THE Save Williamstown group has accused Planning Minister Matthew Guy of withholding a report for 18 months because he knew its contents would stymie Liberal heavyweight Ron Walker’s residential development at Williamstown.
Mr Guy last week rejected a recommendation in the Ports and Environs advisory committee report to impose a ports environs overlay (PEO) over the Port Phillip Woollen Mill site.
Evolve Development, half owned by MrWalker, is part of a company planning to build more than 400 dwellings including four towers at the site, which is near Mobil’s fuel tank farm.
Mobil supplies about half of Victoria’s fuel.
Last year, Mr Guy rejected another advisory committee’s recommendation to cap building heights on the entire mill site.
State Williamstown MP Wade Noonan criticised Mr Guy’s rejection of the Ports advisory committee’s recommendation to put a PEO over the whole mill site.
“They’re saying that there should be a more cautious approach taken in relation to simple things like how do you evacuate more than 1000 people, potentially, from a series of towers,” Mr Noonan said. “It doesn’t make any sense to me to put the biggest, most highly intensive development within an area that this Ports and Environs advisory committee report is now saying you should not do.”
Save Williamstown spokesman Godfrey Moase said every day the report’s recommendations weren’t implemented was another day the community remained at risk. “Apparently the operations of the Point Gellibrand major hazard facility don’t deserve to be taken into account in the decision-making process for a major development in Williamstown,” he said.
“Never before have I seen a state government actually put the lives of residents at risk by ignoring the advice of its own experts so that a handful of rich men can make additional profits.
“The level of disregard for the safety of our community the minister has displayed is personally upsetting.”
Evolve managing director Ashley Williams dismissed Mr Moase’s comments as nonsense.
He said Mr Guy had been forced to choose between two different recommendations for the site and had imposed a design and development overlay (DDO), which imposed “far more rigid and demanding controls than proposed under the ports environs overlay”.
“[Mr Guy] quite clearly says … ‘I’ve acted on the advice of another advisory committee and put in place far more stringent requirements in a DDO.’
“The controls we’ve got on the site are quite cumbersome and respond to the extensive submissions made to both advisory committees.
“This is just more misleading anti-development propaganda from Save Williamstown.
“I would ask Godfrey, if it is so dangerous, why would all the existing residents be happily living there?”
Mr Guy’s spokeswoman, Emily Broadbent, said the government had placed controls on the mill site which were much stricter than the overlay proposed by the Ports advisory committee.
She said this was simply desperation politics by Labor, which had allowed a residential proposal to be submitted on the site while in government.
“The Labor Party can’t play innocent on the woollen mills issue given that they rezoned the site without any community consultation.”
