At the last Healesville Freeway Reserve stakeholder meeting held in August’16, VicRoads announced that 21 titles of unencumbered parcels of land have been deposited at the Titles Office for transfer to Crown. It is now just the amount of time the Titles office takes to effect the transfer to Crown for that land to be saved as Open Space for the community. I do not know how many hectares it amounts to but it is the bulk of the land on that corridor. That leaves the titles of encumbered land, which will be released over time as the tenancies fall vacant.
We are over the moon with this, as we can now start concentrating on the draft future uses and the development of the Establishment Plan for the corridor.
This has truly been a community campaign and we thank all the volunteers who generously assisted us, we also want to thank the community for supporting the campaign by signing the petition, coming out in large numbers to attend public events and voting to let us know exactly what they thought and wanted for this land. That gave us the conviction we were truly representing the views of the people.
A special acknowledgement and thank you goes out to Amanda Simpson and Margaret Rackham who joined the Friends of the HFR right at the start, in the early days of the campaign and stayed committed, active and supportive throughout the whole process. The work of Lindsay Cowling is also acknowledged, he joined us later in the process and has been an active and supportive member ever since.
The role of Shaun Leane MLC and the Labor Party also needs to be acknowledged, they recognised the views of the community and pledged to save the land if they won Government. After the election, even though they did not win the seat, Labor have followed through and kept their promise to save the land by transferring it to Crown and we are very grateful. The Greens also had the protection of the whole corridor as a pre-election policy and Samantha Dunn MLC assisted us with making representations in Parliament, we thank them for their support.
This outcome would not have been possible without the participation and support of the Friends of the HFR, Volunteers, the Community and the Labor Party keeping its election promise on this issue.
We look forward to the development of a wonderful community park, an asset to the area. Please do participate in the forthcoming Community Consultation on the future uses of the land.
COMMUNITY DROP IN CONSULTATION -
Sunday 25th September 2016
Time : 10am - 2pm
Place: Vermont Secondary College, Morack Road, Vermont 3133
ONLINE SURVEY - Open till 7th October 2016
Go to : http://portphillip.delwp.vic.gov.au/healesville-freeway-reserve
POP UP STALLS will also be held at local shops and the Vermont South library, dates and times will be advertised, so look out for them. Come along and have your say.
On another matter, there has been a development since the last May’16 update.
On 17th June’16 the Friends of the HFR, addressed to me by name, received a ‘Concerns Notice for the purpose of the Defamation Act 2005(Vic)’ from Neil Angus MP, State Member for Forest Hill, claiming comments made in the May 2016 update on the Friends of the Healesville Freeway Reserve website were defamatory.
It was never our intention to defame anyone and we have always acted in good faith. We have always endeavoured to inform the community of the facts and therefore needed to alert them to what we considered was the misleading wording of the Nov’14 brochure once it came to our attention. Consequently we have reworded the particular paragraph on the website. It is worth noting that the flyer itself accuses others of lying, without any proof provided! Throughout this campaign, we have tried to keep the community informed of the facts without fear or prejudice. At various times there have been challenges, threats of legal action and various forms of pressure but we have remained undeterred.
At this point the Concerns Notice is not being published as we were asked not to by the author, however in the future should it become necessary and in the public interest, we reserve the right to do so.
Attached is our response to the Concerns Notice in the form of a ‘Further Particulars Notice’. It is long and rather detailed but do spend the time to read it and acquaint yourself with the contents. 
Further Particulars Notice Nov'14 Pre election flyer
Also attached is the Nov ’14 pre-election brochure at the heart of this matter, make up your own mind on this issue.
Anne Makhijani.