Melbourne, Oct 27 (IANS): Australia's Victoria state is demanding that "cowboy" developers who demolished one of Melbourne's oldest buildings without a permit to rebuild the structure.
The 159-year-old Corkman Irish pub in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Carlton was demolished in mid-October despite a local council issuing workers on the site with a stop-work order, Xinhua news agency reported.
Richard Wynne, Victoria's minister for planning, confirmed that both he and the City of Melbourne council would launch legal action against the developers of the site, Stefce Kutlesovski and Raman Shaqiri.
Wynne said he would take Kutlesovski and Shaqiri to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) to compel the owners to rebuild in line with the "design, scale and layout" of the original building.
"It has been a wilful and illegal destruction of Victorian heritage which can't be tolerated," Wynne said on Thursday.