I’ve written previously about the plans to gut the historically and architecturally significant Windsor Hotel and build a completely inappropriate tower onto the back of it.
This is not the first time the Brumby government has allowed the demolition of Melbourne’s heritage building and streetscapes, of course, and Planning Minister Justin Madden, a former football player with all the finesse and wisdom of a bull in a china shop, has shown himself to be anti-heritage and pro-whomever-pays-the-most more than once. He is one of the primary reasons I will be voting against Brumby in the upcoming election. That and the fact that Brumby is rather a colourless character who never seems to have anything interesting, innovative, or dynamic to say, on any topic.
And let’s not forget that “Attorney-General Rob Hulls has committed a serious contempt of Parliament by ordering government advisers not to appear before a parliamentary inquiry into the Hotel Windsor planning scandal, according to the legal guardian of Victoria’s upper house.”
Now we’re seeing revelations from an upper house inquiry into the Windsor affair that show just exactly how dishonest this government really is, and just how hopeless Justin Madden is as a Planning Minister:
Brumby government officials tried to have the Windsor Hotel redevelopment deferred until after the state election to avert any political backlash over the $270 million project.
Ultimately unsuccessful, the move preceded another failed strategy to scuttle the Windsor makeover using a sham consultation process as its pretext.
Read the rest of the article for yourself in The Age Online, and if you are a Victorian voter, I urge you to really think about voting Brumby and his bumbling crew out of office. Seriously, he wasn’t even put there by election, but by the sudden retirement of Steve Bracks, so it’s not like you’re going to be losing someone you actually supported. I’m no fan of the Liberal Party (nor of their party name, which is ridiculous when you consider they’re the opposite of “liberal”), but Brumby and Madden have really got to go before they manage to give the okay to demolish most of the state and lie about why they allowed it.
Find out more about the fight to Save the Windsor.
