Thursday, 21 March 2024

Preston activity centre

Nathan LAMBERT (Preston) (17:27): (606) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Planning, and the action I seek is for the minister to visit central Preston to discuss the proposed Preston activity centre, which forms part of this government’s housing statement. As we know, Melbourne continues to grow as it has for many, many decades, and of course we continue to build new homes, as we have also done for a long time. But I think there is very strong recognition in the community now that the thing that we cannot continue to do is to build the vast majority of those homes on the urban fringe. We know that Los Angeles is famously the poster child for urban sprawl, but in fact Melbourne is worse than Los Angeles on a number of those measures, and we know that it leads to greater congestion, it leads to more carbon dioxide emissions and it leads to more inequality in terms of access to services, jobs and cultural opportunities.

That brings me to central Preston. It is of course a wonderful part of the world, and it does have great access to jobs, services and particularly cultural opportunities. It is right next to the new Preston station, rebuilt entirely by this Labor government, and it is exactly the kind of place where you can have that more European urban form without having additional car trips and urban sprawl. So we would really appreciate the chance to chat to the minister about just what this might look like locally. There are a range of issues to think through, many of which are picked up by council’s existing draft structure plan. I do thank the council for their work on that; I think it is a very good starting point. But there are some unresolved issues that we would like to chat to the minister about. Increasing enrolment pressure on Preston High is one. Preston High is a fantastic school, but it does have a very small campus in the square metre sense. The future use of the Preston Library space is a local issue. There are road safety implications for Cramer Street and particularly High Street, which is actually already one of our most dangerous stretches in the suburb, despite the fact that it is only 40 kilometres per hour, and I think further north of Murray Road there are some real questions about road safety during peak hour.

We can also chat about the further development of Preston Market and about upgrades to Preston City Oval, which will be an important green space area for any new residents. It will also be important to talk about the under-utilised VicTrack land around the station, the Melbourne Polytechnic land further along Cramer Street and the relationship with Northland. I think it is interrelated, the way that development at Northland and development at Preston Central have a relationship to each other, particularly in terms of the amount of retail space provided. As you can see, there are a wide range of important issues to discuss in order to support the very important goals of this government’s housing statement, and we thank the minister for her consideration.