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Legislative Assembly
 
LAND (REVOCATION OF RESERVATIONS) BILL 2019

15 October 2019
Second reading
Ellen Sandell  (GRN)

 


Ms SANDELL (Melbourne) (18:08:21): I regret now that I do not have any Shakespeare quotes in my speech, but anyway I will press on. I rise to speak on the Land (Revocation of Reservations) Bill 2019. As other speakers have mentioned, the bill revokes, and in some cases reapplies, reservations on Crown land, predominantly relating to four sites. One is land next to the Frankston Hospital currently occupied by a tennis club to be re-reserved as public land for the hospital’s expansion. There are two bits of land next to Camberwell Primary School, as the member for Hawthorn just talked about in depth, one of which has tennis courts on it and one of which has a soccer pitch, the soccer pitch land being re-reserved for school purposes so the school can expand and the tennis club land being re-reserved for public recreation. Thirdly, there is land on the Geelong foreshore, near North Geelong station. This one is a little bit unclear to us, I have to say, but it seems like perhaps the government sold off land for a housing development and marina but did not properly discharge all the public land reserved. So basically it seems like the government has made a mistake and sold off land it was not supposed to. There is a bit of empty space next to the development, and the government is proposing to release this so it can be included in the lease for the marina, which we assume means putting more houses on it. The development website is already advertising stages 3 and 4 of the development on that bit of empty land, so we assume that that is what that is for. Lastly, there is land in Coleraine being used for the Coleraine Racecourse, as the member for Lowan talked about. The bill is revoking the permanent reservation of this land and re-reserving it clearly for racecourse purposes. The second-reading speech suggests that not all the land that is being used by the racecourse was reserved for racecourse purposes and that this is fixing it. The member for Lowan talked at length about jumps racing, and of course Victoria is one of the only two states—Victoria and South Australia—that still allow jumps racing. It is known that this is a particularly dangerous and cruel sport for horses; over the last 10 years it has seen 50 horses killed in Victoria and many, many more injured, and we would hope that Victoria would join the rest of the country, come in to the 21st century and ban the cruel practice of jumps racing sometime soon, although I will not hold my breath. What I wanted to talk about as well around this bill is what the government is doing with public land in Victoria in general. There are currently 151 sites—that is over 2600 hectares of land—being prepared for sale by this government. That is more than double the land area sold over the last decade—more than double that sold in 10 years—that is being prepared for sale right now. At the same time there are over 85 000 people in Victoria on the public housing waiting list and Victoria is still shockingly behind other states in the provision of the public housing that people need. In fact we provide less than half the funding that New South Wales does. We are actually the lowest funding state for public housing per capita in the country. But instead of looking at this public land and using it perhaps for public purposes like public housing, we are seeing so much land being sold off for developments. Making money in the short term for the government’s bottom line might make the budget look good and might make a mint for private developers, but it really is short-changing the people of Victoria and also future generations. In fact many of the sites that the government wants to sell off are actually sites that a recent Melbourne University report identified as priority sites that should be used to house people who are experiencing homelessness, yet the government is going to sell them off anyway—sites in Footscray and sites in Essendon, for example. I do have to say that I am especially flabbergasted that many of the sites the government wishes to sell off are sites that the former government actually bought to build the east–west toll road, and when the Andrews Labor government came into office, under pressure from the Greens and the community, they promised to use these sites—like the Evo Apartments in Parkville and a number of houses on Bendigo Street in Collingwood—as housing for people who need them the most. They promised to use them, for example, for people fleeing family violence. In fact when a group of people occupied the houses on Bendigo Street, demanding they be used for public housing, the government, including the housing minister at the time, the now Minister for Mental Health, told the protesters that they needed to leave because they were preventing women and families fleeing family violence from using those houses. This government had the gall to accuse those protesters of preventing family violence victims from using those houses, yet now they are going to sell them off, so they are not going to be used for family violence victims anymore. This seems like a ridiculous situation. We have these houses that could be used for public housing. In fact the government promised to use them for housing for people who needed it, but now we see the true colours of the government—the bottom line is more important than housing people who are at risk of homelessness. Now, the Greens have not been against the sell-off of all public land in general. It may be that in some circumstances selling off a site unsuitable for public housing, for example, could free up money to purchase another site that is better suited for public housing or another public purpose. But that is not what the government is doing here. Instead they are selling off prime inner-city land—in many cases land that has been promised for social housing or land that Melbourne University has explicitly identified as perfect locations for housing homeless people—to boost the budget bottom line. Are they going to use this money to build more public housing? No—in fact the government’s agenda is to sell off land on public housing estates across Victoria to build private apartments and transfer public housing management to non-government organisations, thus leading to even less publicly managed housing than we have now. They are letting developers make an absolute killing, bringing in money to make the budget look good for political purposes while spending less on public housing per person than any state in Australia. What is more, this government also promised to enter into treaties with First Nations peoples in a genuine way and give Aboriginal people here in Victoria the opportunity to fully engage in treaties on an equal footing with the government. Ms Green: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, I would ask the member for Melbourne to actually address what the bill before the house is about. She has strayed very, very far from the bill and to other government announcements which have nothing to do with this bill, so I would ask you to return her to the content of the bill. Ms SANDELL: On the point of order, Acting Speaker, the member would well know that the lead speaker from any political party is able to give a wideranging debate on issues related to the bill. This bill is about Crown land; that is exactly what I am doing. The member may not have ever had the pleasure of being the lead speaker from her political party on any bill, so she may not know that. The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Carbines): Order! The Chair is well aware that the member for Yan Yean has led discussion and debate on many bills in this place in roles that she has held in the past. But for the record it is fair and reasonable. The member for Melbourne is the lead speaker for her party. It would certainly assist the running of the house for her to refer to the Land (Revocation of Reservations) Bill 2019, but I do not uphold the point of order. The member for Melbourne will continue. Ms SANDELL: Thank you, Acting Speaker. I was talking specifically about Crown land and the fact that Crown land in fact is one of the tools which Aboriginal people have with which to negotiate a treaty with this government—it is one of the cards that they have in their hand. By selling off so much Crown land, public land, before treaties have been negotiated what this government is doing is removing one of the main cards that First Nations peoples have in their hand and doing it right before negotiations start. We do not believe that is a genuine way to negotiate, and it risks undermining the process of treaty. So we have been calling for a moratorium on the sale of public land until treaties have been negotiated. We do think that when it comes to public land the government ought to go back to the drawing board. Governments do have the responsibility to provide the basics to people who live in Victoria, and nothing is more basic and fundamental than the right to have a safe roof over one’s head. And when there are over 85 000 people on the public housing waiting list, we believe that this government should not be selling off large tracts of public land but in fact should preserve them for public use and for future generations.