VIC: Minister criticises parkland sports complex protest

AAP General News (Australia)
04-19-1999
VIC: Minister criticises parkland sports complex protest

MELBOURNE, April 19 AAP - Victorian Sports Minister Tom Reynolds criticised protesters
demonstrating on Melbourne parkland today over plans to build a sports complex for the 2006
Commonwealth Games.

Police removed 15 people, carrying some of them, after they refused to leave the site in
Royal Park, Parkville, in Melbourne's north.

The group wanted to stop the clearing of trees from the old-established public parkland to
make way for a netball and hockey complex.

Two protesters, one a woman, refused to climb down from a tree on the site early this
afternoon.

Mr Reynolds said the sports complex would not turn the area into another Albert Park, the
scene of long-running protests against the Formula One Grand Prix motor race.

"... I think the objections to it are spurious because they're based on facts which are not
correct," he said.

Demonstrators at the site today said old oak trees and eucalypts were being felled and
mulched.

Julianne Bell, of the Royal Park Protection Group, called for the hockey and netball
complex to be built in more appropriate surroundings such as Docklands or Fishermen's Bend.

She said the habitats of birds and possums were being destroyed on the 5.5 hectare site,
which was surrounded by wire-mesh fencing topped with barbed wire.

Ms Bell said the site already contained smaller, separate community netball and hockey
facilities; the planned development, including a three-storey building, would take up 5.5
hectares.

Mr Reynolds told reporters Melbourne would benefit from the replacement of an outdated
netball stadium with a modern structure that could be used by all players, not just elite
athletes.

There would be a net gain of parkland and all trees felled would be replaced, he said.

AAP pjb/er/it

KEYWORD: GAMES PARK NIGHTLEAD

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