Thursday, 12 September 2024

 Sam HIBBINS (Prahran) (18:23): (847) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Planning, and the action I seek is for the minister to finally lift the Punt Road public acquisition overlay. This overlay on Punt Road has been in place for 70 years, and I recently joined residents to commiserate this embarrassing milestone put in place when there was a now discredited vision for freeways cutting through the inner city. It has been retained by successive governments. They have never had any plan to use it. It was previously subject to a planning panel process, which did recommend to partially remove it, but the government ultimately opted to retain it in full even though its own advisory panel said that all this would achieve would be more traffic and further disruptions to residents living in the area. Over 140 properties are impacted, and the people who are living with this are forced to live in limbo on what could happen to their homes. Residents have had enough of the uncertainty that the overlay has caused.

Critically, as was outlined in the review process, the overlay is a barrier to development along this strip of land. At a time of a housing crisis why is the government keeping up a barrier to more homes being built in what is a residential growth zone? In addition to that, the government owns 22 properties along the alignment, many of which are either vacant or underutilised, which presents a much-needed opportunity to get more public and genuinely affordable housing built in our community. The government is constantly talking about housing supply. If that is the case, it is absolutely not acceptable to have an overlay sitting there for 70 years, leaving residents in limbo and preventing much-needed housing being built. I urge the government: remove the overlay, give residents certainty and allow for more housing to be built in our community.