Tuesday, 20 September 2022

 Dr BACH (Eastern Metropolitan) (17:54): (2129) My adjournment matter tonight is for the Minister for Planning. Yesterday I had the great pleasure of catching up again with members of an important community group in Prahran, the Drop Punt community group. Now, I like the Drop Punt community group for a number of reasons. One is the pithy name. The Drop Punt community group has campaigned for years and years to drop the Punt Road public acquisition overlay. Interestingly this is something that the government over a long period of time has been implacably opposed to. This is odd, because under the Punt Road public acquisition overlay a future government could bulldoze a huge number of heritage homes—along Punt Road—pubs and other historic buildings, all to widen the road. My friend Ryan Smith in the other place has for a long period of time mounted the case to drop this overlay. That is the position of the Liberals and Nationals; it was at the last election and it is at this election. However, the government has been opposed to it.

To be fair, we have a new Minister for Planning—as we have a new minister for just about everything—and so I want to reach out to her tonight in a spirit of goodwill to see if she will join with us, with many concerned locals, to put our minds at ease. If you do not have a secret plan to bulldoze many homes and historic pubs and other buildings along Punt Road, why would you wish to keep this overlay? The government even initiated a process in 2016. The Andrews Labor government initiated a ministerial advisory committee process, and do you know what that process determined? It determined that the overlay should be dropped. But the government at that time had a different position.

I do not think it shows weakness to change one’s mind in the face of facts. I actually think it shows strength, and I think it would do this new minister much good to show strength and to consider the facts on the table: that we are thinking here about a move to widen Punt Road and to bulldoze a huge number of important buildings and homes. That would be a disaster for local residents, it would add significantly to emissions and it would do nothing for travel times. The Labor government’s own process determined that enacting this secret plan would cut only 11 seconds off travel times, so this is not a plan that the government should move ahead with. It was wonderful when I met with the Drop Punt community group, when I was joined by Matt Lucas—not the Matt Lucas from Little Britain but the Liberal Party’s Matt Lucas, our candidate for Prahran. He too is passionate about dropping this planning process. The action I seek is for the minister to do so.