Assistant Treasurer Gordon Rich-Phillips has described as a political stunt the announcement by shadow treasurer Tim Pallas that a Labor government would negotiate to buy back the former Sunvale Primary School site.
Mr Pallas promised last month that, if elected, Labor would negotiate with a private developer to re-purchase the land.
The developer bought the land from the state government in June for $4.2 million.
Mr Pallas said he had been advised “those contracts [of sale] have not been signed yet”, and he lamented that Liberal MP Bernie Finn had broken a promise to Sunshine residents.
“They stood at this place before the last election. They pointed to every corner and said it would be returned for community use,”
Mr Pallas said.
But Mr Rich-Phillips said the government had kept its promise to work with Brimbank council to retain most of the site as public open space.
“The government offered the site for sale to Brimbank city council. The city elected to buy the majority of the site on a discounted, restricted-use basis,” he said.
“When the city declined to buy the remaining 0.8 hectares of the site, it was sold by public tender to a private buyer. The sale was reported publicly weeks ago and any claim by Tim Pallas that he can ‘renegotiate’ the contract is just a stunt. There was never a commitment by the Coalition prior to the election, or any time since, to retain the site in full for public open space or to gift the site to council.”
Mr Finn has denied ever making the promise, labelling it an “aspiration”.
Questioned by Star Weekly last week, Chris Reilly, press secretary of Opposition Leader Daniel Andrews, said that when the repurchase announcement was made, “we were not aware of the speed and secrecy with which [Premier] Denis Napthine wanted to rip the land away from the community, and that he had already signed the contracts”.
Mr Reilly said that given the contracts had been signed, Labor would enter into negotiations with the developer and, by agreement, seek to return the land to the community.
