Melbourne’s Greenline Survives Bid to Shelve Project

Melbourne’s Greenline project has dodged a bullet, surviving a City of Melbourne motion to pause the project.

At a meeting of the Future Melbourne Committee this week, Cr Phillip Le Liu put forward the motion to shelve the Greenline and to only return to it in stages once each of those stages was fully funded.

The Greenline project is a 4km long ecological restoration project for the northern bank of Melbourne’s Yarra River. 

It is expected to create wetlands, parks, open green space and restore the river’s ecosystem and create and restore historical gathering sites for Boonwurrung and Wurundjeri traditional owners. 

Last week, the council’s draft budget omitted line item funds for the Greenline project as the council had not yet received funding for it from the Victorian or Federal Governments. 

Council officers confirmed this was in line with the strategy to not move ahead with projects unless they were fully funded and that advocacy for the necessary funding would continue. 

They also said it did not mean that Greenline had been dropped or paused. 

“How can council go ahead with something when there is no funding to it or ask anyone else to do it?” Le Liu said. “It is disingenuous.” 

The Greenline was championed by former lord mayor Sally Capp and Stage 1 Birrarung Marr was approved and under way before she left office in 2024. 

The Federal Government provided $20 million for the first stage. 

“In the four years since we got that funding, we have not heard anything else,” Le Liu said.

Le Liu said that projects on the council books, such as the Southbank Library and the North Melbourne Community Centre, were also vital to the community. 

“We have to borrow funding to deliver our projects and we have to also sell our assets to keep up with that,” Le Liu said.

“If you look at the North Melbourne Community Centre, they have been waiting for 12 years—we haven’t even touched that.

“We pulled people off the Queen Victoria Markets project to work on Greenline.”

▲ The two precincts planned from the World Trade Centre to the Bolt Bridge in Melbourne’s transformative Greenline Project.

He said that the Greenline was expected to bring in revenue and create jobs but that it also had been four years of trying to get $100 million in funding from the state and another $100 million from the Commonwealth.

Le Liu said while it was a tough decision, it did not seem viable to continue. 

“Please also know that if we actually had the funding for Greenline that would be fantastic, but we don’t, and that is why we actually need to make a decision,” Le Liu said. 

“At the end of the day, this is one that we can’t afford, given our history of big infrastructure projects that is still in play so let’s finish up before we actually start taking things on.”

Cr Rafael Camillo said it seemed ridiculous that a project expected to generate as much revenue as Greenline would not be a good prospect for other levels of government to consider. 

“We generate 7 per cent of the GDP of the Federal Government and 24 per cent of the state’s GDP,” Camillo said.

“I find it a little bit frustrating that the State Government is giving us nearly nothing.”

The Australian Institute of Landscape Architects Victorian president Naomi Barun told the committee that it made more sense to treat the entire project as a masterplan rather than potentially pause it and break it up. 

“It is a strategic public investment, delivering ecological restoration, social cohesion, cultural leadership and long-term economic return with projected benefits exceeding $740 million,” Barun said.

▲ A rendering of The River Edge, one of the contemporary spaces at Birrarung Marr’s Site 1, part of the Greenline.

Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece said he could not vote to pause the project although he understood the concerns. 

“The process of ending the Greenline project ... that is something I could not support as the Lord Mayor of Melbourne,” Reece said.

“That would be an utter betrayal of the promise of Melbourne.”

Reece said the council would continue to keep Greenline on the agenda.

“It became clear that that funding was not forthcoming, and so the right decision was made that that funding would be allocated to other pressing priority projects,” Reece said.

“That was the responsible thing for the City to do, putting those funds to better and more immediate use. 

“What it does not mean is that the City of Melbourne is walking away from the Greenline project.”

Councillors Le Liu and Owen Guest voted for the motion; all others voted against and Cr Camillo and Cr Gladys Liu abstained.