By Cam Lucadou-Wells
Cranbourne MP Pauline Richards says she had early doubts about the bona fides of a community action group secretly sponsored by developer John Woodman.
On a two-day door knock before the 2018 state election, Ms Richards found little support among voters for Save Cranbourne West Residents Action Group’s (SCWRAG) demands to rezone an adjoining industrial zone.
“It wasn’t raised with me even once,” Ms Richards told IBAC on 30 November.
“I began to doubt his intentions and whether this particular group was what it purported to be.”
She said the group’s other quest to upgrade Hall Road had more popular support as a road-safety issue.
Ms Richards said the group leader Ray Walker didn’t show SCWRAG to be a “broadly altruistic group of people” with “common interests” such as the environment or community-building.
Her predecessor Jude Perera had earlier told the inquiry he and Planning Minister Richard Wynne had doubts about SCWRAG due its “big posters” in 2015.
He still submitted SCWRAG’s purported petitions and documents to Mr Wynne and Casey Council, despite the suspicions.
Ms Richards told IBAC that Mr Perera had not shared his suspicions with her.
“It was something that perhaps became apparent to me and was then crystal clear after the article in The Age at the end of 2018.”
Mr Wynne’s chief of staff Peter Keogh told IBAC on 2 December that SCWRAG seemed a “pretty passive community group” without much “colour and movement”.
“For all the signatures or whatever, the only thing they ever did was write letters.
“I don’t want to encourage people to ring the minister’s office, but, you know, we get … thousands of calls in a couple of days.”
IBAC has alleged that SCWRAG was funded $193,000 by Mr Woodman’s company Watsons and his consultant Megan Schutz’s firm Schutz Consulting.
Ms Schutz helped set up SCWRAG.
She was financed to do so by another developer Leighton Properties, which owned the land and would gain a windfall from the rezoning.
Mr Woodman was offered a $2 million success fee.
Ms Schutz told IBAC “we were using the community as a basis for my client’s commercial interests”.
