Tuesday, 28 May 2024

Cooks’ Cottage

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (20:58): (912) My matter for the adjournment tonight is for the attention of the Minister for Environment. The environment portfolio manages important tracts of public land, including ones quite close to here in the Fitzroy Gardens, and I am particularly interested in the land around Captain Cook’s cottage. This land is managed under delegation by the City of Melbourne, and I can indicate to the chamber I have FOI-ed the City of Melbourne, who have been very unresponsive.

A member interjected.

David DAVIS: No, they have taken more than six months to give me just a few figures and to deny a series of important documents about their plans and proposals for Captain Cook’s cottage. They have said that the documents are too sensitive to release, Minister, but I am concerned given the attacks by leftists and hooligans on Captain Cook statues and the propensity of the City of Melbourne to move into, let us just say, ideological territory. I am concerned that the City of Melbourne does have unfortunate plans for Captain Cook’s cottage.

Bear in mind this is actually the Cook family’s cottage. It was brought here in 1934 in celebration of 100 years of Victoria, and it is a link back to the fact that Captain Cook was the first European – and I hasten to add that word ‘European’ – to sight Victoria and Australia’s east coast in the place of Point Hicks in April 1770. It is meaningful for Victoria and a meaningful part of our history, and the Cooks’ Cottage should be protected. I am deeply troubled about what I have heard informally out of the bureaucracy but also this resistance to actually bringing the community into their confidence, and it is in that circumstance that I ask the Minister for Environment to intervene. The land is public land. It ultimately is the responsibility of the Minister for Environment. If the City of Melbourne has some harebrained scheme to move Cooks’ Cottage, to close Cooks’ Cottage, to make it more difficult to access, to put obscure and strange requirements on it, well, I think the Minister for Environment should stand up to them and should say no and, if necessary, take back control from the City of Melbourne.

I do not actually think the City of Melbourne can be trusted with this important land. I mean, they have gone on a whole series of ideological frolics, and we need to stop that. So the action I am seeking from the Minister for Environment is to intervene to examine what is going on, to find out what proposals the City of Melbourne has and to protect Captain Cook’s cottage, if necessary by taking back control.