Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last Friday I had the opportunity in my electorate to meet with members of the Bulleen traders association. The purpose of this meeting was to discuss the impact on the traders of the development of the North East Link. Both the traders and I support the building of the North East Link, but what they, and I in turn, are concerned about is the devastating impact the current plans would have on the traders in Bulleen. Some hundreds of businesses and, indeed, more than 1,000 jobs would be affected under the current plans, which are for a vast, spaghetti-type interchange replacing the business community hub in Bulleen in my electorate. What the traders would like to see is a redrawing of those plans to a scale which would allow the North East Link to be constructed and at the same time preserve as many of those businesses as possible. For example, something that would preserve one-third of the businesses is moving the site of the drilling equipment, and the soil that comes out of the tunnel before it's moved elsewhere, to land north of the river rather than in Bulleen, where the business traders are. Some of the Defence land at Simpson barracks is a possibility for that purpose. But, one way or another, something must be done to save these traders and their businesses in Bulleen.