Thursday, 31 July 2025

Blackburn planning

Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:18): (1796) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop, and it is about a very special vision. In Box Hill there is a former quarry site known as the Box Hill brickworks. It lies as a large green grassed space, unused and locked behind chain wire fences adjoining Surrey Park, crowned with the iconic industrial shell and chimney of the old brickworks factory, an industrial relic that has taken on a rugged new beauty since the smoke and fires of its heyday were extinguished many years ago. The community, led by the Box Hill Brickworks Parkland Association, have a vision for this vacant unused space. It is a fantastic vision, but it is also a solution. Box Hill is zoned for up to seven 50-storey apartments to be built in the coming years. Many other six- to eight-storey apartment blocks are to be shoved into the area. I think it will have terrible human consequences for families and community, because there is no matching social infrastructure proposed. The community know this too. The local community is well awake to the flaws of the Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) plan. The enthusiasm for what was previously sold to them has given way to much deeper concerns about the effect on quality of life, the loss of open space, new Box Hill specific taxes to fund it, massive additions to the population and no additional infrastructure to match.

There has been one ray of light, and that was the hope that the brickworks site might provide additional open space the community will desperately need. It is a vision that amongst the new towers and population there would be a Central Park kind of space for the community to exercise, to walk the dog, to meet – to breathe – before they go back to their tower block apartment. It was a vision that the old brickworks building, with its massive wooden beams and chimney, could become a community centre, an arts centre, a cafe, a gallery, a performance space or all of the above – but no.

Even though the local member teased locals with the idea of a park at the last election, now you and he – the government – have gone and rezoned it for SRL housing development. Then you thumbed your nose at the community and zoned the brickworks for higher density residences. Then you said the local government is to buy it, but you rezoned it to high density and made it unaffordable. Then you said you cannot do anything because it is private property, but you had no hesitation in purchasing 300 private residences in the SRL area, including the Waverley RSL, which you only need for a staging area, which you are paying $35 million or more for. So the action I seek from the minister is to make the Box Hill brickworks a permanent parkland – and pay for it.