Cade Lucas
Werribee, Sunshine and Bundoora would benefit from increased productivity and improved public transport and amenities if public service jobs were moved there according to a new economic analysis.
Planning firm SGS last week released an analysis on the impact of relocating all new public service jobs created over the next 30 years to five outer suburban locations.
The analysis, contained in the report ‘Unlocking the potential: Promoting investment in Greater South East Melbourne’ was conducted on behalf of a group of councils in Melbourne’s south east interested in attracting more jobs and investment to the region.
“They were interested in what Melbourne might look like if the role of the CBD changed a little bit, if the future jobs growth that may have gone into the CBD, if some of that was relocated” said report co-author William Boadle, adding that while Werribee, Sunshine and the area around La Trobe University in Bundoora were not in the south east, they were included to give the study more heft.
“If our report just focused on shifting jobs to south east Melbourne the state government would think it was unbalanced so we took a metropolitan wide approach to illustrate how decentralisation could impact Melburnians,” he said.
The report assumed that Werribee, Sunshine, La Trobe, Monash and Dandenong would absorb all new public service positions over the next 30 years and that for every government job relocated, another two private sector positions would follow.
The resulting 58,000 jobs would produce $22 billion in productivity benefits, almost $4 billion in transport benefits and $1 billion in amenity benefits.
Mr Boadle explained what such a scenario could mean for Werribee.
“If decentralisation really plays out in a big way, public transport investment would occur, investment in civic spaces would occur and if you relocate 5000 jobs to Werribee, that’s potentially good for local residents and business because suddenly the whole Werribee community has access to more services.
“They’ll need more hospitality and retails services and that’ll spill over into the broader community.”
Werribee and Sunshine and La Trobe have long been earmarked as potential satellite cities, with all three named National Employment and Innovation Clusters (NEICs) in the state government’s Plan Melbourne blueprint aimed at guiding the city’s development over the next 35 years.
Wyndham mayor Jennie Barrera supported the report’s findings and said the proposed East Werribee development was the ideal location for relocated jobs.
“The notion of a polycentric city is something that Wyndham City wholeheartedly supports and has for some time,” Cr Barrera said.
“East Werribee provides the perfect parcel of land, at 774 hectares, to see this realised. For many years we’ve made clear our strong view that this parcel of land be developed with a primary focus of job creation, as per the plan unveiled a decade ago.”
