Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My electorate of Aston in outer eastern Melbourne is a beautiful electorate, made up of suburban family homes and leafy streets. It is the nature of the suburbs which makes it so attractive for families. But the nature of the community is under threat by medium- and sometimes even high-density housing that is getting approval across the Knox community. It is occurring in places like Boronia, Rowville, Knoxfield and other suburbs in my electorate. I do not believe that this is the right way to go. The Knox council is primarily responsible for this and I implore them to preserve the family nature of our suburbs and not to ruin Knox from being a place where families want to reside. But the federal government also has a role in ensuring that we have infrastructure which matches our population growth. I have expressed my concerns in this place before that our population has been growing too fast and our infrastructure has not been keeping up. I believe we need to slow down our population growth until there is infrastructure in place, otherwise we will have a larger economy but a poorer quality of living.