An engineer who helped build Melbourne\u2019s public housing towers in the 1960s has condemned the Victorian government\u2019s plan to demolish them, saying it is expensive, unnecessary and environmentally irresponsible.<\/p>\n
Gerry Noonan, who worked on most of the city\u2019s 44 towers, told a Victorian parliamentary inquiry into their redevelopment they should be refurbished and upgraded instead \u2013 citing the financial cost and carbon impact of demolition and rebuilding.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be sinful to knock those buildings down. They\u2019re icons,\u201d he told the inquiry on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The government has claimed the towers are outdated, unsafe and energy-inefficient, but Noonan characterised those problems as minor and fixable.<\/p>\n
\u201cI live in a house that was built 155 years ago, as do a lot of people in Melbourne, probably even longer than that. You get the odd problem, but it\u2019s not a big deal, certainly not to knock the whole building down over it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Under the state government\u2019s plan, announced by the then premier Daniel Andrews<\/a> in September 2023, all 44 towers will be demolished and redeveloped by 2051, starting with three occupied towers in Flemington and North Melbourne and two unoccupied redbrick towers in Carlton.<\/p>\n While there will be 10% increased social housing across the sites, only the towers in Carlton will return as public housing, thanks to federal funding<\/a>.<\/p>\n The rest will be managed by community housing providers, which advocates have previously warned the inquiry<\/a> could lead to higher rents and weaker tenant protections.<\/p>\n Much of Wednesday\u2019s hearing was focused on the condition of the towers, with the minister overseeing the redevelopment, Harriet Shing, telling the inquiry despite spending $110m on maintenance each year, the government was \u201cswimming against a very strong current of deterioration\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to make sure that the housing that we are providing for people is not degraded to the point where we have to act with undue haste in a way that doesn\u2019t give people choices, because we left it for too long,\u201d Shing said.<\/p>\n She described the redevelopment as a \u201cvery staged, very careful and considered process\u201d that will take place over 30 years. She said so far, 88% of residents in the first stage had agreed to relocate.<\/p>\n Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n Peta McCammon, the department\u2019s secretary, said many towers had failed key standards including accessibility, sustainability, ventilation, noise and private open space. She said they would be unsafe in the event of fire or earthquake.<\/p>\n While she conceded some issues could be fixed, she said the cost would \u201cfar exceed the benefit\u201d and residents would still need to relocate.<\/p>\n The department\u2019s presentation said pipe walls in some larger towers had eroded from 2mm to as thin as 0.2mm, with 52 temporary patches applied in just the past three months.<\/p>\n About 3,000 units were estimated to be at risk due to failing sewer stacks, with Martin McCurry, the asset manager at Homes Victoria, telling the inquiry about 20km of sewers \u201cneed to be replaced\u201d.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n He also stressed another major concern was concrete spawning, which occurs when concrete surfaces start to break away. McCurry said this can become \u201cconcrete cancer\u201d, which causes the corrosion of the steel reinforcement and weakens the structural integrity of the building.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019ve got a structure which has durability issues, then is it prudent to continue, invest in a structure that has got a remaining life of a minimum number of years?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n But Noonan described \u201cconcrete cancer\u201d as a \u201cpiece of cake\u201d to repair. He also rejected the claim that modern amenities, such as air conditioning, were required in all units.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Melbourne, you get 10 hot days a year, for God\u2019s sake. You don\u2019t need air conditioning,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Noonan also pointed to a report by architecture firm of OFFICE, which released a proposal last year to retain and upgrade the Flemington estate and build five new mid-rises on existing car parks, saving the government $364m.<\/p>\n Simon Newport from Homes Victoria, however, said the report failed to take into account the need to relocate residents during works.<\/p>\n Newport confirmed condition reports and cost-benefit analyses had been completed but he could not provide them to the committee, as the government had asserted executive privilege over the documents.<\/p>\n The inquiry heard that government has made public just 12 of 146 documents, despite the Greens\u2019 attempt to compel their publication through the parliament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An engineer who helped build Melbourne\u2019s public housing towers in the 1960s has condemned the Victorian government\u2019s plan…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":123064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-123063","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114980727439318637","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}