VICTORIAN Planning Minister Matthew Guy has rejected suggestions that secret dinners with developers influenced his decision to fast-track a 1400-dwelling Footscray project.
A Fairfax Media investigation last week revealed Mr Guy helped approve applications by Melbourne property developers, who had paid $10,000 to attend the secret dinners, including a ‘mini-suburb’ touted for the Kinnears rope factory site on Ballarat Road.
Mr Guy was reported to have appeared at the dinners in 2011 and last year despite then-Premier Ted Baillieu’s ban on ministers attending fund-raising events.
Chinese firm AXF bought the Kinnears site in 2007 and was represented at the dinners by an executive.
Mr Guy used his powers to help expedite the rezoning of the Kinnears site, at the request of Maribyrnong Council. The council backs the project, which could feature high-rise apartments with up to 1400 units, a 60-room residential hotel, offices, shops, a medical centre, an early childhood facility, community space and up to 1900 car spaces.
Detractors have criticised the project over concerns with building height, amenity impacts, heritage, transport and traffic.
Shadow planning minister Brian Tees called on Mr Guy to respond to the allegations in Parliament last week. “At these dinners did the developers discuss their individual-specific projects with him while his member of staff, Mr Daniel Parsons, took notes?”
Mr Guy said: “The Department of Planning and Community Development recommended at the same time — in September 2011, when the authorisation to exhibit a planning amendment overlay, amendment C93, commenced — that in fact the [Kinnears] site be rezoned from business 3 to a mixed-use zone, as the council’s authorisation request had foreshadowed,” he said.
Mr Guy said the government was going along with the intention of the then Labor-controlled Maribyrnong Council.
