Wednesday, 15 October 2025

 Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:54): (2007) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop. The government has lied to the Box Hill community. The government, including the member for Box Hill Paul Hamer, have played the Box Hill community for years. Paul Hamer has strung the community along, saying he supported the Box Hill brickworks becoming permanent parkland – desperately needed space. He has walked the perimeters with community members, gazing at it and saying how it could be Manhattan Central Park skyline. For the last four years the Suburban Rail Loop project has always displayed this on every diagram as green open space. Then the language subtly changed and it became a ‘special purpose zone’. And then, with no formal announcement, the diagram subtly changed to suddenly have buildings on that green space.

But it gets worse. As part of the latest pseudo-consultation program, the government released documents. Amongst those there is an email from the property owner, Phileo Australia. Unfortunately for the government, when the document was circulated the email was accidentally left attached. And what does it say? It says that Phileo and the Suburban Rail Loop Authority have gone behind everybody’s backs and already agreed on a massive new high-rise development for the entirety of the Box Hill brickworks site, such that there will only be 5 per cent of open space left on it. This basically invalidates every other piece of so-called consultation or community information provided over the past five years. The SRLA have moved the goalposts, and the last thing they want is for the community to know it. It is the government yet again weaponising access to information and limiting the community’s ability to provide an informed response based on full information. There now can be no doubt whatsoever that any community group or organisation dealing in Box Hill has every right to question whether those conversations are in good faith or not.

On Monday night Whitehorse council unanimously – Liberal councillors and Labor councillors, every councillor – passed a motion that Whitehorse council should enter into negotiations for the purchase of the Box Hill brickworks site for the explicit purpose of turning the entirety of it into permanent parkland. The action I seek from the minister is to reverse her decision to make an agreement to build high-rise developments, to engage with Whitehorse council and to take all necessary steps to acquire Box Hill brickworks for permanent parkland.