I rise to update the house on the infrastructure needs of new communities. I was recently provided with a report entitled Fisherman’s Bend Preliminary Community Infrastructure Needs Assessment. I have requested and received advice about the normal cost of providing facilities for such communities. The report shows that in an area of about 30 000 new dwellings, the community infrastructure required would be 6 indoor recreation centres or courts, 1 council aquatic leisure centre, 24 outdoor tennis courts and 4 kindergarten rooms. Ordinarily this would cost about $50 million. It is not cheap. But things start getting very expensive when you have to buy back capital city blocks to build vital infrastructure.

It is very difficult to say exactly how expensive because nobody in their right mind would approve the creation of a 30 000 household community without first putting aside enough land to accommodate these crucial facilities. But the Leader of the Opposition was clearly not in his right mind. We are considering the report and we are developing a planning strategy that will involve doing some actual planning along the way. The Andrews Labor government will not be lining the pockets of property speculators at the direct expense of the Victorian taxpayer. Kerry Packer famously once said, ‘You only get one Alan Bond in your life, and I have had mine’. The property development community has just had its Alan Bond. The most generous interpretation is that the Leader of the Opposition was simply incompetent. Only time and rigorous inquiry will tell.