Thursday, 16 October 2025

 Colin BROOKS (Bundoora – Minister for Industry and Advanced Manufacturing, Minister for Creative Industries) (14:38): In early December Victorians will start using the Metro Tunnel with access to some of the great cultural institutions of Melbourne. The timing could not be better, with our beautiful Regent Theatre just a few metres from the new Town Hall station hosting Opera Australia’s new production of Orpheus & Eurydice in early December. In fact our whole theatre district – one of the best in the world – will be easily accessible from the new Metro Tunnel stations. I cannot wait to see people emerging from the Town Hall station portal in Fed Square to catch a performance or a cultural event, to visit ACMI or to wander across the bridge to the Australian Performing Arts Museum, Hamer Hall, the Arts Centre Melbourne, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Recital Centre, the Sidney Myer Music Bowl and the list goes on. I cannot wait to see people moving from the Metro Tunnel State Library station and to wander into what is already the third-most visited library in the world – one of the most beautiful libraries in the world – or around the corner into Australia’s home of literature and ideas, the Wheeler Centre. Victorians and others flocked to our cultural agencies in record numbers last year – 11.6 million people – and the Metro Tunnel will make it easier, particularly for people on the Sunbury, Cranbourne and Pakenham lines.

And of course the Metro stations themselves will feature significant work by incredible Victorian and Australian artists. First Peoples artist Maree Clarke has developed a work spanning all five stations, and there are works by Raafat Ishaq, Fiona Hall, Abdul Abdullah and Patricia Piccinini. And how stunning are the portraits of Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung women on the huge glass facades at the State Library station by Danie Mellor. It is so fitting that in the cultural capital of the country we have built art and culture into this city-shaping transport project.