At Kananook station in Melbourne’s south-east there’s not a lot of spare space between Wells Road, the railway line and the Frankston Freeway.
The tight squeeze is one of the reasons, the federal opposition says, that an enlarged station car park was never going to be possible. That is despite promises from the Morrison government in 2019 to build one as part of a $660 million program that was criticised as election pork-barrelling.
Dunkley MP Peta Murphy at Kananook station with opposition transport spokesman Andrew Giles.Credit:Scott McNaughhton
Last week the Australian National Audit Office found that the federal government cash splash was not administered appropriately and that there was no consultation with state governments and councils about where the money was needed.
“What is particularly egregious … is that the car park could never have been built here,” said Andrew Giles, the federal opposition’s acting transport spokesman.
“If [the federal government] had bothered to speak to the council, speak to the local community, or even to look at the very site that we’re on, they would have known there was no way this promise could have been kept. They should have known that they were telling … a lie at the time of the election, they should come clean about it now.”
The Audit Office report noted that just two out of the 47 car parks were completed. In March this year, the federal government pulled the pin on $50 million in funding for five Melbourne car parks, at Brighton Beach, Balaclava, Mitcham, Kananook and Seaford.
Both Kananook and Seaford are in the marginal seat of Dunkley, which Labor holds with a 2.7 per cent margin. Prior to the election, the electorate was in Liberal hands but a redistribution made it notionally Labor.
Dunkley Labor MP Peta Murphy said the promise of a commuter car park in the area had been particularly attractive because many people took the train into the city each day.
“It was nothing more than an outrageous play and outrageous call on people in my community who are stressed trying to get to work every morning in the city when there isn't enough commuter car parking,” she said.
A federal government spokesperson said the decisions on where to build car parks in Melbourne were made “in the context of the government’s total investments across the city, as well as the commuter car park investments already made by the state government”.
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