Cindy McLeish, MLA for Eildon

Eildon MLA Cindy McLeish delivered a far-reaching summary of life in the electorate, when speaking in State Parliament last week:
I am really pleased to make a contribution to the grievance debate,
and I am also pleased to have such an audience.
I am not sure where those on the government benches actually live, but I am fairly convinced it is in fairyland.
My contribution today is going to
focus on land sell-offs, community consultation — or lack of community consultation — and hypocrisy.
With all of these things comes a key attribute of most of those on the Labor government benches, and that is arrogance.
They think that they should be the ruling class. They are there for the battler, but they think that their rightful place is that of the almighty ruler. The way they carry on and treat the communities, I believe that they think they have been selected as part of a ruling class.
I am going to start with the land sell-offs. There are constant land sell-offs being undertaken by the government because they are trying to raise every cent that they can.
Disposal of public assets is one of the key ways they are doing that. When we have a look, we see that they are throwing money at things left, right and centre, but what really concerns me is the constant budget overruns and the lack of accountability, because it is somebody else’s money.
The land sell-offs that are happening all around Victoria are one way that they are looking to boost their coffers.
I am going to focus on a few areas locally that are being looked at, one of which is Green Street in Healesville.
This has been used as a community space for quite some time, and there has been a bit of debate within the community about the best way forward for that space.
There is a community market that happens frequently in that space. It is a very well patronised market, and there are a number of people in town who would like to see this continue. The council were not quite sure, so they went out and did some consultation around this. There were, as I said, various opinions.
They were led to believe that they were going to get this land at a reasonable price, but what has happened is that they have had a valuation and it has been put at a price that
the council just cannot afford, so now of course it is being flogged off and the future of that site, of who is going to buy it and what will happen to it, is under a bit of a cloud.
We have in Warburton the Yarra Ranges Enterprise Centre (YREC), which has been a fabulous small collection of start-up businesses, and they have been really quite innovative.
The land there, at the junction of Woods Point Road and the Warb-urton Highway, was Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works land, so it therefore falls under Melbourne Water.
In fact I asked the Minister for Planning to intervene on this because it has been such a successful little start-up area that it would be a shame for the community to lose it.
I understand that that is now being delayed to see whether or not YREC, the enterprise centre, can actually purchase the land.
There has been a massive sell-off of land at Christmas Hills, a Melbourne Water site that had been flagged for a dam.
That is a really large and treasured space as part of the green wedge of Melbourne.
There have been a number of issues with this flogging off of Melbourne Water land, and there are conflicting issues.
The government — and let us be clear, their goal is about maximising the land value — want to get as much for it as possible, even if that means subdividing it into blocks as small as possible.
That is certainly the interest of the government. We also have the interests of real estate agents, who are very keen to sell this land, and of course the more of it they can get, the better.
The council are really worried about this, because there are a number of overlays on this land, including a bushfire management overlay, and some of those plans — there are various plans — would be sold as almost house and land packages with a sizeable piece of land.
The council and councillors are very worried that you would not be able to build on those pieces of land
with the current bushfire management overlay in place, so they would like to see the land being sold perhaps with planning permits so that people know what they can and cannot do.
There have already been ads for
some of this land, and they make it sound as though you are going to be able to build your dream home on this site.
That is just not going to happen, certainly not without a fight.
We have also seen that the plans have been hidden from the community, so there is a lack of transparency and certainly a lack of consultation.
I think seven different precincts were identified and developed separately, and within those precincts there were three different plans.
Interestingly, when they went to community consultation only two of those plans were made available to the community to comment on — the ones which kept that land at the largest sizes possible, which seems to be what people really like, whether that is recreational land or whether that remains as farmland.
People tended to be in favour of keeping these blocks as large as pos-
sible. I found it extremely interesting that they were not even put on the table for consultation.
It was only later that it was found there was another option there.
The reasons for it being hidden from the community are a bit of a mystery to me, and as a result I have gone to the minister to get them to have a look at that, because it certainly does not sound very transparent.
It actually is quite hypocritical and is typical of the arrogance of this government.
I find this quite interesting, because at the same time that we have land being flogged off at a rate of knots by the state government I heard the member for Eltham, and in fact at times also the member for Yan Yean,
denigrate the actions of the Nillumbik Shire Council and in particular the mayor, Cr Peter Clarke. Typically they shoot from the hip without finding out all the right information, and as I understand it neither have been to the council for a full briefing from either the council or the acting CEO, so they are not really aware of exactly what is going on.
However, that does not stop them
shooting from the hip in any way.
We have got an old shire office site which has been derelict for some 25 years.
The council are now moving to find a joint venture partner to redevelop this site, and they are very keen to honour the heritage issue here.
I think hypocrisy is being shown by the members for Eltham and for Yan Yean. It is not okay for Nill-umbik to look at joint ventures locally, but at the same time we see the state government joint venture — as you could describe it — in their relationship with Transurban.
It did not go to tender. It was, ‘We’re going to give you this project. Yep, go and do what you like’. That is okay, but it is not okay for similar things to happen at a local level.
Then there is the gifting to the AFL of $225 million. A gift like that could be put back into community sport by
way of a joint venture.
There is certainly no criticism of
that policy from the government benches, and I think “ that is absolutely a dog of a policy.
I cannot believe that those on the other side of the house are not speak ing up, because I think that is something that certainly should not happen.
But when we look at the local level, the members are certainly, with Nillumbik, keen to start jumping
around and trying to make a little bit of an issue. There are reasons behind some of the things that Nillumbik Shire Council are trying to do: they are trying to maximise a
tourism opportunity; they are trying to support jobs; they want to build a better kinder; they want a new, better art gallery; and they are looking to support residential accommodation, whether that be aged care or for retirees.
I would think that the local members down there would actually be supportive of jobs and supporting the older members of their community rather than going off like they are. The process is also a full public process; there is a public probity audit as well. I think that this is very typical of the hypocrisy.
I want to turn briefly to community consultation, because as I have mentioned already with the Christmas Hills example, the community consultation seemed quite flawed — one of the options was actually withheld from the community.
I want to bring in the example of Mount Macedon and what has happened there.
In Mount Macedon, there were a number of aspen trees at the picnic grounds. Parks Victoria went in one day and chopped them down.
No-one was aware that this was going to happen. The trees were non-native trees, but aspens are really quite beautiful in autumn and they become a tourist attraction.
People go to that area to look at the autumn trees and to see the leaves on the ground. Parks Victoria in their wisdom, without any consultation with the community, went in, got the chainsaws out and floored them.
There was no consultation, and I think the member for Macedon was
probably backing in Parks Victoria. She was fairly silent on it as far as I can see. Again, this is an example of a government that says one thing and does something entirely different.
It is really about how you go about the process. It is what you do, your actions, that are important, not what you say.
We have sky rail. Gosh, the people down in the bayside suburbs and in Oakleigh were not informed
that there was going to be a sky rail. They were expecting that the plans would be underground, separating the road and rail, as has happened in other areas.
This was what they were expecting. You have seen now what has happened — people are outraged. To think that they looked out their back door where there was a beautiful row of trees, and now they have been chopped down and they have got a full sky rail right at their back door.
People are absolutely outraged by this and I think, again, the government has ignored the will of the community.
Another example of a lack of good consultation is the rollout of the wire rope barriers that we are seeing across the state.
This rollout started in my electorate. It started with a demonstration barrier on the Melba Highway.
I believe they have never sought
feedback about how well those barriers work and how safe it is for people entering and exiting the property there.
Equally, they then went and rolled out about 8 or 10 kilometres between Yea and Molesworth — telling people how it was going to be, not really taking on any of the ideas and suggestions of the community although, at the time, they did pad the uprights as a protection mechanism for motorbikes.
I notice that with subsequent rollouts, certainly down in the Gippsland area, this has not occurred.
I think that they have not at all thought about possible impacts on the motorbike riders in those areas.
The installation of wire rope barriers: they have been rolled out and, looking certainly between the Molesworth and Cathkin, have been extended.
There is a section of road there which is extremely dangerous.
It is prone to flooding. Home Creek floods all the time.
The local Victoria State Emergency Service (SES) has said that it is very dangerous to put these centre wire rope barriers in this position and it will cause all sorts of issues when they have to do their rescues by boat, which happens fairly frequently because, as I said, that area is prone to flooding.
However, the government in their wisdom have said, ‘No, this is all fine. The road does not need to be raised at the same time’, which would actually be a reasonable solution — to lift the road there so that the impacts from flooding are lessened.
If you are going to have these wire rope barriers, it would make it a lot safer.
But no, in their wisdom the government are not going to listen to anyone.
They are not going to hear the experts at the SES and the Country Fire Authority who deal with rescues on this stretch of road all the time.
They know better, and I think that is another fine example of a government full of arrogance and, certainly, one of great hypocrisy.
I have been quite appalled to see the way this government behave. However it is a complete reflection of how they behaved with the north–south pipeline, which upset my community greatly.