Tuesday, 8 September 2026

 Kat THEOPHANOUS (Northcote) (19:16): (1826) My adjournment is to the Minister for Housing, Building and Precincts and Minister for Homelessness. I ask the minister to seek confirmation from Nightingale Housing that the walking and cycling connection proposed as part of the 1A Hamilton Street development in Alphington will be designed and delivered to fulfil its intended role as a C2 main route within Victoria’s strategic cycling corridors.

First, I want to acknowledge that this is a very positive project for our community. The Nightingale project will turn a long underutilised and vacant government site into around 70 homes, including seven affordable homes for low-income women and their families, through a partnership with Women’s Property Initiatives. This is exactly the kind of housing our community needs, and we are proud to support more homes in the inner north next to transport, schools and health services. I have been advocating for this site and its future for many years, including raising the former rail spur in Parliament and securing a formal community consultation process. I have continued to meet with the Alphington and Fairfield Civic Association (AFCA), who have been closely engaged in the future of this site and represent many local residents. There is a lot to welcome here, including that as a direct result of our local advocacy, a requirement for a shared user path was prominent in the expression of interest and request for proposal process for this land.

But AFCA has rightly raised with me an important question about the proposed walking and cycling connection. The publicly released concepts show a landscaped internal route through the development. That is encouraging, but the level of detail currently available is not clear about exactly what that route will mean in practice. In particular there is not yet sufficient detail about its precise alignment, end points, width, design standard or the arrangements that will ensure it remains publicly accessible. This matters because it is not simply an internal pathway within a housing development; Transport Victoria maps the former rail spur as a C2 strategic cycling corridor. Strategic cycling corridors are intended to provide continuous, safe, direct and connected routes linking people to stations, schools, shops, activity centres and employment. The Alphington spur has the potential to perform exactly that role: it can provide a missing link between Fairfield and South Alphington, connecting into the broader network around the Yarra and trails, Chandler Highway and Wingrove Street. There is a real opportunity here to take what is currently an informal and fragmented movement line and create a permanent and genuinely useful connection for people walking and riding. And importantly, this is the moment to get it right. Once housing, fences, services and ownership arrangements are established, it becomes harder to retrofit a continuous route.

As I said before, this project represents a very good housing outcome for Alphington. Locals also want it to deliver the full benefit it can for the community: new homes, quality open space and a shared user path that enhances our active transport network. There is one opportunity to get that connection right from the outset, and we seek that assurance from Nightingale.