Hansard debates

Mr McGUIRE (Broadmeadows) (10:19): I refer to the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee inquiry into the budget estimates and particularly the contribution from the Minister for Local Government concerning the Growing Suburbs Fund. The Growing Suburbs Fund is a contribution towards critical community infrastructure. It highlights town centres as a typical project. There is no limit to the number of projects council can submit for consideration, according to the Victorian government’s application guidelines. This is why I have called on the Hume City Council to nominate projects that have previously been prioritised by the Broadmeadows Revitalisation Board, and one that I highlighted was around town centres.

I just want to comment that the board included council representatives, including the former mayor. There were specific priorities given for immediate action, and it fits within the bigger picture strategy that I am trying to promote to drive economic development for Broadmeadows, to connect these different deals into the Australian government’s proposed city deal for Melbourne’s north-west and to revitalise this critically important community. This is how we need to have a strategic view. It is not just transactional, it is transformative, that we actually connect up these different opportunities where you can apply for funding.

This is the big-picture strategy Melbourne’s north craves and the best opportunity to revitalise Broadmeadows as an epicentre for new industries and jobs. This is a proposition on how these projects could be included and could be submitted and help deliver this bigger picture—because it then goes to my argument with the Australian government on these city deals, to say to them: this is one of the hubs for the new industries and the new jobs.

Never forget the impact on blue-collar communities with the demise of our once-proud automotive industry. We are still reeling this week with a sense of betrayal that there will be no more Holdens made. How does that play out? Remember the end of the line was 7 October 2016. Ford closed in Geelong and Broadmeadows at that time, and this devastated these communities. In Broadmeadows 550 people immediately lost their jobs. Then there was the flow-on effect with the supply chain.

So I am asking, as the reappointed chair of the Broadmeadows Revitalisation Board, to get these unity tickets, to get the three tiers of government to collaborate, to bring in the private sector for the investment and to get the civil society to do it. I have only been doing it for more than two decades. Can we actually get a coordinated strategy—have these lined up? I do want to point out references to the Broadmeadows railway station:

Revitalisation of key transport interchanges has often been a central catalyst project leading urban renewal initiatives.

And:

For Broadmeadows, enhancing of the station precinct can deliver improved connections for the community between employment and residential areas as well as delivering better connections for Broadmeadows residents to key employment and activity hubs across the rest of Melbourne.

That was referenced in the first report of the Broadmeadows Revitalisation Board. This is what we are doing with the Victorian government. We have been working on all of this. Here is what the board also said:

The Board welcomes the Government’s funding commitment to develop a business case for investment in an upgrade of this vital regional transport hub. The Board notes that earlier design investigations could be drawn upon and community input sort in developing the business case. A substantial redevelopment and renewal of Broadmeadows Railway Station will establish Broadmeadows as a primary transport interchange node in Melbourne’s outer north and significantly support the renewal of central Broadmeadows.

These are high-value projects. This is what these funding applications are based on, but you have got to weld together the social infrastructure with the big-picture infrastructure for the new industries and the jobs. You have got to have the coordinated strategy. This is why I am saying Broadmeadows should have been priority one in these applications. This is part of what I am arguing for. The Broadmeadows revitalisation projects have previously secured the support of key Victorian government departments and community representatives, and investing in such projects would help redevelopment, as we have with the redevelopment of the Broadmeadows town hall. That has been an outstanding collaboration between the Victorian government and Hume City Council. We have got that piece of infrastructure up and going now.

The other thing about the railway station is that the Victorian government has designated Broadmeadows as a super-hub for Australia’s biggest transport project. (Time expired)