Matthew GUY (Bulleen) (17:08): (1749) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Transport Infrastructure. Earlier today I raised the outrageous circumstance of the 53-metre smokestack for exhaust emissions being placed in Bulleen without any form of filtration. I put on record also for the Minister for Transport Infrastructure the 49-metre structure at the northern end of the North East Link being built opposite Fairlie Avenue and Hester Walk on Greensborough Road, and I note the local MPs, the member for Ivanhoe and the member for Bundoora, have never once had the courage to walk into this chamber to represent their constituents facing the onset of a 49-metre smokestack for unfiltered exhaust opposite hundreds of homes, just 150 metres from the closest home, right near Macleod College, similar to the smokestack in Bulleen, which is going to be opposite the Veneto Club, as I said earlier today, which is going to be close to hundreds of homes near Belle Vue Primary, near the Carey sports ovals and near the Trinity sports ovals. I see the member for Ivanhoe in the chamber listening to this, and I hope that the Minister for Transport Infrastructure will listen to this, because I intend to distribute the answer I get to this to all the residents who are going to be impacted by these two smokestacks. I request the minister to provide the world’s best filtration and purification for these two facilities on the North East Link that are going to spew out exhaust for hundreds of metres close to hundreds of homes, to schools and to sporting facilities, and the government does not tell those residents, those schools and those sporting clubs what the long term impact may be.
Remember, the Andrews, Allan and now Carroll governments usurped planning and environmental laws and regulations to ram through this project without getting proper advice and without going through proper levels of public discourse so that we could get world’s best practice on these sites. Now what we have is world’s least-best practice, or what might be – who would know? The government tells us nothing. The North East Link Authority tells us nothing.
These residents in Macleod deserve better. In Bulleen they deserve better. I request that the Minister for Transport Infrastructure provide the world’s best practice on exhaust filtration for these two towers, and I request it urgently.