Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

I invite the member for Banks to come and visit; he could add to the complexion and then we might actually get a look in as a great place to live! But that is a discussion for another day. But what Bernard Salt talks about are these urban-planning strategies and how they have popped up right across the capital cities of Australia. It started in our great city, Melbourne, with the Melbourne 2030 plan released in October 2002. Lots has been said about Melbourne 2030 and imposition of the urban growth boundary, how it was arrived at and what it actually means, but one of the things that Mr Salt points out is that the factual foundation on which it was determined has already been blown out of the water. In the article, he points out:

… Melbourne 2030 is designed to contain the city’s expansion via an urban growth boundary … This boundary was set when it was thought that Melbourne might add 831,000 residents between 2006 and 2031.

He then says:

But now the ABS has weighed in with a very different outlook: it says Melbourne will add 1.611 million over this time frame.

That is a difference of over three-quarters of a million people. That is more than a statistical blip. That involves a little bit more than putting another floor on some high-rise development to accommodate just a few extra households. That is more than half a million extra households that now need to be accommodated. It points to a gross underestimate of the planning foundation on which the growth boundary was developed.

Mr Salt identifies some strategic responses and introduces the concept of Melbourne as a flower. With Victoria the garden state, I can live with Melbourne as a flower, but he goes further, talking about the concept of the petals of that flower. There would be a hub, a high-order functional city centre, in Melbourne and then petals coming out from that to follow the transportation corridors.

I would point out that in the great area of Dunkley there is a transportation corridor called the Frankston rail line—it has been there since long before I was around—and people used to catch it to go on their holidays. Now they catch it to get somewhere near the edge of the urban sprawl and then wrestle for a car park and then realise that, in cities where there is a rail network and a key focal point, the smart thing to do is to actually take the rail line to a couple of stations past the main focal point. That is where the land is cheaper. That is where you can build intermodal systems, a park-and-ride capability and proper car parking so that you do not have to arm-wrestle TAFE students for a space, hope the local footy club does not give you a hard time for parking there or have to park at the Seaford RSL, where the car park desperately needs resealing, because you think you can sneak in there although it is actually for the RSL members.

The smart thing to do is to recognise that Frankston is an urban centre of some significance—I think, appropriately, it needs to be seen as being more significant—and then extend the rail line out further and put these intermodal connections in beyond the focal point of the rail line. You can then build fast rail to the city, have a metro flyer and stop at only one or two places, turning the hour train ride from Frankston into a much shorter trip. You can get to the city more quickly from Ballarat; you can get to the city more quickly from Geelong—and we are in the city; we are in the metropolis.

Some forward thinking is what Bernard Salt is saying is needed. I agree with his concept of the petals, but it needs to go further and pick up some of the ‘city of cities’ flavour that you see in Sydney, where a place like Frankston is identified as a city—as fully functioning, fully self-contained and able to meet all people’s employment, education, social and cultural ambitions—and thus limit the need to travel as often to the ‘high-order functionality of the city centre’, as Bernard Salt describes it. That is a vision where transport is a key part of the planning. That is where AusLink then says, ‘There are some connections here we can play a role in.’ That is where, with the Frankston bypass, without tolls, you would factor in a park-and-ride location where you can car pool or at least interconnect with the rail transport further into the city. That is strategic planning for transport. (Time expired)

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