Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Port Phillip City Council is at it again. Not content with destroying Fitzroy Street, it has now turned its attention to Acland Street with another half-thought-out plan. The council is proposing to close off the Barkly Street end and remove parking spaces along this street. It is the council's belief that, by stopping cars and widening footpaths, there will be an influx of pedestrians. I am not against pedestrian malls but, as we have seen in Fitzroy Street, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Two years ago Yarra Trams, together with the council, ruined Fitzroy Street, virtually closing it for six months to elevate several hundred metres of track, which prevents people doing U-turns and leaves deserted parking off Fitzroy Street. A once vibrant and thriving strip of shops and cafes is now a ghost town during the day and a sleazy, sometimes dangerous dive at night. Wasting further hundreds of thousands of dollars, the council now is blocking traffic with the installation of ill-fated, narrow garden strips next to this elevated tram track.

Surely the last few years of the Port Phillip City Council have been the most profligate in local history, as many landmarks, like the local Point Ormond Beacon, lie ruined for months and recreational bike riders and pedestrians in Elwood are assaulted verbally, and sometimes physically, by martinets employed to supervise outside commercial events imposed on the foreshore and agreed to by the Port Phillip Council.

First, it is clear that the Port Phillip Council needs more time to listen to the voices of local business and traders along Acland Street. The Acland Street Village Business Association is against the total closure and has commissioned an alternative that will not cost jobs or business. The association president, Palma Smith, says the council proposal would grind access to a halt. I feel, given its failures to date, the Port Phillip City Council's doctrine should be 'do no harm'.

The second issue is the ad hoc nature, it appears, of council planning. A month or two ago, they floated the idea of the St Kilda Triangle space being used for the National Gallery of Victoria's third campus. This may be a good idea. I am always in favour of the local arts in our community, but these major plans for the triangle need to be incorporated in an overarching plan for the entire area instead of a patchwork of half-baked fixes that ruin the area, as they have in Fitzroy Street and prospectively in Acland Street.

Many will question whether this council is the worst ever in the history of the city since its forced amalgamation by the Kennett government. With the new system of three-by-three council wards that has been installed for the next election, we must see that the state government insists that, as in all other councils, postal voting is allowed, as barely 40 per cent of voters have elected some of the current councillors.