Developer Bill McNee, the political donor at the centre of a scandal involving an aircraft given to Pauline Hanson, is embarking on a new headache: trying to build over railway lines in Melbourne.
Mr McNee, a major donor to the Liberal Party during Matthew Guy's time as planning minister, is relying on the goodwill of the Andrews government to help build a $25 million project over tracks next to South Yarra railway station.
The project would see a three-level office and retail centre built above train tracks on Toorak Road, directly opposite South Yarra station.
Construction of the project, on land owned by VicTrack, would lie directly in the path of the proposed $11 billion Metro Tunnel rail extension. It sits near the proposed location for the South Yarra underground station Stonnington Council has been lobbying for.
VicTrack owns both the land the rail tracks sit on, and the air rights above them. VicTrack has given its support to the project.
The office building would not preclude later construction of an extra railway station. Public Transport Minister Jacinta Allan is opposed to a new station there as part of the Metro Tunnel project, because of what would be high construction costs for an area already well serviced by heavy rail and trams.
Plans were lodged with Stonnington Council last week.
Mr McNee and the architects and planners involved in the project have met with Stonnington councillors, VicTrack, Yarra Trams, the Metro Tunnel authority and Planning Minister Richard Wynne's office.
The proposed building would include 1000 square metres of office space, 1000 square metres of retail space, and a public plaza of almost 1000 square metres.
The project would provide a new thoroughfare from Toorak Road to a park known as the South Yarra Siding Reserve.Â
But it is at odds with a plan floated by Stonnington Council at hearings last year into the impacts of the state government's proposed Metro Tunnel, which surfaces in South Yarra near the site.
An Australian Electoral Commission official in May told a Senates estimates hearing that it had launched an investigation into the ownership of the plane used by One Nation during the 2016 federal election campaign.
The investigation came after the ABC's Four Corners uncovered evidence the plane had been bought for One Nation by Mr McNee, but never properly declared.
While Mr McNee owns the company proposing the South Yarra plan, a director and spokesman for the group is architect Bruce Henderson.
He has owned his offices, which are opposite the site, since 1982.
"The crowds back then would be one person crossing at the traffic lights. If I look out my window now there are 60 people trying to cross Toorak Road right now," Mr Henderson said on Thursday.
"This project would give people who use Toorak Road a park off the main street that they could easily get to," he said.
Melbourne has a long and tortured history of building above railway lines, with few proposals moving forward to construction. The most infamous was the decade-long battle by a developer to build a tower above rail lines at Camberwell railway station.
Stonnington Council chief executive Warren Roberts said it wanted to increase its open space, and "if a proposal was appropriate, [we] would consider the land above railways as an opportunity for this".
But he said because the project had only just been submitted to the council it would not be appropriate to comment until the application was considered.