Why Melbourne has given up on our new inner-city suburb

3 months ago 9

Opinion

September 3, 2025 — 7.00pm

A decade ago, Victorian treasurer Tim Pallas had a field day in parliament, mocking then opposition leader Matthew Guy over his “cowboy approach” to land in Port Melbourne and South Melbourne that Guy as planning minister had rezoned for thousands of new homes.

That new suburb – Fishermans Bend – was a “calamity caused by the former minister for planning”, Pallas told Victoria’s lower house.

Artist’s impression of the tech hub at Fishermans Bend, put on hold on Tuesday by the University of Melbourne.

“The man is to metropolitan planning what John Howard was to spin bowling: uncoordinated and aimless. He is the Tonya Harding of planning probity. It is no wonder that his projects limped along,” Pallas crowed.

It’s probably a good thing for Pallas he’s left parliament because today, today the kneecapping at Fishermans Bend is Labor doing it to itself – and to Victorians.

In 2012, Fishermans Bend became Australia’s largest urban renewal project after Guy controversially rezoned 250 hectares of industrial land overnight. The new suburb, planned for 80,000 residents, lacked a master plan, height limits or any mechanism to capture land value increases to fund infrastructure. A 2015 expert report was scathing, calling the rezoning “misguided” and “unprecedented in the developed world” for its failure to plan for crucial services.

That Fishermans Bend is now turning into a fiasco of even greater proportions under Labor than its Coalition predecessor was underscored on Tuesday when the University of Melbourne suspended plans to build what would have been a key part of the precinct.

Its new $2 billion campus was to have 10,000 staff and students, and be open by 2031.

Melbourne Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece said the university’s decision to shelve the new campus was “very disappointing”.

Reece was for a decade the University of Melbourne’s director of strategy, policy and projects. So he knows better than anyone when he says it makes sense for the university “to wait until key state transport infrastructure projects are under way – so students, residents and workers can easily get to the precinct and the campus”.

That a major Melbourne institution has turned its back on this fledgling suburb in part because of a lack of public transport is a planning disaster.

It isn’t like Labor can’t plan and deliver transport mega-projects, even if it can’t manage their costs. The North East Link toll road, once promised for $6 billion, is midway through completion – albeit for a remarkable $26.5 billion. Labor took a secret plan cooked up by Transurban, the West Gate Tunnel, and turned that $5 billion proposal into a more than $10 billion project. It, too, is hurtling towards completion.

Labor has budgeted a scarifying $34.5 billion for an orbital rail line that it says, “will enable around 70,000 new homes to be built”. Construction has begun on that one as well.

And yet, Labor remains utterly unable to build a tram line to Fishermans Bend – one simple thing that would have expedited a vast renewal project metres from the city centre, but lacking rapid transport options.

It’s not like people weren’t trying to help Labor over the line with the tram. In 2016, Port Phillip council said one could be built for $300 million. Consultancy firm AECOM in 2018 put the likely cost at $1 billion to extend the existing tram lines down Collins Street into Fishermans Bend.

Labor repeatedly said it was exploring options via multimillion-dollar studies, even producing slick videos of the train and tram lines to Fishermans Bend it would one day build. That day has never materialised. And in June, an Auditor-General’s report painted a bleak picture of inaction at Fishermans Bend. Forget the tram – even a simple bike lane was nine years behind schedule.

True, Labor has put extra buses on to Fishermans Bend. But as architect and urban planner Rob McGauran – one of the people handpicked by Labor in 2015 to devise its strategy to save the area – put it in 2023, buses wouldn’t “cut the mustard” for the university.

“How will Melbourne University, in reality, have a successful campus where students either have to drive or catch a bus or walk through two kilometres of the business park, where the lights are off after 7pm at night?” he asked. Turns out, they won’t.

After Matthew Guy rezoned Fishermans Bend, I was The Age’s city editor and, with investigative reporter Royce Millar and others, wrote story after story about the train wreck that was Guy’s rezoning. It delivered billions in windfall gains to landowners, with not a cent captured for public infrastructure, and triggered a high-rise frenzy with 46 towers approved or proposed.

Some have since been built, but many developers – and now the University of Melbourne – were holding off until public transport improvements made a car-dependent precinct more accessible.

Back in 2015, Tim Pallas jeered at Matthew Guy for his “reckless blunder” at Fishermans Bend. A decade on, Labor is guilty of an absurd blunder: the failure to deliver even a simple tram line.

Clay Lucas is an investigative reporter at The Age who reported on transport and planning from 2006 to 2018.