The Royal Park Protection Group got it right. For years we have been saying that construction of the 2006 Games Village on the former Royal Park Hospital site in Parkville was just an excuse for a private real estate development. Now we know its true.

Tomorrow Saturday 16 October 2004 at around 10:15 am Royal Park Protection Group members and supporters will stage a protest outside the gates of the former Royal Park Hospital in Park Street. This is the day for a "priority viewing" of the Australand-Citta Property Group’s "Parkville Gardens" where display houses will be on show and put on the market reportedly for $1 million. The fact that this is supposedly a Games Village does not appear on advertising material.

Rod Quantock Deputy Convenor of RPPG commented: "We will protesting tomorrow over the biggest public landgrab in Melbourne’s history, engineered by interlocking interests of sport, business, and the construction industry and sanctioned by the State Government. Public land and public assets have been handed over for private profit. The Victorian taxpayer is being treated with contempt at a time when funding is desperately needed for hospitals, mental health and schools."

In an Age Article (14/4/03) "The best real estate deal in the state’s history?" Kenneth Davidson summed it up: "The Bracks Government is handing over, gratis, 20 hectares of inner-city parkland to a developer for a housing development, plus $85 million in cash. Why? The land alone, as a development site, is worth $250 million at least … And it gets better. Last week the Government rushed legislation through the Legislative Assembly that effectively makes the development immune until 2011 from heritage, environmental and planning legislation that would govern any similar real estate development"

Julianne Bell, Convenor of RPPG commented: "The Bracks Government said when elected ‘We will protect what you love about your neighbourhood’ and that Melbourne would be kept as the world’s most liveable city Yet we have seen the Royal Park Hospital site cleared of 2,000 trees, wildlife exterminated and one of Victoria’s finest complex of heritage buildings damaged and degraded. We should remember Patrick White’s words spoken when addressing the Save Centennial Park rally in Sydney in 1972. He said ‘Parkland is valuable, and greedy eyes see the money in it. So you must always be on the alert. Hang onto your breathing spaces in this developing and already over congested city’".