Healesville freeway reserve
Mr ANGUS (Forest Hill) (17:12): (1841) I again raise a matter of importance for the attention of the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change. The action I seek, which I note I have asked for in this place on several occasions, is for the minister to urgently provide me with detailed written advice or alternatively a briefing in relation to the documented plans for the future use and ongoing maintenance of the land in the Forest Hill district known as the Healesville freeway reserve (HFR). This land, which is more than 30 hectares in size, runs east–west from Springvale Road, Forest Hill, in the west to Boronia Road, Vermont, in the east. I have repeatedly—and I note, unsuccessfully—asked various ministers for this information. Most recently in November 2019 I asked the Minister for Roads about this issue. The reply I received from that minister was that the responsibility for the land was now with the minister responsible for the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning who consequently was the appropriate minister to ask for this information. This response was in direct contradiction to the answer given to the question raised by my colleague Mr Atkinson in the other place when he asked the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change about the future of the HFR and was told in the answer that this land ‘falls within the responsibility of the Minister for Roads’. This appears to be a classic case of one minister trying to pass the buck to another minister, thereby fobbing off a genuine inquiry from a member on behalf of his community—an almost unbelievable situation.
As I have also noted before in relation to this issue, I am regularly fielding inquiries from residents inquiring as to what is happening with this land. My community is very concerned that in fact nothing at all is happening to this land and that the much-promised improvements, such as the shared walking-cycling path over the entire length of the HFR, will never be constructed. Even members of some of our local environmental groups are in the dark, and I find that very surprising given that they were on the inside in relation to some of the consultations that went on many years ago. They are now completely excluded. So yet again I call on the minister to urgently provide me with detailed written advice in relation to the documented plans for the future use of the HFR or alternatively a briefing on this so that I can provide this information to my constituents. I trust that this information will be forthcoming and that I can look forward to finally receiving a satisfactory response from the minister containing the information that I and my residents have been repeatedly seeking for a very long time.