Wednesday the 16th of October 2024
Victorian Legislative Council
Rachel Payne, member for South-East Melbourne Metropolitan, spoke in support of a community petition to quash the proposed development of a freight terminal in Little River’s ‘green wedge’ grasslands.
The Little River community passionately spoke out against the proposed terminal, bolstered by Rachel’s Legalise Cannabis colleague David Ettershank, leading to a positive outcome for the Little River community and its delicate ecosystem.
RACHEL PAYNE, Member for South-Eastern Metropolitan Melbourne: I rise to make a contribution to this petition sponsored by my colleague David Ettershank. Firstly, I would like to thank the almost 5000 Victorians who signed this petition and acknowledge the extraordinary effort of the Little River Action Group. As a direct result of your advocacy, Pacific National have decided not to proceed with the Little River logistics precinct project. The way that your community came together to protest, to form an action group and to spread your story across Victoria was so impressive. It was a testament to how seriously you understood the harms of this proposed development on your community. I would also like to congratulate my colleague David Ettershank and his team on their involvement with this incredibly successful campaign. As both your colleague and your neighbour here in Parliament, I got to see and hear about your advocacy right from the start. Your passion was clear, as was your determination to elevate the voices of the Little River community. Thanks to your work and that of the local community, we have prevented 75 football fields of destruction. We have stopped traffic, noise and light pollution, and we have stopped the threat to critically endangered wildlife and rare grasslands. But it is regrettable that we are even here and getting to that point. As the president of the Little River Action Group aptly pointed out:
It makes no sense that residential development is banned on the green wedge, but they are proposing an industrial freight monolith in … a fragile and threatened ecosystem.
These wedges were put aside for a reason: to keep the city’s air clean and buffer western Victoria’s farmland from contaminants. These wedges are for the health and wellbeing of all Victorians. With this in mind, the announcement that the Little River logistics precinct project will not proceed is a welcome one, but as my colleague David Ettershank noted, we have won the battle but not the war. As it stands, this land will be land banked indefinitely until Pacific National decides on a future development, so we are stuck here in a limbo. There is a real risk that the same plans for development emerge over time, or perhaps there will be plans for an entirely new industrial development. Again, we do not believe this will be appropriate for Little River. As my colleague has highlighted, this green wedge is a sensitive environmental site, and any development would threaten critically endangered native animals and could destroy rare grasslands.
There is unanimous support from the federal and state governments to preserve these grasslands, but support is one thing, action is another. This environment must be protected through land acquisition, something this government says it is doing but which is a process that is incredibly slow. There is a need for a network of conservation reserve areas and management programs. We call on this government to act on this need before we lose any more of our irreplaceable native environments. This is the only way we can prevent a Little River 2.0.
I would like to conclude by again thanking the people of Little River and all those across Victoria who made their voices heard and prevented this development. When a community act, they can make change.