Parkland spin

Congratulations to The Sunday Age (28/12) for reporting on public opposition to the alienation of our parklands and to the support for the "Protectors of Public Lands" movement.

The views of Government MPs appear to lag behind public opinion, however, in attitudes to the environment. Moreover they appear ill-informed about what's going on in their electorates. Take Labor MP Glenys Romanes, for example.

Her letter (28/12) contains erroneous and misleading information about the Royal Park Commonwealth Games village. For example, Ms Romanes repeats Games Minister Madden's mantra that the Games village site was never part of Royal Park and is not parkland.

Wrong - it was part of La Trobe's Royal Park and was parkland with nearly 2000 trees until the developer recently axed all but 80. Ms Romanes claims that plans include 200 units of "public housing".

Wrong again. Plans for the post-Games village include 100 "social housing" units and 100 beds in an aged-care facility.

Ms Romanes claims that 1.4 hectares of parkland is being given back to Royal Park. Wrong once more. The land lies along two contaminated drains on which notices proclaim that they are a danger to public safety and which, anyway, run through Royal Park.

The message to Government is becoming clear: "Keep public lands in public hands." Ignore it at your peril, Mr Bracks.
Julieanne Bell,
convenor,
Royal Park Protection Group,
Parkville

Grey - or green?

According to Glenys Romanes (28/12), we should all rejoice in selling off our public land because, among other "benefits", the Royal Park real estate development will use grey water.

Grey water, bilge water, spin water . . . call it what you will, one salient fact remains.

Her Government is bestowing our common wealth to a foreign developer. Is she so confident that posterity will benefit from that?
Pamela Lloyd,
West Brunswick

Elastic definitions

The Royal Park Protection Group and its convenor, Julianne Bell, are to be congratulated on launching the new coalition of community groups, Protectors of Public Lands.

It is sad that such an organisation should be needed to protect public lands from governments at all levels.

As the Point Nepean episode demonstrated, governments often show little understanding of, let alone respect for, public land (parkland in particular), and simply see it as potential real estate or ripe for commercial exploitation.

Remember the definition of parkland by the then Victorian minister for conservation and land management, Marie Tehan, in May, 1997: "Parkland is a general term used to describe all land in parks irrespective of its use."

This meant at the time that the government could build permanent car-race infrastructure in Albert Park Reserve and fence off other parts of it for months at a time, and with a straight face claim there had been no loss of parkland.

This kind of thinking still pervades the current State Government and the outcomes are as regrettable as the Commonwealth Games deal involving the disposal to developers of the site of the former Royal Park psychiatric hospital.
Peter Goad,
acting convenor,
Save Albert Park Inc.

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/03/1072908951450.html