Tuesday, 16 June 2026

 David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (13:35): Today I want to draw the chamber’s attention to an FOI that we received from the Department of Transport and Planning. What it shows is an exchange with the City of Melbourne in relation to the Burke and Wills statue, and it makes it very clear that the City of Melbourne changed its position at a secret council meeting. This was a meeting that was not declared. There was no public discussion about this. I say –

John Berger interjected.

David DAVIS: Well, I know it because I can see it in the documents. It actually refers directly to the secret council meeting.

John Berger: Oh, that’s a secret meeting! They called it a secret meeting, did they?

David DAVIS: That is what it does. It does actually call it exactly that. They then changed the agreed document, and they actually have all the deletions and the changed words highlighted and with the strike-through on the words that were going out. But the intention initially was that the Burke and Wills statue, the statue of our intrepid explorers who crossed the continent from the south to the north – and obviously Burke and Wills died; King was the one survivor. But that important statue had stood in or near the City Square for more than a century. Obviously the works happened on the overbudget metro, and that had to go into storage. The agreement was that that statue would be put back in the City Square. Well, that is not happening. The state government and the council have connived to move it to a distant site. This is our history, our colonial history. We should stand up for it and not have these people – (Time expired)