More secrecy claims over Daniel Andrews’ level crossing project

Members of a second Melbourne community have accused the Level Crossing Removal Authority of secrecy, ‘sham’ consultation and a lack of due process.

An artist’s impression of the new Union Station, which will replace the current Mont Albert and Surrey Hills stations.

Members of a second Melbourne community negatively affected by the Andrews government’s level crossing removals have accused the Level Crossing Removal Authority of secrecy, “sham” consultation and a lack of due process.

Residents affected by the removal of level crossings and train stations at Surrey Hills and Mont Albert in Melbourne’s east, and their replacement with a single station, have requested information relating to the project from the LXRA.

But as is the case with an application made by members of northern suburbs community group Save Buckley St, revealed in Monday’s Australian, the LXRA is spending taxpayers’ money appealing an Information Commissioner’s order to release the information.

Surrey Hills and Mont Albert Progress Association president Greg Buchanan accused the LXRA of operating in an “aggressive and autocratic” manner.

“They’ve pushed the project through with a facade of a consultation process, which has never released plans of the project or relevant planning documents to support it,” said Mr Buchanan, who worked as a town planner for more than 30 years.

“Usually with a project like this you would expect to see the release of planning, traffic, arborists’ and cultural heritage reports, but none of the usual reports you would expect to accompany a public project have been released.”

Mr Buchanan said he had been a member of a community reference group formed by the LXRA.

“But I and every other member – there were about 15 of us – we were required to sign confidentiality agreements so we couldn’t give information to affected members of the public who we were supposed to be representing on this reference group,” he said.

“When you invite the public into a consultation process, it needs to be genuine and in good faith, and this clearly hasn’t happened in this case. They may as well have said to the public, ‘We really don’t want to consult on this project. Here it is, and it’s proceeding’.”

 

Mr Buchanan said the Andrews government had gone to the 2018 election promising to retain both the Surrey Hills and Mont Albert train stations, before later revealing that they would be building one new station.

Details of the battle come as The Australian today publishes a list of 18 Melbourne level crossings, with Australian Level Crossing Assessment Model ratings of more than 1000, which the Andrews government has no plans to remove.

The average ALCAM risk rating of the 35 level crossing removals and seven closures announced ahead of last year’s state election is 791.3.

The ALCAM ranking is based on metrics including traffic and train volumes, collision history, and engineering and social and economic factors.

Deputy opposition leader David Southwick said the Andrews government must “come clean” and explain how it prioritised the program.

Labor frontbencher Colin Brooks said the LXRA’s decision to block the release of documents was “a matter for them”.