‘Scorched earth’: public housing demo plan picked apart
Resistance is not yet dead to end a contentious plan to demolish and rebuild all public housing towers in Australia’s second largest city.
Lawyers, engineers, residents and other speakers criticized the Victorian government’s plan at a public forum at Melbourne’s Capitol Theater on Thursday night.
In one of his final acts as Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews announced in September 2023 that all 44 public housing sites in Melbourne would be demolished and redeveloped by 2051.
The towers were built between the 1950s and 1970s, and the state government has argued that none of them should be renovated.
This will lead to the relocation of more than 10,000 residents despite being promised the right of return.
Former Barak Beacon housing resident Margaret Kelly said forced relocation without warning harmed people.
Twelve days before Christmas he and his neighbors on his block were told the relocation would begin in three weeks.
Ms Kelly said two people were taken to hospital, one suffering from a stroke and the other with kidney failure.
“It didn’t have to be this way,” he told the large crowd at the Standing Together for Public Housing event.
“There are alternatives to scorched earth development.”
Retired Supreme Court judge Kevin Bell said residents were “at home, not on the road” and that the problem lay with the government’s lack of consultation and information sharing.
The former judge, who grew up in public housing, echoed The Castle’s Darryl Kerrigan’s famous quote.
“You are treated as if you don’t count, as if you could be easily displaced,” he said.
“But a house is a castle.”
Demolition of Carlton’s desolate red-brick Elgin St towers is expected to be completed by mid-2026, with redevelopment expected to be completed by 2028.
The towers in North Melbourne and Flemington will not be demolished until they are vacant, with construction completion due in 2031.
Brendon McNiven from the University of Melbourne’s Regeneration Lab said not every building needed to be refurbished, but everyone should be considered for it.
The senior structural engineer claimed it was “complete nonsense” to cite sustainability as a reason to demolish the towers.
“No matter how efficient a building you build to replace it… you will never save the carbon and energy you need to rebuild that building,” he said.
North Melbourne tower resident Barry Berih also spoke at the event after becoming lead plaintiff in an unsuccessful class action to rule the decision invalid and unlawful.
Inner Melbourne Community Law lawyer Louisa Bassini, who is prosecuting the case, urged people to turn up when the matter is heard in the Court of Appeal on Monday.
The forum collectively called on the state Labor government to commission and publish detailed assessments of the tower’s full structural conditions.
The list of demands went no further than insisting on a complete halt to demolition, but some speakers pressed for it.
Housing Minister Harriet Shing told a parliamentary inquiry in August that the government was “swimming against a very strong current of degradation” and that 88 per cent of residents agreed to be relocated in the first phase of redevelopment.
