Northern Sewerage Project: Bell Street land

I raise a matter for the attention of the Minister for Water. The action I seek is that the minister alert the new Melbourne Water managing director of Melbourne Water’s responsibility to honour its commitment post the completion of the Northern Sewerage Project to restore the local amenity of the mine sites that were used for the Northern Sewerage Project tunnelling. I want to thank the Minister for Water for giving me, along with the managing director and the chair of the board of Melbourne Water, a good hearing on this matter when I went to the closing of the Northern Sewerage Project in Newlands Road. The facts I want to put before this house may not be fully known to the managing director of Melbourne Water, as he inherited a project that began long before his appointment. The fact is that there was a very family-oriented site which became a mine site. It was called Brearley Reserve, where houses back on to Bell Street.

Melbourne Water, along with Yarra Valley Water, has a proud record in having delivered the Northern Sewerage Project, but there has been a vast contrast between how Yarra Valley Water has acted and how Melbourne Water has acted. Yarra Valley Water has acted with community engagement and consultation as part of its delivery of its section of the project. In contrast, Melbourne Water had a view, largely generated by a rather senior person there, of stakeholder management which resulted in many errors in its dealings with the community and many oversights. I and the Moreland council have had to become active in ensuring that people’s rights are protected.

We have a nickname for one of Melbourne Water’s leading lights of the Northern Sewerage Project. We call him ‘the colonialist’. His attitude is: ‘This is land that Melbourne Water and I can conquer’, and his attitude with many residents when he goes in to conquer a local area is to throw them some beads, a tomahawk, a saw or the equivalent and then forget the commitments that have been made.

Melbourne Water undertook to restore the Bell Street area to its pre-Northern Sewerage Project condition. It undertook to consult with the community prior to the sale of land, and it has failed.