Parkland versus hospital for children

Many Victorians will be comfortable with the Royal Children's Hospital redevelopment, but the value of Melbourne's parkland is inestimable.

ON SOME significant matters, Melbourne's forefathers were truly visionary. One was setting aside a large area of mostly pristine bush in the central highlands more than a century ago to serve as the city's water catchment. Another was the early construction of a vast sewerage system that has stood the city in good stead for generations. A third piece of remarkable foresight was the reservation of substantial areas of cultivated and semi-natural parkland throughout the inner city. Bear in mind that these decisions were taken in an era when the environment was seen as little more than an almost infinite resource to be conquered and exploited. Land was normally something to be speculated in rather than preserved. As its stands, Melbourne is blessed with parkland that is the envy of many other cities, not just in Australia but around the world. Some of it, such as Yarra Bend Park, remains truly remarkable despite over time having been dotted with prisons, hospitals, golf courses and sporting facilities and bisected by roads and freeways. Parks are part of the city's heritage and among its key attractions, assets that are both essential and non-renewable. They contribute in no small measure to the liveability of the metropolis.

That initial vision has given way in recent years to more pragmatic, even venal motivations. Parkland that Melburnians have taken for granted for many years is certainly no longer seen as inviolable public space. In much the same way that public utilities have been sold into private hands, public property has become a negotiable asset. It is interesting to consider the parkland spaces that have been lost in whole or part to commercial interests or to other permanent and temporary uses in recent years. The Cain government took over Flinders Park for the tennis centre in the mid-1980s. Less than a decade later, Albert Park was redeveloped as the site of the formula one Grand Prix, with a further section later excised for an aquatic centre. About 15 hectares of Gosch's Paddock in Punt Road is to be converted into sporting facilities, including a 25,000-seat stadium. Public land once given over to public health facilities at Royal Park has since been given over to a private developer to build a village for the Commonwealth Games, much of it later to be sold off into private hands. Another section of Royal Park has previously been excised for use as a hockey and netball centre. On a smaller scale, the Carlton Gardens are annually given over to a commercial garden show.

Currently at issue is the prospect of a further four hectares of Royal Park being set aside for the redevelopment of the Royal Children's Hospital. The new $850 million development to the west of the existing RCH site was announced by Premier Steve Bracks yesterday. Under the proposal, part of the existing hospital will be retained but other buildings will be demolished and this land returned to the park. When asked to quantify the impact of the redevelopment, Mr Bracks said somewhat vaguely that the future park would comprise "what exists now … plus a bit extra".

The Premier went so far as to suggest that the parkland site was preferred in part because of the therapeutic values that such a venue suggests to recuperating children. It was an unnecessary embellishment: there are strong reasons to suggest that moving the RCH to an alternative site would be neither efficient nor popular with the broader public. While questions have been raised about the integrity of the consultative process, The Age does not consider in this instance that the outcome is against the public interest.

Of more concern, however, is the way in which the invaluable assets that are Melbourne's — and Victoria's — public parklands have been nibbled at by successive governments. The encroachment has largely been one-way. Once gone, these important spaces are irreplaceable. The State Government in this instance owes the people of Victoria an obligation to ensure that the land it says it will return is in fact returned. But more importantly, all tiers of government must abandon their attachment to using public land to overcome dilemmas lest the Garden State lose that mantle forever.