Hansard debates

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (22:31): My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change. The Geelong Steam Preservation Society, also known as the Bellarine Railway, is a volunteer-run tourism business that provides heritage steam train rides between Drysdale and Queenscliff. They are responsible for the management of vegetation on the railway reserve. In April this year Bellarine Railway began clearing vegetation to reinstate a fire access track on the reserve when an officer from the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) showed up and insisted that the maintenance was essentially illegal. This work was the clearing and maintenance of a pre-existing fire and rail corridor maintenance track, which had become overgrown and impassable, to allow safe access for railway maintenance vehicles and emergency services vehicles.

Bellarine Railway have subsequently written on a number of occasions to DELWP explaining why they are in fact allowed to undertake this removal of vegetation but have not received a response. Since May there has been a standstill, with no clearance having been able to take place. Bellarine Railway could have had all the vegetation removed and could have mulched it in a week, but the department stands in their way. Numerous landowners in the area are deeply concerned about the potential fire risk. The railway used to act as a firebreak, but it now poses a significant fire risk for the area, with overgrown and dead vegetation.

This situation has all the markers of an incompetent Labor government. An important tourism business is being stifled by government control, unable to restore the formerly scenic views from the train rides by removing the vegetation. Bureaucrats are seemingly more concerned about saving vegetation than saving lives and property by mitigating fire danger, and a volunteer organisation is being antagonised and ignored by a government department. So the action I seek is for the minister to ensure that DELWP immediately enters negotiations with Bellarine Railway over the removal of vegetation from the railway reserve, thereby ensuring this fire risk is immediately removed before the summer gets even worse.