Swinburne University is under growing pressure over its move to evict a community childcare centre and kindergarten from its home of nearly 20 years, in Melbourne’s south-east on land that was given to it by the state government.
In a rare display of unity, members of political parties from across the spectrum and independents gathered at the Windsor community children’s centre on Wednesday to call on Swinburne to stop the sale, ahead of a byelection in the inner-Melbourne seat of Prahran and a federal election in the seat of Macnamara.
The state government donated the land occupied by the childcare centre to the university in 2013.
Eighty families have children who attend the non-for-profit childcare centre, and the director, Sam Vale, said they are furious about the prospect of the sale.
Vale said it was one of the only daycare and kindergartens in the area with an “enormous” outdoor space, in a suburb where most people live in apartments.
“We’re in a really dense area,” Vale said.
“Not many of us have back yards for our children to have the sort of childhood that we imagined and envisaged for them.”
The centre was given notice by Swinburne University in late 2023 to vacate the Union Street site it has occupied since 1997 by the end of 2025.
Swinburne said it was obliged to sell the land because it is no longer operating in the area, having closed its Prahran campus, and had offered it to the state, federal and local governments.
When there were no takers, Swinburne asked the Victorian government to change the planning provisions for the low-rise site to allow up to five storeys, which it said would help facilitate the sale.
The planning minister, Sonya Kilkenny, is yet to make a decision on the rezoning application, but received independent advice from the government land standing advisory committee on the matter in December.
The application was opposed by Stonnington council, which estimates the land is valued at between $12.2m to $13.8m.
“Council, unfortunately, is not in a position by itself to save the centre”, the deputy mayor, Tom Humphries, said.
“That’s why we’re calling on the state and federal governments to come to the table and deliver a funding solution help protect this great community asset.”
While each party held separate press conferences on Wednesday – and there was some jostling over who would speak first – they all called for state government intervention in the event the sale goes ahead.
No one from the Victorian Labor government attended the event.
“Today, I can see people right across the political spectrum. It’s actually quite a unique situation and it smells like elections with the Prahran byelection and then the federal election coming up. But that’s not the most important thing,” the federal Labor MP for Macnamara, Josh Burns, told reporters.
“The community doesn’t need politics right now, it needs Swinburne to make a really easy decision to not sell this land, but to work with other levels of government to try and ensure that this centre has certainty going into the future.”
The state Liberal leader, Brad Battin, and the federal Greens leader, Adam Bandt, on Wednesday pledged to save the centre their if their candidates were successful at either upcoming election.
“I’ll work with any political party … to protect this centre,” Battin said.
“We want to see a race to the top start here, where parties come together and try and outbid each other to do more to save the centre,” Bandt said.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Swinburne University said the three levels of government “must move from talking to acting” and “work together to find a solution for the community”.
An Allan government spokesperson said it was inappropriate to comment on a live planning application.
