Wednesday, 4 February 2026

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (18:39): (2271) My adjournment matter is for the Premier. The action that I seek is for the Premier to take immediate action to fix Labor’s major planning failures in Donnybrook. Two weeks ago I joined my colleagues Liberal leader Jess Wilson and Evan Mulholland, the Liberal member for the Northern Metropolitan Region, to meet with local representatives of the Donnybrook community groups. It was deeply concerning to hear their stories of how difficult life is on the urban fringe, in rapidly growing suburbs that have been completely forgotten by the Labor government. New residents were attracted to Donnybrook by the promise that they could live the Australian dream: a new house, easy access to public transport for school and work, green spaces, sporting fields and community facilities all close by. But instead of living the dream, residents on the urban fringe are living a nightmare under Labor’s planning failures. Labor, greedy for extra tax revenue, approved thousands of new homes for the area before the necessary infrastructure had been built.

Donnybrook Road epitomises everything that is wrong with Labor’s approach to planning for growth areas. It is a single-lane road – an old country farm track – that is the only road in and out of the surrounding housing estate. The road is chronically congested every morning and night, with notoriously bad traffic that traps locals and makes them late for work, late for school and late home for dinner in the evening. It should have been upgraded to a double-lane arterial road before the homes were built in order to handle all the extra traffic. But even now Labor has still not allocated funding to duplicate the road. There are currently just over 20,000 residents living in estates accessed via Donnybrook Road, but this will increase to 78,000 residents by 2041, so congestion will only get worse.

Things would not be so bad if the public transport were better, but there is no continuous shared footpath to the train station, so people from the Donnybrook housing estates cannot walk or ride safely to the station to commute. Commuters are forced to drive to the station, but there are not enough car parks, which means that they have to park on the street in the surrounding roads. When the trains do arrive, they are jam-packed, with standing room only, because Labor has not provided enough new services to cater for the growth area suburb.

Crime in the housing estates is rife, and the latest data shows that criminal incidents in the Whittlesea police service area have jumped by 19 per cent in the last year. Statistics alone cannot convey the true reality of crime. I have personally listened to many stories of families who suffered terrifying home invasions and theft from their vehicles. Telecommunications are also poor, and residents struggle with poor mobile phone and internet connections due to the lack of towers. The Premier cannot allow this nightmare to last another decade. Labor must take responsibility for its planning failures and immediately start fixing the problems it has caused.