Category: Australia

“This is totally unexpected and out of the blue,” said University of Melbourne historian, Professor Andrew May.

“Look around, we’re in a modern 21st century metropolis here, so to actually still be finding these sorts of blocks that can tell us things about the history of Melbourne – early settlement, the landscape – that we didn’t know before is extraordinary.”

Visitors to the site can see the remnants of two bluestone pre-gold rush era cottages built in the 1840s, complete with cesspits and backyards where cows and chickens were raised and vegetables were grown.

Both cottages have two almost perfectly preserved red brick fireplaces. Beyond the homes, thousands of artifacts have been found including belt buckles, bottles, cosmetics, pipes, toys, dishes and animal bones.

Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung traditional owners have also been involved in identifying a small number of Indigenous cultural remnants as stone silcrete flakes.

loading

After the original cottages were demolished and filled in at the order of the council, tenement blocks sprang up on the site in the 1850s and became home to some of the city’s poorest residents, as well as artisans such as a Chinese cabinetmaker, whose possessions have also been unearthed.

By 1913, most of the buildings except one on the site were demolished after being condemned as ‘slums’. They were eventually replaced by warehouses and workshops, which remained until a few years ago when the demolition for the new Bennetts Lane office building began.

“Probably it was migrant populations that may have come in during the gold rush, and then found themselves in other occupations within the growing city of Melbourne as the rush calmed down,” said Ian Travers, the chief of Extent Heritage, which undertook the excavation on behalf of the developers.

“The socio-economic state of this part of the city [is] probably one of the reasons that we’ve got such good preservation of archeology because there wasn’t much development pressure.”

The public has only about another month to walk past and see the site while the excavation is being completed, before all artifacts are ripped up and put in storage to make way for the several foundations of the new office tower.

Some of the bluestone and timber found will be showcased on the ground floor of the new building, but the rest will be stored with Heritage Victoria, which has floated the possibility of recreating a cottage elsewhere.

Heritage Victoria chief archeologist, Jeremy Smith, said the discoveries came too late to put a heritage protection to save the site as a dig – or require it to be preserved under glass in the foyer of the new building. But he said he hoped other “buried blocks” in the future could be physically preserved in some way.

“It’s challenging but it’s not impossible,” he said.

Free public tours of the site and a pop-up artefact display will be open to the public on August 6 and 13. Bookings can be made here.

Some emergency services confirmed on Friday they were provided with core recommendations from the report relevant to them and will review those findings.

Former premier Gladys Berejiklian created the disaster management agency in response to the Black Summer bushfires, installing Fitzsimmons as its boss. It has since faced scrutiny over its role, budget and employee-related expenses amounting to $38.5 million for 245 staff.

But former fire chief and climate advocate Greg Mullins said Resilience NSW did not have the easiest start. After forming on May 1, 2020, the disaster agency was forced to begin operating immediately – coordinating recovery in the aftermath of the bushfires. Then it was forced to respond to major flooding events and a COVID-19 pandemic.

Mullins said when the disaster agency was first formed there had been many former emergency leaders who supported the move. “It was the first state government that had acknowledged out-of-scale disasters were happening because of climate change,” he said.

But he said the agency was tasked with a massive remit: to look after resilience and recovery. “They are both very difficult long-term jobs. Our concern is that dumping [the agency] after two years and blaming the boss could put us back behind the eight-ball as we get more and more consecutive disasters.”

Mullins said the new approach to resilience will need closer inspection once the report is publicly released, but many former emergency service commissioners will be prepared to be highly critical of its findings if they feel the approach does not do enough to prepare communities. But Mullins, like many others, still supported Fitzsimmons and said he was the best person for the job.

“They better have a bloody good reason to lose the expertise of someone of his caliber… Good luck to them to find someone better, they won’t.”

Former ACT Emergency Services Authority commissioner Peter Dunn said the approach to resilience and recovery needed to be community-led rather than the centralized approach that had been favored by the government. He worried that recommendations to appoint a new police commissioner risked further centralizing the disaster agency and would take control away from communities.

“We have gone in the exact wrong direction with the wrong lessons and prepared for the wrong disasters,” he said.

loading

Dunn suggested more funding was needed for communities to control how they would prepare and respond to natural disasters. The Productivity Commission estimated last year that 97 per cent of disaster funding is spent on recovery and clean-up, while only 3 per cent is spent on preparing communities, mitigating and resilience.

Lismore City Councilor Elly Bird said the community’s experience with Resilience NSW post-floods had been a mixed bag. She praised the efforts of officers on the ground who had done the best they could to help the community, but she said that there had been frustrating experiences where bureaucracy had delayed urgent help.

For example, in the days following the floods, Bird said an organization offered 1000 volunteers to help with the clean-up and recovery efforts but Resilience NSW needed to grant permission. Despite her best efforts, Bird was unable to secure the necessary approvals. She said another model of adaptation, preparedness and resilience should be used.

“The model of external agencies coming into a community and telling that community what needs to happen is fundamentally flawed,” she said. “Even before the existence of Resilience NSW, the best approach in an emergency is a community lead recovery. But over many events, it doesn’t seem like the government understands or is able to enable effective community lead response.”

“A dollar spent in the community is much more effective than a dollar poured into government. We need to resource communities because communities will respond first and always step up to support themselves and each other to recover.”

The inquiry’s findings will also recommend that responsibilities like emergency accommodation in evacuation centers should be allocated to the Department of Communities and Justice, which has daily expertise in dealing with people in crisis. Increased funding will be critical to supporting this, the report will advise.

The office which replaces Resilience NSW should instead focus on the response in the first 100 days after a disaster. Other recommendations in the report will include strategies to address the future management of flood-prone areas.

The report and the government’s response will be publicly released later this year.

Get to the heart of what’s happening with climate change and the environment. Our fortnightly Environment newsletter brings you the news, the issues and the solutions. Sign up here.

“I don’t accept it at all. No one’s called me about that and I don’t believe they will,” Guy told reporters.

Asked if he would stand aside for the good of the party if the controversy escalated with any new revelations, he said: “I think I’m going to go back to my office and do some work.”

“We’ve got 110 days to [ensure] the most corrupt government in its history gets shown the door.”

Guy is expected to announce a new chief of staff within days, with former federal Liberal staffer Brad Stansfield joining the field of possible candidates after long-standing Liberal campaigner Simon Frost ruled himself out of contention.

Stansfield, a former chief of staff to Tasmanian Premier Will Hodgman, previously worked for Tasmanian senator Eric Abetz and more recently for federal finance minister, Matthias Cormann.

Emboldened by two recent reports from integrity agencies into the conduct of the Labor MPs and staff, the Coalition had planned to hammer the government on integrity matters in the four-month lead-up to the election.

But those plans were derailed when a leaked message from Catlin to Guy’s private Hotmail email account was revealed by The Agealong with a contract the chief of staff had drafted by his lawyers.

The email detailed Catlin’s proposal for Munz, a wealthy horse racing identity, to pay $8,333 a month to his private marketing company, Catchy Media Marketing and Management, for services as a contractor. The services were to be described as “supporting business interests”.

“Hey MG. Attached is the proposed agreement between [the donor] and Catchy Media Marketing and Management,” Catlin wrote to Guy. “It’s as per the original email agreement between you and me. Can I leave you to forward onto him?”

Catlin resigned within hours of the story going public and has not spoken publicly since. Guy has taken questions but not provided any answers about the specifics of the plan that was proposed, how it came about or why it never eventuated.

The government seized on the opposition leader’s woes, by referring him and his party to a host of law enforcement and integrity agencies over the matter. Victoria Police, the state’s electoral commission, the ombudsman, the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission and the Australian Federal Police were among those alerted. Those organizations have confirmed they have received each Labor’s complaint but, as yet, none have opened an investigation.

Labor says Guy’s position as Liberal leader is “compromised” and he should be “held to a high standard”.

“Matthew Guy is putting himself up as the alternative premier for the state of Victoria,” Minister for Innovation, Medical Research and the Digital Economy Jaala Pulford told reporters on Friday.

loading

“It certainly appears to me that he is compromised and these are things he needs to respond to, and if he doesn’t, perhaps maybe these are things his colleagues need to respond to.”

Guy has so far refused to answer detailed questions about the proposed scheme, defending himself by arguing the contract was never signed and did not go ahead.

In the face of that scrutiny, Guy tried to turn attention back on the government when door-stopped by media on Friday.

“[The media] should be more focused on the premier’s leadership. The premier is leading the most corrupt government in Victoria’s history. We’ve got 110 days to make sure the state knows that the most corrupt government in its history gets shown the door,” he said.

Guy has been Liberal leader for the past 10 months after ousting Michael O’Brien last September. He was previously in the role for four years from 2014, but relinquished the job to O’Brien, after a resounding loss at the 2018 election.

The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.