Tuesday, 24 May 2022

Sunbury level crossing removal

Mr FINN (Western Metropolitan) (17:58): (1929) I wish to raise a matter for the attention of the Minister for Small Business. It may be that some members think that I do speak about Sunbury a bit too much, but on this occasion I think it is fully justified. What the Sunbury township and in particular the business community of Sunbury are about to go through is a horror patch. They have already felt of course the longest lockdowns in the world and the economic impact of those lockdowns. We have seen the lack of parking, a problem that the government said it would fix before the last election, but in fact it has taken parking away. What we will be seeing very, very shortly, in fact next week, is the closure of a level crossing—one of only two crossings of the railway line in Sunbury. I have been in Sunbury for a long time, and I have seen two occasions when that level crossing has been closed before. It was usually due to an accident or some other problem that we had trouble dealing with. What it caused was total and absolute gridlock within the Sunbury township, to the point where, and I will recall this, people just locked their cars, walked away and left them on the street.

The impact the closure of this level crossing will have on the business community in Sunbury is going to be absolutely horrific. It will be horrendous. What we need to do is find a way of assisting the business community. What we are going to see is that a lot of people from the Macedon Ranges, most of whom shop in Sunbury as their major regional shopping centre, are going to go straight to Watergardens. They are going to say, ‘I’m not going anywhere near Sunbury; we’re going straight to Watergardens’. Indeed we are going to see a lot of people in Sunbury saying that—they are not going anywhere near the Sunbury CBD because it will be too horrendous, the traffic will be just dreadful. We are going to see a lot of businesses in Sunbury under a lot of pressure over the next—well, how long is this going to take? We do not know. We have seen blowouts in Sunbury before on these sorts of works. We could be talking up to a year perhaps where this level crossing will be out of action.

What I am asking the minister to do is to put together a package of support for businesses in Sunbury. It is not something that I normally promote, not something that I normally would advocate, but certainly on this occasion I believe it is necessary. Otherwise we are going to see economic Armageddon in Sunbury over the next six, eight or maybe 12 months, and that is something that is entirely intolerable.