By Ethan Benedicto
The lake gathering on Sunday, 23 March featured documents that revealed that the City of Casey had long since been sceptical about leading the consultation process of Guru Nanak Lake, declining the role in December 2023.
It was also revealed that there was some ambiguity with land ownership and naming authority between Casey, the Department of Transport and Planning (DTP), and Geographic Names Victoria (GNV).
An official statement from Casey on 18 November 2024, just nine days after the announcement of the current name on 9 November, detailed that the council was not involved in the naming of the lake, nor did they have any authority to name it.
Casey, however, was involved in conversations with the relevant decision-making parties and was initially determined to be the responsible party for community awareness.
A Freedom of Information request made by Michael Ball and other members of the Berwick Springs Community group provided a swathe of details on the correspondence between Casey and other relevant naming authorities.
This included conversations between the council, the DTP and the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH).
Additional information from Geographic Names Victoria was also included in the series of documents.
These documents detailed that Casey was initially meant to handle community consultation, but pulled out since they were not the naming authority.
Prior to this, consultation with the Sikh community groups and the traditional owners of the land had been completed, and without Casey’s cards on the table, there was no replacement figure for the community’s awareness.
Once Casey had removed themselves from the conversation of naming the lake, there were no other records of broader engagement with local residents.
Other documents detailed conversations between Casey and the DTP in 2023, which revealed that Casey owns small portions of the wetlands situated along the edges of the former Berwick Springs Lake.
A spokesperson from the GNV said that they were provided conflicting information regarding which body had ownership of the lake.
In the same email, the GNV spokesperson said that “many of the features have unofficial names and it is a problem waiting to happen”.
Sent from the DFFH to Casey on October 2023 was an official request from the department for Casey to lead the community consultation phase, which they “confirmed” Casey would lead.
This same document presented to Casey detailed the project’s background, rationale, community engagement history, and specific naming principles.
These same factors were called out by Ball during the Sunday gathering as inefficient and ultimately a process that still undermined the residents of Berwick Springs Estate.
The same document highlighted the ‘landmark identification process’ where it was stated that the DFFH, the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) had sought places without a gazetted name with significance to the Sikh population.
The lake had been picked since there was no official name under Geographic Names Victoria, and Casey was home to a large contingent of people of the Sikh faith.
This detail was hotly protested by Ball, and previously by Ann-Marie Hermans MP and Brad Battin MP during the November 2024 gathering, that naming a landmark after a particular religion/faith or ethnic group did not properly represent the locale’s multicultural population.
On the document where Casey was meant to lead the consultation process, the council eventually rescinded it to the relevant authority, Melbourne Water.
This was corroborated by their response to Ball’s question in the most recent council meeting on 18 March, where they repeated the same response with emphasis on their lack of participation.
As mentioned in previous articles, conversations between the relevant bodies, including Casey, on naming the lake, had been ongoing since mid-2022, coming to fruition following an entire year in 2023 spent on consulting the Sikh community and the Bunurong Land Council.
In the documents, community consultation began in July 2022 and ended in July 2023.
It began with guidance from the Victorian Multicultural Commission, where the DFFH invited 19 Sikh community organisations to participate in consultation on the proposed landmark.
A year later in July 2023, the DFFH met with representatives from the GNV, DEECA, Ambulance Vic, Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority, Melbourne Water and Casey regarding the name’s proposal and the next steps.
Here it was determined that Melbourne Water was the naming authority but Casey would lead the naming process.
Later that year, Casey would fully remove itself from the responsibility, giving all relevant powers to Melbourne Water.
The process remains in murky waters, with residents still left to wonder where the consultation process for the community had been.
