Elevated Rail Proposal

Ms DUNN (Eastern Metropolitan) — I rise to speak on Mr Davis' motion in relation to the elevated rail project, a matter that has certainly captured the attention of the house this morning.

In terms of the motion before us, firstly, I want to talk about consultation and what makes good consultation, because it seems to me that the situation that we are seeing unfold in the south-east of Melbourne is in fact a result of very poor consultation. Information sessions are not consultation. Consultation is a genuine and authentic conversation with your community. Consultation is about letting people have an opportunity to influence outcomes and decision-making. To call information sessions consultation makes a mockery of what a genuine conversation with the community is. Given what the Greens have ascertained to date we are very concerned that there has not been a genuine consultative process at all. In fact there has been a lot of telling the community what will happen, rather than supporting the community with detailed information as to how that decision was made. So, of course, we see enormous angst out there about that. That angst does not necessarily mean opposition to elevated rail and it does not necessarily mean support for elevated rail. But what it does indicate is that people want to know more. People want to have the information in front of them to make up their own minds, and at the moment they cannot do that.

We have had extensive conversations with the community to date over this issue. I want to give the house a bit of a snapshot of some of those conversations. I am certainly not going to read every last little bit of feedback; a lot of it is actually repetitive, with people saying the same thing to us. On a particular day when we talk to local community members from the Carnegie, Clayton, Hughesdale, Murrumbeena, Oakleigh, South Oakleigh, Springvale and Noble Park areas these are the sorts of things they said to us. They said residents are very concerned about the noise in relation to the proposal and they cannot get any sort of detailed information on the implications of noise and what that means to them. One person said:

Those people who did attend the 'consultation' sessions are adamant that they were led to believe the line would go under the roads and that the current plan was only ever presented as one option amongst many.

Another said the government:

… has undertaken no community consultation at all … council and residents impacted by this only being advised on the Saturday night before they announced it on Sunday morning.

Another said his father:

… lives just on the railway line and was never consulted! … He was sent pamphlets in English only, so his elderly mother was unable to read them.

It has been a constant in the feedback that we have received in relation to this that doorknocking and pamphlets were only provided in English so there was no consideration of languages other than English as part of that process. I am not even sure whether I would call it consultation, because I do not believe that telling communities things is consultation. As I said earlier, consultation is a conversation where people have an opportunity to influence decision-making. Telling people what is going to happen is information in itself, but it is not consultation.

In the particular session we held, 70 per cent of the people we spoke to said they had not been consulted. In fairness, 8 per cent said that had been consulted. It seems that there is a bit of an ad hoc arrangement going on, because one person we spoke to actually said the information was available in English, Vietnamese and Cambodian. But that was only one person. Consistently we heard that all the information has been provided only in English.

A person from Clayton South said that the flyer he had received:

… didn't mention elevated rail and was in English only.

Residents were presented with four options that looked at rail under road or road under rail. There is a general degree of frustration that:

… the government is consistently claiming they consulted us. They did not consult us or ask for any input at all, they simply told us what they have planned.

And I think that captures the really core issue around consultation and when you do not consult and you treat the community with contempt. That is what we see happening and is what does happen. I say that with many years of experience in local government, where it is absolutely critical to get consultation right if you actually want a smooth road to major projects.

To move on to other things the community has said, one person:

… found out through the media and not happy about the lack of information.

Another person said:

Like everyone else we were doorknocked the Saturday before the Sunday announcement … why hide it? We went to several meetings before the announcement and sky rail was not presented as a preferred or even as an option.

Another comment:

I live on the train line in Hughesdale … two women knocked on my door at 7 that night to give me a brochure about the formal announcement the government was going to make in the morning. They couldn't answer any questions but just replied I had to wait for the community sessions. And that sums up the whole consultation process of the past seven months!

People have indicated concern in relation to the river red gums in the Murrumbeena region. They are very concerned about the native vegetation impacts and also other significant trees along that line and how they will be impacted. Their feedback to me has been that there are local governments that have not even seen the elevated rail proposal in any great detail.

The comments go on, and believe me, they have been extensive. There have been many, and they have been consistent in their messaging, such as:

Public spaces will end up as weed patches and car parks.

So people are concerned about what actually happens to those spaces under elevated rail, who maintains them, what they look like and who pays for them. Another person said:

I am strongly in favour of the project, but I am concerned about futureproofing.

And that is around integrating express or freight lines and how the regional rail connects in with the metropolitan service.

Another person said:

Did they release the cost-benefit analysis of above ground versus below ground?

There are so many questions in relation to this project, but sadly what is missing is answers for the community in relation to this project. I think if there were answers for the community, they would in fact have far less angst because they would understand that their concerns have been thought about. They are not random concerns. They are not concerns that are really localised to that household. They are broad concerns which broadly concern the community as a whole, so it is important to have that sort of information available to it.

In relation to the earlier motion that Mr Mulino spoke to, he talked about an extensive consultation process and said that the government had consulted on so many levels in so many forums. Well, from my perspective what I and my colleagues have heard out there in the suburbs is that there has not been consultation. There has not been extensive consultation and there might have been a whole lot of meetings but there has not been consultation. I think that the critical element to remember is this: if we are actually genuine about consultation, let us have the genuine conversation.

According to an article in the Australian yesterday, it would seem that the consultation has not even occurred in the Andrews government's own cabinet. It states:

Disunity has flared within Daniel Andrews's Labor government amid revelations the sensitive decision to elevate a rail line to save costs on level crossing removals did not go to cabinet …

So it would seem to me, if you believe those comments, the core of this is a lack of understanding of consultation and what consultation means.

I had the pleasure on the weekend of visiting Ms Springle's electorate of South Eastern Metropolitan Region, where I attended an information session held by the Level Crossing Removal Authority. It was a good opportunity to ask many questions, but I did make some observations in relation to that session. I will refer to the sorts of things that community members out in Noble Park were keen to understand more about, were keen to have more knowledge of and were very frustrated by the fact that that information was not available for them as part of this session that was held. The first one was around traffic flow: members of the public want to know what the implications of this infrastructure will be on local traffic movements. They want to understand whether there will be the need for any traffic-calming measures and how traffic may be reconfigured as part of this construction process, but that information simply was not available to them.

The fact that that information was not there only leads to frustration in the community because people start to get suspicious. It is only human nature that when you cannot find out what you want you start to wonder, 'What are you hiding?'. I would think there would be no issue with having this as public information and in fact it would serve to assist members of the public in weighing up whether they believe this project is a good project for their community.

In relation to noise, of course there is a lot of concern around noise and the impact of noise generally. There was a one-page flyer at the information day, and quite frankly that did not cut it for community members who were there that day. They want the detailed noise studies. They want to understand how the noise emanates from the train and how that will be attenuated. I know that regarding the one-pager that was presented on the day, although it is probably within the principles of 'Keep it simple', people actually want the detail, and particularly those people who live along the line who will feel quite acutely the impacts of that noise. They want to know how that noise is going to be attenuated. They want to know what that will mean for them and for where they live, and that detail simply was not there.

There were concerns about vibration of the rail line, and it is the same thing again: they want to know how that will be mitigated and what that means for them, particularly those located close to the line. Unfortunately that information was not available at the information session in Noble Park either.

Residents wanted details on how visual amenity will be treated, the impact of this sort of infrastructure and what that means in terms of the character of their neighbourhoods, but sadly that information was not available to them. There was some information around some computer mock-ups of what it would look like, but people wanted the detail. It was impressive, and I might say Ms Springle has a very switched-on community because the residents actually wanted to get to the detail of what is going on. They did not want a glossy photo, they wanted to understand how that glossy photo came to be, what makes that up and what is underpinning that glossy photo. Sadly, there were no details on visual amenity and how that will be dealt with, aside from those glossy visualisations.

There is no business plan available for the community to look at. Members of the community were very keen to look at a business plan in relation to this project but, alas, that was not available to them either. There were a lot of frustrated people on Saturday morning. They took time out of their Saturday to go to this information session and, sadly, did not get the information they were looking for. Of course that just leads to even greater frustration, and from my local government days I know that you really do not want members of the community walking out of a meeting feeling frustrated if you can help it. Information and knowledge is always the key to a strengthened and empowered community.

On the day people wanted to understand how the 11 MCGs of open space was calculated and what that actually means. They wanted to understand how the sky rail will be built, what it will look like, who will maintain it and when it is going to happen. Sadly, there was no detail in relation to that. Once again there were some glossy photos and representations of what it could be, but no detail to give certainty as to how that would be arrived at. Members of the community then wanted to know about the budget in relation to this and what would be applied, along the line on a suburb-by-suburb basis, to this particular project, but that information was not available to them. People who live close to the line were very concerned about solar access, sunlight and shadow diagrams. Sadly, that information was not available to them. Members can see there is a bit of a consistent path here in terms of information seeking and the same answer, that there was scant information but not the detail that the community is seeking in relation to this.

There was concern about the bike paths and configuration along the track, because it would seem in many areas along the track, particularly when that cycle path reaches an activity centre, that cyclists are to dismount and walk their bikes through the activity centres and then get back on their bikes again and continue on their way. We know that is not a good outcome for cycling and active communities. Cyclists there on the day expressed concern about that and wanted details on how that design got to that point, but that was not available to them. There were concerns, should the project go ahead as elevated rail, about tracks that are left underneath that. There was a lot of scepticism about who would in fact be lifting those tracks and when they would be lifted.

There is quite a degree of scepticism in relation to seeing the delivery of the promised open spaces and community infrastructure under the elevated rail. That went on to concern about local governments being lumbered with the task of having to build the structures under the elevated rail. People are very concerned about what their rate dollar is spent on. It is an acute issue for them, and of course it should be. They are concerned that a state government responsibility will be passed on to the local government areas. What that means is that it will be passed on to them, so they are very concerned about how that will pan out. I have to say that I had two different answers to the same question on the day I attended the information session, so it would either be that there is no clarity around that at a government level or that it has not been promulgated to the staff of the level crossing authority, because I did get some mixed messages on how that would play out.

People were concerned about car parking. It is an enormous issue in relation to our local railway stations, but by the same token they also did not want to see swathes of land given over to car parking when there was an opportunity for other sorts of infrastructure to be in place. There was no detail in relation to a car parking strategy around the elevated rail proposal.

Lastly, in relation to the Noble Park information session only, people were very concerned about vegetation removal, replanting and the landscape plans in relation to this project. They wanted to be sure that the beautiful, scattered old trees that exist along the line are retained, but they also wanted to ensure that there were enhancement works in relation to planting. As an aside again — they are acutely aware of who pays for what in Noble Park, I can assure Ms Springle — they did not want their local government to be burdened with the cost of that in an unnecessary way, so there were lots of questions about that, but sadly there was no detailed landscape plan available for them to look at, interrogate and feel comfortable about.

I might just add, while I am talking about consultation in Noble Park, that Ms Springle is in fact a very proud resident of Noble Park. She lives, she tells me, within 400 metres of the railway line. Her own summation of the consultation and her exposure to the consultation is that she has received no flyer and she has received no doorknocking; she has received nothing at all in relation to it. So that is a firsthand account from a Noble Park resident — a very proud Noble Park resident. I must say that Ms Springle is acutely aware of the issues, but she was not made aware of them through a doorknocking or pamphlet-dropping exercise.

A range of issues have been brought to our attention through local government. They span issues around the crime prevention through environmental design analysis. Local government wants to understand whether that is being done; it wants to be sure that that has been looked at, particularly around any alcoves that might be created where the line ascends or descends. Local government wants to be sure that local schools along the line have been consulted and whether there has been a conversation with them about the open space that could potentially affect the schools. It wants to know if the police have been consulted regarding the design, and whether there is any antisocial behaviour that could be mitigated through the design. It wants to understand the net increase in car parking spaces and more detail around car parking. It wants to understand what graffiti-prevention techniques have been proposed as part of the proposal. It wants to know how much funding there will be for open space improvements under the line. This is all in the context of local governments facing significant cuts to their budget. The City of Greater Dandenong is looking at a $3 million shortfall in anticipated funding next year. Someone is going to have to carry the can for that, and local government, rightly, is very concerned that it will be left carrying the can and will not have the ability to do so.

Local government is interested to learn what will be the increased ongoing maintenance cost of new community facilities and open space under the line. It is lovely to entertain the thought of new community facilities, and certainly communities on the Cranbourne and Pakenham lines are screaming for new infrastructure, but with that new infrastructure, of course, comes maintenance costs into the future, so it is important to have that conversation.

There has been no clarity for local government around how the future third and fourth lines are to be catered for and how that integrates with the solution chosen for Springvale station. There is reference to the cost-benefit analysis of underground versus elevated rail solutions. Council is rightly questioning whether diesel trains impact on the solution choice and how. In fact that was a conversation that also came up as part of the Noble Park information session that I attended.

There is a lot of concern about local traffic and traffic congestion and how that will work, and in particular there has been the suggestion that more space for pedestrians will be provided as part of the project. There are concerns around the bus interchange and the design for that. With the tension between car parking and bus interchanges, will that in fact eat into the open space that is being entertained as part of this proposal? What is the plan in relation to taxis and how they will interact with the station? What is the impact of future residential apartment developments along elevated rail? Will greater heights be encouraged or discouraged, or will those matters be left in the hands of the local planning authority, which is local government?

Local government questions the data that supports very low sound barriers to reduce the noise. They want to understand the evidence in relation to that, and they want to know why the barriers are not higher, like you would see along freeway projects. These are reasonable questions for local government to ask, and at this point it actually does not have the answers to them. I would have thought that at this point local government would be across all of those things, and that there would have been a longstanding consultative process with local government as the local authority in the area.

Local government is concerned about colours, materials and geometric designs. It wants to understand whether any of the visual elements presented reflect the final visual treatment, because at the moment what we are seeing in those glossy computer graphics is just straight-out concrete. Local government really does have concerns about the visual amenity of the design. There is no clarity at all around whether there will be better treatment in relation to that straight-out concrete design. Local government is concerned about the mock-ups that are on display at the moment — —

The PRESIDENT — Order! Ms Dunn will have the call on the resumption of this debate.

Business interrupted pursuant to sessional orders.

Debate resumed.

Ms DUNN (Eastern Metropolitan) — To pick up where I left off, I was talking about a range of concerns that have been brought to my attention from local government given the prospect of elevated rail through their municipalities. I will continue down that path. There was concern from local government around the computer-generated shots of community; there were many significant and critical areas of their communities that were not part of the montages available, and available to date.

In a particular instance cited to me on what is a significant road in the Noble Park area, that being Chandler Road, there was only a mock-up of one direction along Chandler Road, which might have been perhaps the most sympathetic. The community and council of course want to see the whole picture, the entire perspective, in relation to what elevated rail and Chandler Road may look like, and I think it is reasonable for local government to have a 360-degree view of what this project will look like in its municipality.

Local government is concerned about the next round of consultations. It will highlight what can be changed and what cannot be changed. That is an important question to ask because it gets back to the whole nub of what is genuine community consultation. Is there in fact an ability for the community to influence outcomes and, with that, for the council to influence outcomes — or are they just going to be told, ‘This is what’s happening and this is what we’re going to do’? So it is a genuine question that it has on its mind.

Local government is concerned about the modelling and the impact on shopping strip centres, particularly if there are obstructions in relation to the elevated rail structure. How do embankments, concrete pylons and elevated structures integrate with shopping strips? There is no detail being given to councils on how that would work and what it would look like, and it goes back to the core issue — that the detail of what is an incredibly complex project that is being entertained is simply not available for people to really interrogate and understand what is being proposed.

Local government also has concerns around what vegetation will be removed — particularly trees, whether they be exotic trees or native trees — for the elevated rail itself but also in relation to the addition of the commuter parking. Will we see vegetation losses in relation to that as well? As I have articulated from the Noble Park information sessions, that detail — that vegetation and landscape plan — is simply not available to the community or to local government, so rightly they are concerned about that.

It was extraordinary, I guess, to listen to some elements of Mr Davis’s contribution in relation to this — I believe he talked about elevated rail as being cheap, ugly and noisy — because when Mr Davis was in government it produced the Rowville rail reports and in fact recommended elevated rail as part of that project and seemed quite keen on elevated rail at that time.

Mr Dalidakis — Seventeen metres high.

Ms DUNN — I do believe in some places, picking up the interjection, 17 metres was contemplated as part of the Rowville elevated rail proposal. I think the community of Rowville would be very happy to have a rail line, because it has waited since 1969. It is extraordinary to hear that it has turned into something cheap, ugly and noisy, when in fact it was a legitimate proposal in relation to Rowville rail under the previous government.

My colleague Ms Hartland, who sat through some of the debate — —

Mr Dalidakis interjected.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Mr Ramsay) — Order! I ask Mr Dalidakis to let Ms Dunn finish her contribution — probably not before lunch, I suspect — or at least allow her to be heard. Ms Dunn, to continue.

Ms DUNN — Thank you, Acting President, and I am on the downhill run. I know that the lunch bell is nearing. In relation to Ms Hartland — right on the bell! — she sat through some of the debate this morning and found the contributions of Mr Davis amazing and hypocritical, because what Mr Davis is highlighting as a flawed process in relation to this proposal for elevated rail is exactly the same process the former government followed in relation to the regional rail link and particularly how that government of the day treated the residents of West Footscray, Deer Park and Sunshine.

Sitting suspended 1.00 p.m. until 2.04 p.m.

Ms DUNN — Resuming where I left off in part 2 of my contribution, it was in relation to the former government and Rowville rail. At the time the report that was handed down recommended an elevated rail made of precast concrete in a viaduct for many sections of the line. So it is interesting to see this change of heart from the opposition in relation to elevated rail generally — that it is now referring to as cheap, ugly and noisy. It seems it would have been fit for the people of Rowville. However, sadly for the people of Rowville their aspiration for a rail line has not been met. It continues to be infrastructure that is very much needed but still, unfortunately, not committed to.

In terms of Mr Davis’s motion and what he suggests, the Greens are most concerned about the consultative process. We think it has been inadequate consultation. We are aware that this project, whatever the shape of it, needs to last for decades, so it is really important that we get the implementation right, because it could create other issues for the community into the future. The Greens will be fighting for proper consultation so the best outcome can be negotiated for public transport users and the local communities. We understand that communities are up in arms. They have not been properly consulted, and from all that we have heard and all of the conversations we have had we can see that they have not been properly consulted. I am not going to go back to what proper consultation means; I think I probably covered off on that in the initial comments of my contribution.

Both the community and councils are angry, and quite frankly that is what happens when you do not properly consult with communities. When you treat communities with contempt this is the sort of response you get. It is contemptuous to not provide them with the full raft of information they need to properly understand such a major project as elevated rail. We are concerned that this is a tick-the-box exercise. It is not a proper consultative process. For that reason we will not be opposing this motion of Mr Davis, and we hope that lessons are learnt and that we start to see proper consultation in relation to this so people can make decisions based on real evidence in front of them.

If you live in the affected area, Nina Springle MP wants to hear whether or not you were consulted. Click here to go to her page.