Current Advocacy Projects

Renewed Threat to Sunshine Technical Buildings

April 2024

The threat of demolition of the former Sunshine Technical School buildings has come closer. In January 2024, Heritage Victoria determined that the two buildings were not of State-level cultural heritage significance and should not be included in the Victorian Heritage Register. The RHSV, the National Trust and the Brimbank Council have all opposed the decision, with the Heritage Committee of the RHSV and Brimbank Council making submissions to the Heritage Council of Victoria emphasising the significant historical and architectural  importance of the buildings and arguing strongly for their preservation.

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Another Challenge to the World Heritage Listed Royal Exhibition Building

In another challenge to the  integrity of the World and National Heritage Listed Royal Exhibition Building (REB) site, a proposal is with Yarra City Council to redevelop 1-9 Gertrude Street Fitzroy, near the corner of Gertrude and Nicholson Streets. Taken as a whole, the importance of this site, incorporating the REB, the Carlton Gardens and their surrounds, cannot be overstated. In the words of the eminent UK historian Professor David Cannadine ‘The expositional ensemble . . . is a unique, magnificent and outstanding survivor from this great age of great exhibitions. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world today’. [1] This significance was recognised in its nomination as a World Heritage site.

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28th June 2022: Statement on Queen Victoria Market “Renewal”

The CEO of the Queen Victoria Market, Stan Liacos, has been on a propaganda offensive, presenting a warm fuzzy on change at the Queen Victoria Market. As CEO, Stan has driven the process of change currently engulfing the market, change based on the proposals Robert Doyle made nine years ago, since overwhelmingly rejected by the people of Melbourne. The issue is not whether the market ‘should stay just as it is’. The issue is whether change will be driven by family business stall-holders responding to their customers in the canopy provided by the historic sheds and buildings, or by bureaucrats seeking high end stalls offering ‘value add’ products from hygienic, uniform fixed stalls, ‘a brighter, lighter, cleaner, greener more contemporary’ market.

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