Wednesday, 22 March 2023

Lake Wendouree lighting project

Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (17:51): (135) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Planning and relates to the ongoing works to put 225 tall lights around Ballarat’s Lake Wendouree. There is significant angst within the Ballarat community that current drilling works do not comply with permit conditions laid out by Heritage Victoria. Lake Wendouree is listed on the state heritage register. Documented and photographic evidence clearly shows multiple breaches within tree protection zones specified within Australian standards and within the Ballarat council’s construction and tree management plan. The breaches within the zones include machinery excavation, parking of vehicles and plant, a failure to meet protective fencing standards and a failure to meet ground protection measures. There is no evidence of hand boring, also required in the permits.

I am advised by members of the Get our Lake Wendouree lighting right! group, who spoke to drilling contractors at the lake on Friday 10 March, two weeks after the start of work, that the project arborist had not been on site but that they thought his name was Tony – again, another permit breach. The lighting group has relayed these concerns to Heritage Victoria, who last week responded in writing via a senior heritage officer. She advised she had been in touch with the City of Ballarat and the arborist and she is satisfied – from their word only – that everything is fine. She continues to refuse their request for an on-site visit to inspect the works, writing:

Heritage Victoria will continue to monitor works …

More colloquially, others have been told in phone calls to Heritage Victoria, ‘The lights are going ahead regardless of the breaches.’ In this instance one might liken Heritage Victoria’s Melbourne-based reliance on the word of a Labor-led regional council as trusting a fox in a henhouse. One should remember this project is a Labor election promise to a Labor-held electorate pushed through by Labor-endorsed mayors. It is all red Labor in this project. I recall the words of our colleague in this house last year, Mr Somyurek, when he described walking into a government department as akin to walking into an ALP state conference and ‘looking at a Labor Party branch list.’ My action for the minister is to advise whether she is confident that Heritage Victoria’s ‘monitoring’ of such projects is good enough for an authority in which Victorians place great trust.