The balance at the heart of Yarra Park is about to be broken

For more than a century and a half, Yarra Park has held two important roles.

It is the green forecourt to the MCG on select event days. Every other day of the year, it is one of inner Melbourne's most-used public parks – the place where apartment-dwellers from East Melbourne, Richmond, Abbotsford, Collingwood, Jolimont and the CBD walk a dog, kick a footy, lay out a picnic rug, or sit under a tree.

That balance has worked. The City of Melbourne's own data shows three-quarters of East Melbourne residents use Yarra Park, with a catchment that reaches well past the East Melbourne boundary. The park’s primary character has been preserved alongside the big events that make Melbourne Melbourne.

But a proposed new Master Plan now sitting with the Minister for Planning for approval would tip that balance for good – opening the door for heritage public parkland to be converted, by stealth, into a semi-permanent corporate event space.

The East Melbourne Group is not against the Grand Final, the Boxing Day Test, or the major concerts the MCG has always hosted. But the reality is these changes would authorise permanent event infrastructure embedded inside the park. New buildings with no maximum size set in the binding document. Underground power and water lines to selected paddocks. Permanent walls and barriers where temporary fencing used to come down after a match. Architectural lighting that extends out from the stadium into the parkland.

It would also change who gets a say in events held in the park. A new permit-exemption pathway would be carved out under rules that have not yet been written. A resident could turn up one morning to walk the dog, and find part of their park fenced off for a corporate event nobody got to comment on.

Temporary structures, put up and packed down for events, have always been part of the park's life. Permanent ones change what the park is.

The way this amendment has reached the Minister is part of the concern too. Submitters have not been allowed to see the final binding document now in front of her. The City of Melbourne asked for residential amenity to be added as a guiding principle. That request was refused.

Once gazetted, the amendment is in the planning scheme. Once permanent infrastructure is built, it does not come out. The Minister should send the amendment back to the department, so the issues submitters have raised can be properly resolved before any sign-off. •