18 March 2026

How we engaged

To reach a diverse-cross session of the community across the Maribyrnong River Catchment, we delivered a mix of online and in-person activities:

4 community drop‑in events

with 60+ attendees

3 Community Partnership Panels

with 44 members

9 small group discussions

with 35+ attendees

120+ surveys completed
10+ additional submissions

via email and written feedback

Options Map: 160 contributions

across ~50 conceptual options

Let’s Talk website

13,700+ views

Social media campaign:

1.3M+ impressions

13,000+ letters distributed

What we heard

Phase 2 of engagement provided valuable insights about community perspectives on the Evaluation Criteria, long-list and engagement process.

Community and stakeholder sentiment about the Evaluation Criteria was mixed.

  • We received a high number of comments on how the categories in the Criteria had been ranked, especially the relative importance of Safety, Property and Value for Money
  • Feedback recommended that some of the language needed to be improved to help with clarity, especially terms like favourable and unfavourable
  • We received a significant amount of feedback from Kensington Banks residents, asking for the Criteria to reflect local risk, past commitments and issues raised in the Victorian Ombudsman report.

Overall, the feedback about the long-list of mitigation options highlighted:

  • Clear recognition among community members and stakeholders of trade‑offs between risk reduction, cost, timing, environmental impacts, amenity and feasibility
  • We received the most feedback on the following categories of mitigation options:
    • 91% of feedback received about retarding basins agreed with their broad locations
    • Strong positive feedback about nature‑based solutions particularly in relation to environmental benefits
    • Community feedback about levees highlighted concerns about visual/amenity impacts and potential impacts downstream
    • Mixed feedback about multifunctional storage areas with impacts to recreation raised as a key concern
  • Some categories (e.g. alterations to bridges) drew questions about effectiveness and practicality
  • Community asked for more information about certain emerging or excluded options (e.g. Tidal Barrage and Flemington Racecourse storage).

The survey results from the engagement events showed strong satisfaction:

  • 100% found participation and access easy or very easy
  • 92% rated events good or excellent
  • 70% found materials easy to understand.

What’s next

We’re grateful for the valuable feedback we received. Our thanks to everyone who took the time to contribute their ideas and insights in Phase 2.

Feedback about the Evaluation Criteria and the long-list is being considered by the study team as we move into Phase 3, which will include refining the long-list of options into a shortlist.

Your feedback about the engagement process is helping inform our plans for delivering community engagement in Phase 3, which we plan on delivering within the next 3 months. This will involve:

  • commencing the next phase of community engagement
  • sharing an updated version of the Evaluation Criteria
  • sharing the shortlist and schemes of flood mitigation options for feedback.

We will continue to keep community members and stakeholders updated via the Let’s Talk website. Please select ‘follow’ at the top of the page to be kept up-to-date on the progress of this project.

Share your feedback

Please complete our engagement survey to help us understand any areas for improvement or change as we plan for Phase 3.

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