I grieve for the members of my community if the Liberals ever got their wish to scrap the Suburban Rail Loop (SRL). Since the beginning of modern-day Melbourne our city has grown around a core city centre, radiating outwards. It has shaped so much of the contemporary Melbourne we know, from our radial transport network to the location of workplaces and affordability of housing. Until now, the expansion has continued, pushing further into what was once agricultural land. By 2050 Melbourne will have a population of 9 million, the current population of London. It is crucial that we make investments into public transport infrastructure and community amenity now so we can best serve Melburnians down the track.
I grieve a scenario where the Liberals hold power and gut the pipeline of infrastructure projects underway to prepare for a growing Melbourne, including the Suburban Rail Loop. Reflecting on the infrastructure that has made Melbourne the livable city that it is, projects like the city loop or the Eastern Freeway took years to build, but I cannot imagine a livable or functional Melbourne without them. No, they were not cheap at the time and the governments that commenced planning and early works were not the governments that cut the ribbon. But what the people of the Glen Waverley electorate want is a government that is deeply committed to a better Victoria for the long term, not a government that plays short-term political games.
People want foresight and they want a gutsy transport and planning policy, and we are looking forward to 2050. The Andrews Labor government is proud of delivering the Suburban Rail Loop, the most important infrastructure project in Victorian history. The Suburban Rail Loop will recalibrate the way our city continues to grow and reshape our public transport network for generations to come. The orbital 90-kilometre twin rail line will connect every major suburban and regional rail line in Victoria, allowing people to travel around the city and between the other rail lines rather than having to travel into the CBD, interchanging and then heading out again. It is a game changer for all of Victoria.
I grieve a Melbourne where the Liberals get their way and our rail network becomes stuck in time. The SRL will slash travel times from Glen Waverley to Melbourne’s education, health and employment centres and only the Andrews Labor government is making it happen. A trip from Glen Waverley to Monash University will be slashed from 20 minutes to 3 minutes. Similarly, a trip from Glen Waverley to Deakin Burwood in your electorate, Deputy Speaker, will be cut from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. Astonishingly, travel from Glen Waverley to Box Hill will be sliced from 50 minutes to less than 10 minutes and from Glen Waverley to Southland it will take the journey time from 70 minutes down to 15 minutes. Once completed, 7000 people will use Glen Waverley SRL station every single day.
I grieve for those Victorians who, if the Liberals had their way, would be stuck in traffic and spending less time doing the things that matter. Not only will it completely change how we get around, it will change the areas at each SRL station for the better, creating strong communities with quality open space, amenities, housing options and employment choices. It is terrific news for my community in Glen Waverley and indeed all of the SRL station precincts across the city. I am very happy to be holding another Glen Waverley public reference group meeting tomorrow – not on Friday, tomorrow. I thank you, Deputy Speaker, for the times that you were holding those meetings as the member for Mount Waverley in the 59th Parliament. I would like to give a shout-out to the team that are on that precinct reference group: John Taylor from the Waverley RSL; Greg Male and David Schulz, great community representatives for the Glen Waverley district; the management team at Ikon; Joanne Wastle of the Glen Waverley Secondary College; Sarah Maguire and Mitchell Zadow from the Glen Waverley Traders Association; and Joseph Bailouni from Campbell Place.
It is all at risk, with the Liberals committed to tearing it all up. I grieve for the Victorian Liberal party and their short-sightedness. They do not just want to destroy the plans for the critical rail infrastructure, but also world-class communities that the SRL will create in my electorate and across Melbourne. In Glen Waverley the project is set to reshape our community for the better, and the early stages of this structure and precinct planning are underway. In fact just yesterday a discussion paper was released for community feedback, and it is full of details about what we have heard so far from locals in Glen Waverley. People want more shops, more great restaurants, more community facilities and more civic spaces for all to enjoy. There is one thing they certainly do not want, and that is for the Liberals to pull the pin on a game-changing project, because for my community that will not only mean worse transport options and fewer amenities and community services but also an absolute catastrophe for improved housing options and affordability.
We have heard from the community about the desire for more affordable and diverse housing options close to the centre of Glen Waverley. It is what the Suburban Rail Loop will deliver, and it is what the Victorian Liberals have tried at every step of the way to tear down. They threw the kitchen sink at it last year, but the good people of Glen Waverley were able to see through it and see the benefits the SRL will bring to our community. Because they did not just back it resoundingly in 2018; come 2022 community support was even stronger, and the results in the Glen Waverley district are a case in point.
The Andrews Labor government is making the Suburban Rail Loop a reality. There has been a power of work underway, including the development of a full business case and a detailed environment effects statement and continued work on refining designs. With construction now underway, the rubber has truly hit the road. The SRL will be delivered in stages, the first of which will be SRL East, from Cheltenham to Box Hill. Works are currently focused on preparing the station sites along the corridor at Southland, Clayton, Monash University, Glen Waverley, Deakin Burwood and Box Hill. By 2026 tunnel-boring machines will be in the ground, and trains will be taking passengers from 2035. We are getting on and getting it done. SRL East alone will create 8000 quality construction jobs for Victorians, with many thousands more jobs supported around the station precincts once complete, because these precincts will be reinvigorated as places for Victorians to live, study and work.
I grieve the consequences of the Victorian Liberals’ delusions of cancelling this project. In the coming months the Andrews Labor government will begin detailed planning on the Glen Waverley precinct to create a world-class community. The focus is on delivering what our community wants most: quality and diverse housing options, more great dining and shopping precincts, better connectivity to existing public transport, lush, open green spaces and terrific amenity. I encourage all in the Glen Waverley district to contribute to this process through the Engage Victoria website and the range of in-person events being hosted in our community. The SRL is more than just an infrastructure project. It is a community amenity project, a housing project, and we are getting it done. The SRL is going to transform Melbourne for generations to come, with slashed travel times and improved community amenity. Now is the time to make the most of the SRL and all the benefits it will bring to our local residents, to our great Glen Waverley traders and to all who call our community home.
I equally grieve for the state of the Greens political party if they got their hands on the levers, because if their actions in blocking transport and housing progress is anything to go by, we would be in for a hellstorm. The thing about the Greens political party which is so clear is the complete disconnect between their rhetoric and reality. Whether it be in planning policy, housing policy or transport policy, I grieve for the hypocrisy.
Deputy Speaker, in my electorate of Glen Waverley we are lucky to have the terrific route 75 tram. This important transport connection stretches from the Vermont South shops along Burwood Highway to Deakin Uni, in your electorate, and then intersects with the Alamein line in Glen Iris and continues to Camberwell Junction, Hawthorn station and into Richmond, the CBD and Docklands. It is a critical link for my community to access services and amenities, and we are very lucky in the Glen Waverley electorate because every single tram stop in my electorate is an accessible tram stop, with raised platforms, tactile ground surface indicators, quality shelter, access ramps and wide platforms. It would be terrific if all the tram stops along route 75 were up to this standard, but I grieve that it is sadly not the case. Many passengers across the tram network do not have the same quality of public transport infrastructure, and not out of any lack of attention by this government but instead from the Greens political party’s influence over local councils, especially in inner Melbourne.
There are two key elements in the equation for an accessible tram network. The first is more low-floor trams and phasing out the older generations of trams, and the Andrews Labor government is proudly leading the way with the boldest tram rolling stock agenda in our country under the leadership of the Minister for Public Transport, the member for Niddrie. Take for example the E-class trams, which have become a feature of the streetscape – indeed out the very front of this building, turning from Spring Street into Bourke Street on the route 96. We have a hundred of these in our network, first ordered back in the Brumby days and then significantly expanded under the Andrews Labor government – made in Victoria by Victorians for Victorians. And that is not all: with the construction of the next generation trams set to get underway imminently, these hundred new trams will transform our network for the better and are the largest investment in locally made trams in Australia’s history. It is not just good news for Victorian manufacturing workers and public transport users, who will get to ride on these new trams. By introducing these new trams to the fleet, it will create a cascade of other low-floor rolling stock into the new routes and lead to the phase-out of the oldest, least reliable trams. This is terrific news for public transport accessibility and livability in our great state.
But there is a second important part of the accessibility equation that we need for accessible tram stops, and that is where I grieve. I grieve because this is where the Greens councils roll out their typical hypocrisy. They rave and rant about the importance of accessibility, and that is something I agree with wholeheartedly. But the problem is the action here, because instead of backing the Andrews government’s rollout of accessible tram stops, they throw the kitchen sink at stopping progress in its tracks. Whether it be in Fitzroy, in Pascoe Vale or in Brunswick, Greens have culled the Andrews government’s plans for accessible tram stops. It is shameful, but it is typical of the nimby Greens political party. I grieve because it is some of our most vulnerable people living with a disability and the elderly who suffer the most, all because of the hypocritical Greens political party, masquerading as activists, screaming and shouting while stamping out the light of positive change and progress.
I grieve also that this is the same Greens political party hypocrisy seeping into housing policy. Again they rant about the need for radical change, but their actions highlight all that is wrong with what they stand for, because instead of building social and affordable housing, the Greens political party spend all their time blocking and stopping social and affordable housing. The Andrews Labor government is proud to be delivering the Big Housing Build – the largest single investment into social and affordable housing in Victorian history. And it is not just talk, it is action. We are investing more than $5.3 billion to deliver 12,000 new dwellings across Victoria. It is truly a win-win: expanding social housing stock, supporting quality construction jobs and providing world-class 7-star sustainability rated homes for Victoria’s most vulnerable. The Big Housing Build is changing lives, because we know that we cannot properly support vulnerable Victorians without first ensuring that they have a stable place to call home.
It is why the Big Housing Build in Vermont in my electorate is so critical and close to my heart. Similarly, it is why the projects like the Markham estate in your electorate of Ashwood are so important, Deputy Speaker. But Markham is an excellent example of the Greens and their hypocrisy. I grieve because there was an alliance between the Greens and Liberals that voted in the upper house to stop the Markham estate. But the Andrews Labor government will not be stopped in delivering quality social housing in the east, because we build homes for vulnerable people in our community. The old, run-down site was home to 56 dwellings, but thanks to the Andrews government and in spite of the Greens and Liberal political parties’ ongoing opposition, the new Markham estate is the site of 178 beautiful homes. This only happened, though, because of the Labor government. It is exactly why electing a Labor government matters. If the Greens and Liberal parties had had their way, hundreds of Victorians would not be in their new homes in Ashburton at the Markham estate.
It was also terrific to attend the sod turning at the social housing construction site on High Street Road with you, Deputy Speaker, and the Minister for Housing. Although not in my electorate, the site is right on the border and will provide safe and affordable social housing for those in our area, predominately people aged over 55. This project will deliver 96 apartments, providing housing for up to 135 people. The project is also creating 450 jobs, which is great for Victorians and great for the local economy in Glen Waverley.
I grieve for what housing, planning and transport policy would become should the Liberals or Greens political parties have control of the levers of the state government, because the evidence is clear: they do not build, they do not create, they do not change. It is only the Labor governments that get things done and walk the talk. We do not scream through the megaphones of nimby process. We do not tear up the transport infrastructure projects Victorians need and vote for. Only the Andrews Labor government is doing what matters in Glen Waverley district and across our great state. I am proud every day in this place to be part of it.
