying, as a meeting place for local community groups, continuing that strong tradition.

I also wanted to talk about and refer to the changes around the port of Geelong. The bill will revoke a redundant permanent reservation at the port of Geelong. The land is part of the permanent public purposes reserve created along the shores of Port Phillip Bay and Corio Bay in 1873. Part of the land also holds the status of a government road controlled by the City of Greater Geelong under the Local Government Act 1989. This development of the port is another way of actually illustrating the history of the development of Victoria and particularly of our ports. Being an island nation, our ports were and still are the gateway to the international market, and both through Geelong and through Melbourne there were streams of immigrants who came into Australia to head to the goldfields, and out of Geelong and out of the other ports would be the export of goods – even to this day you will have wool and grain – and, as mentioned also by the member for Tarneit, the importing and major manufacturing of wind turbines in the Geelong area and using that Geelong port area. Obviously, over time, as the design of our cargo ships has changed and the stevedoring patterns have changed, the port has changed and the port infrastructure has changed as well. Land has been reclaimed around the port of Geelong, which means that the area that was part of the Crown reserve is now inland, not actually on the coast.

If we look back at history, as was mentioned, the reservation was handed down in 1873. In June 1873 all unappropriated Crown lands along the shores of Port Phillip Bay were permanently reserved. Prior to that time there appear to have been some fairly piecemeal approaches to reserving land and ensuring that that land was Crown land along the foreshore of the bay. It has thrown up a number of anomalies. I was looking at the planning map of Melbourne as part of the research for the bill, and while there is public zoning around almost the entirety of the bay, there are small pockets where the private land and the zoning actually extend right to the coastline. These are areas down particularly in the lower reaches of the Mornington Peninsula where through the historical allocation of land and historical sale of land the title boundaries would extend through to the coast. But after 1873, as stated, all unappropriated Crown lands along the shores of Port Phillip Bay were permanently reserved. On 23 May 1881 a blanket reservation was made for all unalienated land within 1½ chains of the colony’s rivers, rivulets, creeks, channels, aqueducts, lakes, reservoirs, swamps, inlets, loughs and straits. I do not know of any loughs that are within the greater Port Phillip region, but it did try to cover all bases. I think that by and large since that time successive state governments have tried to protect the public reserve around the bay. Some areas obviously have been dedicated as public parkland and Crown reserve entirely for public use and in most of the other areas along the bay full public access is retained, and that is how it should be. We all would like to see that our beaches and our bay are a resource for the use of the entire public.

Just finally, I also do want to touch on the Melbourne City Baths. There is a tiny reservation that will transfer, and it will revoke the permanent reservation for public baths and washhouses over a very small area, just 10.2 square metres, which has to the best of my knowledge always been used just as a splay for the intersection of Franklin Street and Swanston Street. Perhaps this was an oversight when that reserve was first laid down. I commend the bill to the house.

Emma KEALY (Lowan) (15:05): Thank you very much, Acting Speaker Farnham. Again, it is just wonderful to see you in that chair, and you are doing an absolutely fabulous job in chairing the government business of the day. I greatly appreciate your contribution to the Parliament of Victoria.

I rise today to speak on the Land (Revocation of Reservations) Bill 2023. This does excite me. When I grew up in the small town of Edenhope, with just 1000 people, in the far west of Victoria, I never in my wildest dreams would consider that I would be a member of Parliament and able to contribute to the formation of laws in Spring Street. Even further from that, my friends who would catch the Wombelano bus in from that special region and come into town –

Danny O’Brien: Womby.

Emma KEALY: It is otherwise known as ‘Womby’ by the local people. I would never think that I would have the good fortune to be able to speak up for the community of Wombelano in the Parliament of Victoria, and this may be the highlight of my parliamentary career. Wombelano is a very special place. There are very few people who still live in the Wombelano area, and that is one of the reasons why the reservation for land for a mechanics institute is no longer a burning issue in Wombelano. I have made contact with local people who have farms in the Wombelano area, and certainly there is a consideration that it would be a wonderful thing for the local area if the Crown land was opened up for purchase, likely by an adjacent landholder. In fact this is exactly what has happened with the football ground, which is no longer utilised. I believe that Shane Anson has purchased that property, and he is doing a fabulous job in making sure the community have still got that area and it is well maintained and well looked after. I believe he may be one of the interested parties when this particular allotment of land becomes available in the near future.

There are two elements of this legislation which mention Wombelano. Clause 20 will also dissolve the incorporation of the Wombelano Fire Shed Committee of Management under section 14A of the Crown Land (Reserves) Act 1978. We all know the fabulous work that our CFA volunteers do. For our CFA brigades, and in particular those in the Wombelano area – they have got nearby brigades at Charam; I actually assisted in opening the fabulous Charam fire shed many, many moons ago now – the fire shed is used also as a central meeting point for the local community. Charam’s is adjacent to the Charam tennis courts. Again, Charam is very similar to the area of Wombelano, where it is not necessarily a community. In fact I am sure if I spoke to some people who live in Melbourne and have all their lives, they might say, ‘Where is the suburb of Charam?’ or ‘Where is the suburb of Wombelano?’ They might be bitterly disappointed to know that it is little more than a fire shed with a sign out the front and perhaps an adjacent tennis court, as is the case with Charam. As I said, in Wombelano we have got the oval which stands in that place. Karnak is a very similar area in my electorate, and they have a vibrant CFA brigade there; they are doing an absolutely fabulous job.

But what is putting an enormous amount of pressure on these regional communities – these rural communities – is that our farming practices are changing over time. More and more often we have people who move off farm and into larger centres. There may be people from Wombelano who have moved into or retired to communities like Edenhope, a town of about 1000 people as I said earlier, or have moved to a bigger centre like Horsham. As a result, there are fewer people living on a farm. This creates a number of risks to our rural areas, and particularly areas like Wombelano, which once upon a time did have its own football club, which did have its own tennis club, where they had aspirations to have their own mechanics institute in the community, where they have had I am sure many dances locally and many events. I know that there are still events held in the local area, but they have not been held recently.

But if there was ever an event at Wombelano, it would be my absolute honour and privilege to attend, member for Gippsland South. I have been to birthday parties in that area in Woolshed, if that is counted. I did go to Phil Adams’s 18th birthday party, I think it was, in that area. It was quite some years ago – sorry, Phil – but I am the same age as you, so we were in the same category for that. But it is important that we do make sure that the people who are left in those communities have an opportunity to retain some of the privileges of the areas that are there.

Another nearby area in that region is Ullswater. Again, I used to play tennis at the Ullswater tennis courts. Similar to the changes in legislation that are before us today, the Ullswater hall was certainly a place where I attended many local events. There were concerts there. They would always have carols by candlelight in the local area. Not many people lived in the local area, and certainly fewer people live there today. But what happened with Ullswater hall, similar to many of our older small halls in country areas, is that the upgrade of that facility and the cost of the insurance became too much for the local council to manage and to operate. So in that instance, as we will see with this allotment of land in Wombelano, the Ullswater hall was put up for sale, it was bought up for a small fee and it now is being maintained and is made available free of charge to anybody in the area who wants a nice quaint hall to hold an event.

There is also an area just outside of Ullswater which is now planted with trees, but formerly it was a football oval, and Ullswater had its own football club. This was important for my family because we owned an Ullswater property which was adjacent to this football oval, and it was I think many of my forefathers and foremothers – shearers and other workers on the farm – who actually would form part of that critical, vibrant community of the local footy club, and they probably played a bit of cricket there over summer as well. It reflects upon how our rural and regional communities are changing over time. However, the issues that we see change so much over time.

If you travel along that road to Wombelano, you will find that it is extraordinarily narrow, and there are trucks that travel along that road as well, and a school bus service, as I mentioned earlier. That road has got crumbling edges, and it needs to be widened. That is something that the local council have been calling for for some period of time. I have certainly been lobbying for more road funding for a very, very long period of time, and I am fortunate to share the table at the moment with the member for Gippsland South, who is the Shadow Minister for Roads and Road Safety. He has been very supportive of our campaign to ensure that Victorians have safe roadways no matter where they live, including if they live in the Wombelano area, perhaps travelling through to Harrow, Douglas and Miga Lake. Or maybe you are heading across, as I said, to Charam or Edenhope. You could be heading further north to Karnak or Goroke, or you could be travelling easterly and heading towards the big smoke of Horsham.

It is wonderful to see this legislation before us today. I do not think anyone in this chamber is more excited about this this legislation than I am. I believe, as I said, that this is perhaps the proudest moment of my parliamentary career, because I never thought that Wombelano would be so frequently mentioned in the Parliament of Victoria.

Danny O’Brien: You’ve got it in at least 20 times.

Emma KEALY: I did not ever think I would be able to recount so many stories.

Members interjecting.

Emma KEALY: I am hearing across the chamber – where is Womby? Where is Wombelano? Where is Edenhope? I am more than happy for any of the members of this chamber to join me, to travel across our rough, pothole-ridden and crumble-edged country roads. Come out and see the wonderful people at Edenhope or Wombelano or whatever wonderful community you would like to see. I am very fortunate –

Danny O’Brien: Charam.

Emma KEALY: Charam – a wonderful, wonderful institution. Maybe Konongwootong – that is another fabulous place; Konongwootong is absolutely amazing. Benayeo. Bringalbert – you can leave Albert at home if you choose to, because we will bring Albert along. But if you would like to come out to western Victoria in our upcoming season – we have got a festive season coming. We have got a few weeks away from Parliament. What a wonderful opportunity to head to the fabulous electorate of Lowan, the home of Wombelano and so many other fabulous small communities that were once thriving – and now are still thriving and growing and keeping our state alive by contributing to our agricultural economy. But I do welcome anybody to travel out further west. It is 20 per cent of the state by landmass, and I think it is probably 100 per cent of the good times, good fun and economy. It is some of the best land you could ever have, so please come out west over this coming break. I congratulate and thank the community of Wombelano for always fighting for their local mechanics institute.

Darren CHEESEMAN (South Barwon) (15:15): That was an outstanding contribution. I am very impressed by the member for Lowan’s contribution on the Land (Revocation of Reservations) Bill 2023. In my time in this place I think this is at least the second or perhaps third time we have had a bill of this nature brought to this chamber, which I suspect is a relatively regular practice of codifying and making sure our Crown land works the way that it is supposed to. In doing some research on this, because the content is somewhat dry and boring, I was interested to discover a number of interesting facts about Crown land in Victoria. Anyone who has followed the history of the state of Victoria will very quickly become aware that in almost every regard we have set up legal instruments through legislation, the very, very first of those acts were indeed acts of the New South Wales Parliament, because we were of course a part of the New South Wales colony. The very first act that spelt out these arrangements was a New South Wales act. Now, anyone who has followed the history of the state of Victoria will quickly become aware that Victoria was granted statehood, and that was in 1858, if my memory serves me correctly.

Members interjecting.

Darren CHEESEMAN: 1854, okay, we have got some colleagues here that are assisting me with when Victoria became a state. Indeed in 1860 the Victorian Parliament passed some legislation that set out in our own terms as a parliament, as a state, what our Crown land would look like and the underpinning legislative arrangements. As people would be aware, at that point in time globally the industrial nature by which our economy works was well and truly underway. The way that people engaged in the economy, the types of goods and services that our state needed and indeed the way that people made a living in the state of Victoria were profoundly changing in so many ways. Of course in this period of time we had the goldfields underway, driving a significant part of our economy. We had industrialisation taking place, and the needs and the services of the state of Victoria were underway. In that context indeed as a state we needed to spell out very clearly land use, and we needed to very clearly set aside land for public purposes to assist our growing and relatively wealthy state, particularly in comparison to New South Wales and, to be frank, to what people were enduring and experiencing in the United Kingdom.

In the Victorian context, where we are today is that about a third of Victoria’s land mass is set aside as Crown land. That is effectively land that is controlled and owned by the state of Victoria, with of course different protections and different uses spelt out for that land. At that period of time there was a great demand in the Victorian economy to gain the sets of skills that the economy needed. People were very keenly wanting to get themselves a level of education that would enable them to participate in the economy. In the context of this particular bill, there was a great desire in many, many communities across Victoria to establish mechanics institutes. Local communities, in partnership in some ways with the Victorian government, would establish mechanics institutes through which men and women in the colony of Victoria would be able to access the skills that they needed to participate fully in the Victorian economy, and we saw through that period of time mechanics institutes established. We saw this in a lot of the regions, particularly those regions that were attached at that point in time to the mining economy but also in other settings where manufacturing and the like were key parts of the economy. Indeed at that point in time the Crown clearly responded by setting aside Crown land for that purpose. Almost every single town of any size or any scale across Victoria had land set aside for public benefit, often for these types of services.

This bill has recognised that despite the intention of the Crown at that point in time, the Parliament of Victoria and its people, not every single one of those sites was needed. Good planning had set it aside for the purposes of communities that ultimately needed it, and of course in some of these instances and some of these settings it was not needed. Today we have an opportunity, as I say and as I have said on a number of occasions as a member of this Parliament, to reflect on that use and to determine in some of these instances that we do not need it for that purpose. It was a good intention to set it aside, and if the economy had gone in a certain way in a certain location perhaps it might have been taken up for that purpose. I think in so many ways that was good planning back then. It was a good partnership back then in the context of these mechanics institutes.

Now, in a Geelong context one of the provisions in this bill relates to a set of land that is now inland. At the time that it was set aside in Geelong it was for the purposes of a port, but as the bay has changed and as encroachment has happened from the Port of Geelong into the bay, there is now a parcel of land that was seaside but that is now offset from the coast and no longer requires the set of arrangements that were spelt out. It makes sense that we indeed make that change.

This is a pretty straightforward, I think, tidy-up of the arrangements. It is a bill that will see further additions to it as Crown land is assessed and as things get tidied up as we go forward. It has been good to contribute on it. It has been good to reflect on the history of mechanics institutes and those things. From time to time we have the ability and the opportunity to add Crown land or to change the underpinning need for Crown land. This is just one of those instances when we are reflecting that.

Gabrielle WILLIAMS (Dandenong – Minister for Government Services, Minister for Consumer Affairs, Minister for Public and Active Transport) (15:25): It is with great enthusiasm that I move:

That this debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned.

Ordered that debate be adjourned until later this day.