Across 12 Melbourne suburbs, a groundswell of community outrage is growing against the proposal for a new road tunnel that will link the eastern and western suburbs.
As residents have found out about the project, public meetings have been held and community protest groups established in several suburbs. Some of the groups have come together to form Coalition Against the Tunnel.
The first coordinated action will be a protest on October 26 at noon outside Flinders Street station.
Green Left Weekly spoke to several of the groups involved. Clare O'Sullivan is one of three West Footscray women who discovered that the proposed east-west tunnel would come through a portal and emerge into an elevated freeway of possibly six lanes that would run close to their homes.
"That's what got us together to form No Freeway 4 West Footscray", O'Sullivan told GLW.
"We held a number of community forums where we tried to inform the community about what the state government is proposing and the effects that it will have on the local community.
"One of our objectives was to inform our local community, which we don't believe our elected state representative Marsha Thompson has done."
O'Sullivan said that a big issue has been the lack of information from the government. Of the little information available, "none of that information has been in any language except for English. Knowing that West Footscray is a multicultural community, we believe that was a deliberate attempt to exclude a large section of the community by the government."
"We also discovered that any consultation with the state government about the project was invitation-only. If you were from big business you got an invitation, but regular citizens whose homes and health would be dramatically effected by what the government is proposing were not invited", O'Sullivan said.
Ken Mooney told GLW that the Brimbank Transport Action Group (BTAG) grew out of someone finding out from the internet that houses in Sunshine would be knocked down.
Mooney and his wife made up and delivered 15,000 flyers. Seven hundred people came to the first public meeting in July.
According to the current proposal "800-1000 homes will be mown down in Sunshine", said Mooney. "That's why BTAG is so active. When the houses were built in 1974, they were around $23,000. It costs around $400,000-$600,000 to buy a house in Sunshine
now. But the price of houses in the area affected by the freeway has dropped to around $200,000-$300,000. That's why people are prepared to fight."
"We're going to start training the same way that we did during the MUA [Maritime Union of Australia] dispute. We've got enough people for captains in every street", Mooney said.
Mooney believes that the east-west road tunnel is all to do with transport tycoon Lindsay Fox wanting a road from the Port of Hastings through to the Western Ring Road that will be a dedicated route for triple B trucks.
"The Brumby government wants Melbourne to become the container capital of Australia. The tollways aren't being built for people. They're being built for triple Bs", he said.
Freda Watkins said the Yarra Campaign Against the Tunnel grew out of a public meeting after the Eddington report into east-west public transport needs was released. YCAT involves people from a wide range of community groups: Greens, ALP voters, trade unionists and a couple of Liberals.
"It's not often that an issue brings together such a broad range of groups", she said.
The group began out of concern for the environment, a need to reduce fossil fuels, and disbelief and anger that the state government was prioritising road transportation for commuters and freight, that it was proposing to put a tunnel under a very dense residential area and, in doing so, take over public land including Holland Park and the land around the zoo.
"We're disturbed that the government is selling the tunnel to the population of Victoria on the basis that it would assist commuters and reduce congestion, when the Eddington report is very clear that this road link is about freight transportation and the link between the port in Hastings and the ports in Melbourne", Watkins said.
Groups opposing the building of the Frankston bypass have joined the campaign against new roads and tunnels and will support the protest on October 26. Richard Laverack from Friends of Frankston said that "Frankston is typical of the outer suburbs where you get 70% of people leaving the municipality to go to work and they drive a car, particularly the Mornington Peninsula.
"The residents from the Mornington Peninsula are very strong supporters of the bypass because of perceived traffic problems at Frankston", said Laverack.
"The problem is that most people are car dependent. There is no alternative public transport on the Mornington Peninsula and this is being used as a justification for the bypass."
[To contact the groups campaigning against the tunnel, visit
http://www.ycat.org.au, http://www.brimbanktransportactiongroup.org.au and
http://www.nofreeway.org.]