The Greens today unveiled their transport plans for the City.

Click the above link for The Greens’ complete transport vision for Melbourne City Council.

As Bianca Hall reports in today’s Melbourne Times,

A GREENS lord mayor would lobby for public transport to run 24 hours a day and would curb the role cars play in the CBD.

Lord mayor candidate Adam Bandt said his party’s inner-city transport platform … would transform the CBD into a pedestrian and cyclist-friendly zone.

Key to The Greens’ transport vision for the City are:

• Making the tourist bus cost-neutral;
• Introducing a 30km/h throughout Council-controlled CBD roads, and on VicRoads-controlled roads after 8pm;
• Relocating tourist buses from Swanston St to Federation Square;
• Funding safe, well-lit taxi ranks in the city;
• Creating a pedestrian mall on Elizabeth St between Flinders Lane and Flinders Street;
• Removing the unacceptably dangerous Craigieburn line / Macauley Rd level crossing;
• Reinstating Swanston Walk;
• Abolishing the mayoral car and reducing the fuel consumption of the council car fleet;
• Reinstating the Westgate Bike Punt;
• Fast-tracking key commuter bicycle paths, and creating safer bicycle lanes;
• Opposing further reduction of CBD tram stops;
• Increasing the frequency of NightRider services to every 20 minutes; and
• Finally building the bus terminal on Lonsdale St, between King and Spencer Streets.

For the full Transport Policy, click here for the html format or here for the pdf format.

CLICK TO PLAY

The Victorian Greens have released a discussion paper and website proposing a major upgrade of Melbourne’s public transport system. The $14 billion blueprint allows Melburnians to go anywhere by public transport with high-frequency train, tram and bus services covering 101 major centres. This plan has huge benefits for the residents and businesses of Melbourne.

Trains

The Greens are proposing to create an inner city ‘metro’ that would allow faster transport within the near city areas, not just to the CBD grid. New stations will be available to city commuters in Fitzroy, Carlton, Parkville, Southbank and St Kilda Rd. These serve the fastest growing parts of the inner city, not just the CBD grid.

The People Plan includes new train stations for Melbourne - Parkville, Carlton, Exhibition, and Domain - and new services from Footscray to North Melbourne, extending the Upfield Line to Parkville, a new Doncaster to Parkville service, a service from Parkville to Melbourne Central, and a new service from South Yarra to Spencer St.

Trams

The Greens propose running most trams at five-minute frequency all day (7am to 7pm). It means people won’t be stranded or tempted to drive after a night out, shift workers can rely on public transport and weekend frequencies will often be just as good as on weekdays.

The People Plan includes new tram services from Docklands to Port Melbourne, Southbank to Moorabbin, Richmond to Southbank, North Melbourne to Richmond, North Melbourne to Brunswick, and Footscray to Docklands.

Buses

Melbourne needs a high frequency bus network to complete the provision of an integrated public transport network. The Greens are proposing to upgrade 448 km of bus routes to high frequency. These buses would run every 10 minutes from 6am to Midnight and every 20 minutes from Midnight to 6am, seven days a week. They would provide an additional 30.2 million km of bus service each year connecting train stations and Activity Centres.

Greens Deputy Lord Mayor Candidate Cr Kathleen Maltzahn writes:

Over five years ago, I stumbled across slavery in Brunswick St Fitzroy. It was shocking, but not surprising. It wasn’t the first time I’d found out about slavery in Melbourne’s inner city. It wouldn’t be the last.

What was shocking was how long it took for the federal government to respond. It took from the raid of the brothel in mid-2003 to a High Court decision that was handed down on August 28 this year for this case to be resolved.

In between, the five victims endured a committal hearing, two trials, an appeal to the Court of Appeals and the High Court case. Finally though, they have been told that yes, what they experienced was slavery, a crime against humanity.

So what does that have to do with local government?

Local government is often derisively described in terms of roads, rubbish and rates. Of course, it does those things, and during this climate change emergency, it can be argued that how well we deal with those three things will be determine how well we survive into this century. Transport is one of the biggest uses of energy, the culture of consumption fuels climate change, and where we find the money to deal with these challenges is an important question.

But local government is more than the three Rs. The Victorian Local Government Act 1989 tells us that:

The primary objective of a Council is to endeavour to achieve the best outcomes for the local community having regard to the long term and cumulative effects of decisions.

To do this, the Act says, councils ‘must have regard’ ‘to promote the social, economic and environmental viability and sustainability of the municipal district.’

Which means that social justice and human rights are very proper concerns of local government. For a party like The Greens, that has social justice as one of its four pillars, being involved in local government makes a lot of sense.

And for someone like me, who has fought against sexual slavery for many years, local government opens up whole new ways of doing something.

This week, at Yarra Council, we will vote on a motion I initiated to compel every brothel in Yarra to display a sign saying sexual slavery is a serious crime, explaining what this covers, and saying where women can get help.

Greens Councillor Fraser Brindley will initiate a similar motion at Melbourne.

This takes the landmark international High Court decision and translates it to the grassroots.

It will means trafficked women won’t have to hope that help will come to them - without leaving the brothel, they will know both that what is happening to them is a serious crime in Australia and that help is available.

I know from trafficked women I have worked with that this can make a huge difference - too many women just don’t know how to escape once they’ve been trafficked.

I believe state government should bring in a similar regulation to cover every brothel in the state, but I know this won’t happen overnight. At a local government level, in contrast, with the right people on council, change can happen quickly.

Getting the right people on council to make smart decisions about roads, rubbish and rates is crucial. But Greens councillors don’t stop there - we can take the great social issues of our time, and make a difference at the local level. With a Greens Lord Mayor and Deputy Lord Mayor, and Greens councillors on the City of Melbourne, we could put social justice at the heart of every Melbourne decision.

Links

• www.projectrespect.org.au
• For more information about and coverage of the High Court decision, go here.
• For more information about the role of local government, read the Australian Local Government Association’s “Declaration on the role of Australian local government” here.
• Recent media coverage:
  • The modern face of slavery, ABC Online, 28/7/08, Kathleen Maltzahn.
  • Sex slavery everywhere, writer warns, Canberra Times, 23/9/08
  • Melbourne brothel owner jailed…, Guardian.co.uk, 28/8/08
  • Sex slavery case Australian first, Lateline, 28/8/08 (video and transcript)

Swanston Street is an inconsistent mess. When it comes to traffic in Melbourne CBD, we need to move people without petrol. The time has come to actively prioritise bike, public transport and foot traffic. And that means limiting car and tourist bus access.

If elected in November, The Greens will do three things:

1. Immediately implement Associate Professor Nicholas Low’s recommendations for Swanston Street, namely:

i. Create a diagonal pedestrian crossing on the corner of Flinders & Swanston Sts.

ii. Give trams along Swanston Street priority at all intersections.

iii. Ban taxis and tour buses from Swanston Street, and restrict non-essential service vehicles to night and early morning. (Exceptions will be allowed for vehicle access for elderly or disabled passengers, and for taxis after dark.)

iv. Create designated bike lanes the length of Swanston Street.

2. Create 4 tourist bus pick up/ drop off points at north, south, east and west points within the city.

We’ve spoken to tourist bus drivers. In fact, we have one on our council ticket. They don’t want to be in the city centre jousting for space with pedestrians and bikes.*

3. Within the first 3 months of taking office, invite community consultation on broader reforms for traffic in the city centre, including:

i. Turning Swanston Street into a pedestrian centred space by replacing the bitumen with bluestone from La Trobe to Flinders Street, also thereby encouraging more street level retail/café style activity.

ii. Creating designated north-south (e.g. Elizabeth Street) and east-west (e.g. Little Lonsdale Street) car-free streets. Bikes would be encouraged to use these streets.

iii. Creating a car free, pedestrian and tram friendly open space on Elizabeth St between Flinders Lane and Flinders Street.

Current Greens councillor, Fraser Brindley, has been pushing for years for a new approach to Swanston Street, one that separates bikes from buses.

The Age calls it ‘an ambitious plan’. We just think it’s time to turn the CBD into one of the greenest and most attractive places in Melbourne. We’re basing our plan on expert recommendations, but if you think that the plan needs tweaks or modifications, we’ll listen: give us your comments and we’ll take them on board.

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Finally, our hearts go out to the cyclist who was tragically killed in Swanston Street recently. You won’t be forgotten.

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*Since the release of the above statement, Melbourne City Council has voted to approach Federation Square with a business plan to relocate large tourist buses to the Russell Street extension behind Federation Square. The Greens strongly support this move, and elected Greens will vote for a bus pick-up / drop-off zone on the SAFEST CBD street should any move to Federation Square be unsuccessful. For smaller tourist buses, The Greens remain committed to ensuring that the safest pick-up / drop-off arrangements are in place.

For The Greens’ full Transport Policy for Melbourne City Council, click here.

While John Brumby pursues polluting projects like a desalination plant, the real solutions are much simpler. We need to begin looking at all our local spaces - roofs, parks, streets - as potential water catchments. We must advance and fund new projects, like The Greens’ proposal to remove the depot from the Fitzroy Gardens and replace it with a wetland, using otherwise lost water to irrigate the gardens.

With Melbourne City Council’s administration putting together such important initiatives as the Total Watermark strategy, it is vital that the electors of Melbourne ensure that the next council contains the political will to fully fund Total Watermark’s goals and increase spending on water-saving measures for parks and on water-catchment infrastructure so that our city can become more self-reliant.

Water-saving measures at the users’ end are just as important as water-saving measures out in the major catchments. Shockingly, the Victorian state government still allows logging in major water-catchments. According to its own estimates,

20,000 ML of water would be saved every year if logging were phased out in the Thomson catchments by 2020. This is enough to supply 80,000 Melbourne homes for a year.*

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While environmentally conscious MPs in state and federal parliaments continue to push for the cessation of logging in catchments, the Melbourne Times this week referred to The Greens’ plans for water-saving measures in Melbourne city: plans which were prompted by dissatisfaction arising from Council’s recent under-spending. (Green’s water-saving measures, page 5, 10/9/08)

Please also share with us your thoughts on water use in the City of Melbourne in the comments section below.

Links

Total Watermark - Melbourne City Council’s water catchment strategy - here (.pdf, starts page 5)

Your Water Your Say - desalination plant protest group - here

* Australian Conservation Foundation - factsheet on logging in Victoria’s water-catchments - here (.pdf)

Above: protesters outside the State Government’s Transport Summit on Friday.

John Brumby is promising us a ‘30 year vision’ for transport for Victoria, due before the end of the year. It sounds like he is softening us up for the bad news: that some communities will have to wait 30 years for the public transport improvements they are crying out for right now, while a privatised road tunnel gets built in the meantime.

What we need is a much quicker, say ten year, plan that deliver on the promise his government made six years ago; a doubling of the proportion of trips (to 20% by 2020) that are taken on public transport. It requires a dramatic upgrade to the frequency and extent of trams, trains and buses.

Click ‘read more’ for the complete post.

When the 20%/2020 target was first proposed, government transport planners did a lot of work on how it would be achieved. Allowing for population and employment growth, doubling the proportion of trips on public transport means a two and a half times growth in the number of passengers carried. That means we need to replace and expand the existing tram, train and bus fleet. More frequent and faster running, late-night running, extending the network of routes and disability access to the vehicles were all looked at. Many detailed technical reports were prepared to back up the direction presented in Tram Plan, Train Plan and Bus Plan and the job was costed down to the vehicle, kilometre and hour of service.

Unfortunately, these documents were never endorsed, actioned or even officially released. All of the problems and opportunities with public transport that are so obvious now were anticipated then. Because those plans were designed to create such a big increase in patronage, it would have avoided the stresses and strains caused by the recent, dramatic growth in public transport usage, growth that they were warned about, growth that has now come in spite of the lack of action to expand public transport.

We have some well developed policies for the upcoming elections. But we’d love to hear from you: what matters to you? What would you like to see Council do? Or stop doing?

This is an open thread - leave a post on any topic you’d like. Click on the picture or on the ‘Add Comment’ link above.

Over to you.

Above: coloured cardboard and butchers paper aplenty at Bronwyn Pike’s electorate office, 27/8/08.

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What you didn’t know about the State Government’s Victorian Transport Plan:

- ‘Public’ consultation has already closed!
- $10bn East-West Road Tunnel to be automatically adopted by the plan.

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Melburnians woke yesterday morning to a curious piece in The Age, Tunnel critics shunned by Pike transport forum, by Clay Lucas.

CRITICS of a $9 billion road tunnel plan have been barred from a Government forum this afternoon to discuss transport plans for Melbourne …

Opponents of the proposed 18-kilometre tollway, which would run from Footscray to Clifton Hill, have been told they cannot attend today’s forum, being staged by the Education Minister and MP for Melbourne, Bronwyn Pike.

That the government might be fed up with anti-tunnel protests is not surprising. What was surprising was that a transport forum for the state seat of Melbourne was being held at all: transport experts and activists alike knew nothing of the meeting until Residents’ Groups received their invitations a week earlier.

What was even more surprising was the forum itself. A mere 20 people gathered at the invitation-only event, and quickly discovered that they were taking part in what would be the first and only consultation session for the whole of the Melbourne electorate for the development of the state government’s Victorian Transport Plan.

The two farcical hours that ensued could have been lifted straight from a script of The Hollowmen.

Click ‘read more’ for an insight into the meeting from one of the attendees, and discover why the $10bn East-West Road Tunnel will be automatically adopted by the Victorian Transport Plan, as well as the unique definition of ‘community consultation’, according to the State Government…

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The Victorian Transport Plan (VTP)

The Victorian Government is developing a ‘comprehensive transport plan’ for the state (yep, another one) to be launched in November. Consultation for the plan comes in the form of the 2,200 Eddington Report submissions, plus the feedback from eight ‘Transport Round Tables’ and smaller ‘Transport Forums’ conducted by local members, and a state-wide ‘Transport Summit’ (reference). The date for the event (Minister Pike: “what are we calling it again? A Convention?” Adviser: “um… it’s a Summit”. Cue Rob Sitch) to be announced - Minister Pike hinted that the event will take place on September 5th at the Telstra Dome.

So, unless you made a submission to the Eddington Report during its 15-week public consultation period, you won’t be having your say on the state-wide VTP. Unless you were one of the select few that received an invitation to a Transport Round Table or Transport Forum, of course. Eddington Review submission-writers are the lucky few!

Their contributions, though focusing on only one part of the state’s transport network, will be much more valuable than anything taken from the Transport Round Tables or Forums, if Wednesday’s meeting at Minister Pike’s office was anything to go by.

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Melbourne Transport Forum 27/8 - Minister Bronwyn Pike’s electorate office, North Melbourne

With butchers paper and coloured cardboard to spare, 20 invitees, with not one transport expert or trader present, sat down as representatives of the communities within the electorate of Melbourne. Community groups were refused invitations, as were individual members of the public.

But no matter, “Ms Pike said she had invited a cross-section of the community to the forum.”

After some brief introductions, the afternoon’s business consisted of three activities, where attendees split into working groups. The first session required groups to come up with one ‘big question’ for the minister to answer about the Transport Plan. The second session required groups to come up with what they thought were the ‘five biggest transport problems that Melbourne is facing’ (with different coloured cardboard for each). The final session required groups to come up with solutions to the five biggest problem areas as determined by the meeting facilitator (after the coloured cardboard pieces were collected and bundled). After each session, groups reported back to the facilitator and brief questions were asked.

Just what other attendees thought of the process I can’t be sure of, but it would hardly be shocking to suggest that the vast majority of attendees, sitting councillors and a former acting CEO of Melbourne City Council included, found the entire process juvenile in the extreme.

The farcical nature of the meeting really kicked in at 6.15pm - the close of the ’solutions’ workshop, which had begun at 6.02pm. That’s thirteen minutes!

Thirteen was the grand total number of minutes of direct community consultation towards solutions for Victorias transport problems for the electorate of Melbourne.

For those amongst us who hadn’t quite figured out what was going on by then, it quickly became clear: why would you call a ‘community consultation’ Transport Forum meeting at the last minute, if it was only ever going to be a half-hearted attempt to appease Residents’ Groups and contain only 13 minutes of time devoted to seeking solutions to transport problems? Simple! Because then you can say that the community has been consulted! It doesn’t matter that there was nothing of substance: technically, consultation had taken place.

And it gets even better than that: the workshops were so shallow and short, with such vague conclusions, that the Government is free to pick its own narrative and make its own claims of what the results of the meetings were without being in danger of being, well, wrong. Our meeting apparently picked ‘Climate Change’, ‘Freight’, ‘Public Transport’, ‘Population’ and ‘Liveability’ as the five problem areas, before diving into 13 minutes to find solutions to all five. But ‘liveability’ was the facilitator’s word, and didn’t originate within the group of invitees. Is it too cynical to bet that ‘liveability’ is going to become the binding buzz word for the November release of the plan? Watch this space!

The interesting question now is: how long will it be before Bronwyn Pike tells a reporter that her Transport Forum, complete with 13 minutes of in-depth solution-finding, is proof that she’s consulted her community?

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What part will Eddington play in the VTP?

The words Minister Pike used to describe the way the VTP was being formed were similar to recent rhetoric from the Premier: the Eddington Report will be a starting point for the development of the plan, and its independence and extensive public consultation necessarily means that it will be an important and core part of any plan.

That the minister would use this same language with meeting guests, given the political climate of her own electorate and its resoundingly anti-Eddington sentiment, was a slight surprise. When pressed further and asked “does this mean that the East-West road tunnel will automatically form part of the Victorian Transport Plan”, the minister understandably wouldn’t give an answer in the affirmative, but her answer, which reiterated that Eddington made many recommendations and that the plan would be a state-wide plan and so on, did not satisfactorily deny that the tunnel would be automatically adopted by the VTP either.

Given the half-hearted nature of the regional Transport Round Tables and localised Transport Forums, compared with the expensive and extensive Eddington Report, one would have to strongly suspect that the state-wide Transport Round Tables and Forums were devised to show that ‘further consultation’ had been undertaken, but that the East-West road tunnel will still be ‘necessary’.

The Footscray Round Table meeting was staunchly pro-freeways, with just a few known tunnel opponents being invited. It might end up being that the Melbourne Transport Forum, and possibly also the Moreland/Yarra Transport Forum will be the only meetings with vague ‘no freeways please’ outcomes. And that’s despite anti-tunnel community groups being barred from Minister Pike’s meeting.

It is likely then that the minister is gradually preparing herself for the November unveiling (before or after the state-wide municipal elections we wonder!) of the Victorian Transport Plan, complete with a tolled freeway road tunnel underneath her electorate.

Not the most comfortable position to be in, certainly, but if the minister wants to finally take a stand and join with the resounding anti-tunnel sentiment found within the people of her electorate, and represent her electorate as accurately as she can, she has less than three months to move away from her current position, which is the epitome of fence-sitting (see her Eddington Report submission here).

Cartoon: Melbourne Times, 23/7/08

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(Please click the flyer for a full-sized version)

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Bookings

You can book through the mail or by phone.

To book by mail, please download this form and return it by the morning of August 21st.

To book by phone, please call Rohan on 0421 578 918 with your credit card details.

Purchase your tickets soon - limited seats!

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Full line-up announced!

The Melbourne City Greens held a successful fund-raiser on Wednesday night, hosted by former Lord Mayor (1988-89) Winsome McCaughey, the city’s second female Lord Mayor and one of the first dedicated conservationists to chair council.

Four eco-friendly wineries, including McCaughey’s own Baddaginnie Run, set up at Acquum in North Melbourne to provide attendees, including all Greens Melbourne City Council candidates, and councillors and MLCs from across the city, with a wonderful selection of wines to taste and buy.

Ms McCaughey addressed the crowd, speaking about the need for all levels of government to start seriously tackling climate change, and threw her support behind Greens lead Councillor candidate and long-time friend Cathy Oke.

Ms McCaughey’s comments came just hours after the federal government released its Emissions Trading Green Paper, a document fraught with problems and mixed-messages. She, like the Greens Council Candidates, expressed concern that the proposed Emissions Trading Scheme simply won’t send a signal for change.

Finishing with cause for hope, Greens Lord Mayor Candidate Adam Bandt outlined measures that all levels of government should be taking to provide Australians with practical ways to fight climate change. He hinted at what a council with more elected Greens could do with the tens of millions of council dollars currently being funneled into State Government projects… The Greens’ Solar Panel Initiative will be announced in the coming months!

Attended by Licensees, consumers, members of Victoria Police, members of various drug and alcohol organisations, staffers for State Parliamentarians and a current Melbourne City Councillor, the meeting heard from four speakers before an extensive question and answer session and discussion.

As Peter Hitchener of Channel 9 reported, the meeting was called to look at alternatives to the 2am lockout, which had “descended into farce”.

Many ideas were raised, including ID scanners and breathalysers inside venues, by audience members*. But the most common response from attendees was that existing laws needed to be properly policed. Many also questioned the extent of the problem, with Adam Bandt citing the tabloid nature of the recent interest in the issue and likening the ill-conceived lockout regulations to “cracking a walnut with a sledgehammer”. That is not to say that there isn’t a problem: no meeting attendee was willing to deny that more should be done to ensure that the inner city is safer after dark.

The Greens, through consultation and a measured approach that hasn’t pandered to media frenzy, have prepared their Night-time Safety in the CBD policy, which was released on the weekend. It is the first of many policy statements that will be released in the lead-up to November’s council elections.

You can find the newly released policy here.

*Not Greens endorsed. For the official Greens response, read the policy above.

Above: Hundreds of protesters spell the words “CLIMATE EMERGENCY” in Alexandra Gardens, and Greens Lead Councillor Candidate Dr Cathy Oke with Senator Bob Brown.

Climate Emergency Rally and the Draft Garnaut Report

On Saturday afternoon the Green Melbourne City Council Candidates attended the Climate Emergency Rally organised by a coalition of 60 community groups, including the Greens, that are frustrated with State and Federal government inaction on climate change.

A great turnout sent a clear message that we all want positive action immediately to address the Climate Emergency facing us all. Greens Leader Senator Bob Brown was one of the guest speakers, urging greater Government action NOW!

The rally came a day after Professor Ross Garnaut’s draft report on Climate Change was released - ironic timing given that a day earlier, Premier John Brumby announced another greenhouse gas intensive coal fired power plant for Victoria.

That announcement, along with the desalination plant (which will need enormous amounts of power to feed it), the desired East-West Tunnel, and State and Federal legislative harm done to the growing Australian solar industry, is at total odds with the draft Garnaut Review recommendations.

There are 6 key messages in the Garnaut Review Draft:

1) Climate Change is accelerating at a faster than expected rate;

2) The impacts of climate change will be felt more severely in Australia than most other countries;

3) There needs to be a global commitment to reduce carbon through binding emissions targets - and Australia must play a leading role;

4) We need to set up an emissions trading scheme quickly and it should be inclusive of all industries - delayed action or inaction will impact the economy more severely;

5) Revenue raised by the trading scheme needs to be invested in new technologies aimed at reducing carbon, and in assistance for lower income households to meet increased costs of energy; and

6) New technology investment, advancement and deployment is essential to meet large-scale carbon emission reductions, and investment in new technologies will realise more local jobs and will create a new “green” economy.

We are glad that this report has come out and has highlighted the need act immediately and we eagerly await Minister Penny Wong’s Green Paper which will outline the potential models for an emissions trading scheme.

For our campaign, we are aiming to continue the great work of Greens Councillors on Melbourne City Council over the last two terms towards reducing the City of Melbourne’s carbon emissions. So what does the Garnaut report mean to local government?

Essentially local government is the arm of government that most closely interacts with residents and business. The City of Melbourne must lead in assisting our community in its transition to this new carbon constrained economy, and also deal with many of the local impacts of climate change on our urban environment that are already being felt.

The Melbourne City Greens will be releasing our environmental policies well before November’s election. Some of our actions to address Climate Change within the City of Melbourne will include:

• Enacting the City of Melbourne policy, driven by Greens councillors, for Zero Net Emissions by 2020;

• Large-scale investment in energy-efficiency measures for Council assets and facilities, including street lighting and retrofitting existing buildings;

• Establishing a program for the mass retrofitting of residential and business buildings at lowest possible cost;

• Promoting greater uptake of green power within the municipality; and

• Working with the State Government and surrounding municipalities to start filling in the gaps in Melbourne’s Public Transport Network and timetables.

The full Garnaut report will be released in late September. You can download and read the full Garnaut Climate Change Review - Draft Report here.

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Yours sincerely,

The People of Kensington

Darling Park Winery, Red Hill (Mornington Peninsula)

“We have been highly selective of our Vineyard sites; only those with a proven history to produce premium, superior quality fruit have been chosen. We haven’t used any herbicides or pesticides at the home vineyard since mid 2006”.

The winemaker of Darling Park Winery, Judy Gifford, will be showcasing four wines on the night - a Sparkling Rose, a Pinot Gris, a Chardonnay and a Shiraz.

We are keenly interested in applying the latest research knowledge to viticulture in the interests of producing premium quality grapes and enhancing the environment. Seven Sisters Vineyard has been the site of several national water management research projects, with our irrigation system and vines placement specifically designed to produce premium grapes using minimal water

Public Forum

6pm Thursday July 10th, Welsh Church Hall, 320 LaTrobe Street Melbourne.

Please come along! Click “read more” for more details and the flyer…

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(click flyer below to zoom - please print and distribute!)

http://www.wrongway-goback.com

Note: the video above suggests that Lord Mayor John So supports Brumby’s push for a tunnel. However, on Tuesday evening (24th June), John So joined other City of Melbourne councillors in opposing the tunnel.

As late as Monday, Lord Mayor John So was telling reporters that he supported an East-West freeway.

Twenty-four hours later, with the four members of his team all indicating on the floor of the council chambers that they would uphold the sentiment of the original Planning Committee motion moved by Greens Cr Fraser Brindley to abandon Council’s support for any East-West road tunnel, the Lord Mayor decided to save face.

The public galleries were filled beyond capacity with concerned residents, mostly from North Melbourne and Kensington, all waiting to see which way the Lord Mayor, and their Council, would vote.

The Lord Mayor offered no contribution until the very end of the lengthy debate. With a few quick words about the need to satisfy public demands for sustainable transport options, he voted with 8 of the 9 Councillors to support Cr Brindley’s amended motion.

Only Cr Shanahan, the sole ALP member on council, voted against, arguing that council needed to go further and state that they were “horrified” and “terrified” at the prospect of any East-West tunnel engulfing public spaces. As it was an argument over language, rather than of support for a tunnel, the State Government must now come to terms with the fact that 9 out of 9 Melbourne City Councillors have voted to strongly oppose any East-West road tunnel.

A firm political obstacle now stands in the way of the pro-tunnel State Labor Government…

Hosted by Winsome McCaughey (former Lord Mayor of Melbourne and co-owner of Baddaginnie Run winery) as part of The Greens’ Melbourne City Council Campaign. 10% of wine purchases (by glass, bottle or case) will go towards the campaign.

At 6:30pm Winsome McCaughey, Former Lord Mayor of Melbourne will introduce the Greens’ Lord Mayor and Deputy Lord Mayor Candidates, Adam Bandt and Kathleen Maltzahn, and Council Candidates Cathy Oke, Rohan Leppert, Alister Air and Donna Lancaster.

Wineries on show include Baddaginnie Run (Strathbogie Ranges), Avonmore Estate Biodynamic Wines (Bendigo) and Darling Park (Red Hill).

Details of the wines on offer have been posted.

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Please share with your friends by clicking on the flyer (.pdf) and printing it.

Monday the 16th of June was such a day: commuters stood on the platforms at South Kensington station for forty minutes before a train arrived that could just squeeze some more passengers in.

Melbourne City Council candidate and Kensington local Donna Lancaster, who frequently uses South Kensington station, explains that some city-bound commuters find that it’s more time-efficient to take trains or buses back to Footscray to board trains coming from the Sydenham line (which has not stopped at South Kensington station for years to relieve pressure on the system!) than it is to wait on the platform.

“It’s not an option to go to Kensington Station as the Craigieburn line trains are full as well, and for some people, that’s a 25 minute walk” says Donna.

“The biggest insult to locals using South Kensington station is that they walk across JJ Holland Park to get there; the park that the Eddington Report recommends digging up to facilitate the building of the $10 billion East-West tunnel.”

For Kensington residents, the choice is clear: Public Transport, not roads!

To continue reading, click “read more”…

But Eddington’s report does mention public transport, doesn’t it? If you read Sunday’s Age, you might have noticed a piece by its state politics reporter Melissa Fyfe, “Beyond tunnel vision“. In it, she argues that

the public transport advocates’ response to the rail tunnel idea — and the other non-car initiatives in Eddington — has been bewildering.

Perhaps she undermines the skepticism with which Melbournians treat state government public transport projects.

After all, where is the Doncaster line? A corridor was left down the middle of the Eastern Freeway for just such a project: land cuttings were made, properties were acquired, and the route has been set out since 1972. Labor and Liberal state governments have, ever since, toyed with the public during election years with renewed, ultimately empty, promises to build it. Many other proposed rail projects have suffered a similar fate.

It is important to remember that no major public transport project has been started in this city since 1971, when the City Loop construction commenced. That’s 37