The decision to declare the precinct a Capital City zone triggered a massive hike in land values, a frenzy of high-rise apartment tower applications and approvals, and windfall paper profits to landowners and speculators, among whom were some senior Liberal Party members and donors, including the partys honorary federal treasurer Andrew Burnes.
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At the time there was no binding master plan nor height limits, nor any mechanism to capture any of the uplift in land values money that could have helped pay upfront for the infrastructure and services.
In 2015 a Labor-appointed committee found Mr Guys Fishermans Bend move was unprecedented in the developed world in the 21st century.
Confidential departmental briefs from early 2011 to 2013 revealed how senior bureaucrats had urged Mr Guy to buy key strategic sites before allowing redevelopment of the precinct. But, over 15 months, at the behest of the ministers office, the department gradually dropped its demands.
The Andrews governments Planning Minister, Richard Wynne, later knocked back an application by Fragrance for an 82-level tower on the site, and reversed Mr Guys rule change that allowed the overshadowing of the Yarra.
Despite a Baillieu government ban on fundraising at the time, Mr Guy attended a secret fundraising dinner in 2011 with leading Melbourne developers, some of whom were seeking planning approvals.
When The Age revealed the dinners in 2013, a spokeswoman for Mr Guy said the minister was told that the developers had not paid to attend the dinners.
She stressed that he had rejected some of their planning applications.
Developers and landowners who had tipped thousands of dollars into Liberal Party coffers were among the big winners from Mr Guys opening of green-wedge areas and farmland to development on Melbournes fringe in 2012.
Matthew Guy as opposition leader.Credit:Daniel Pockett
Among those celebrating the expansion of the citys boundary were the owner, the developer and the lobbyist connected to an egg farm known as Brompton Lodge in the City of Casey.
In 2011, The Age revealed that the trio farmer Peter Carpenter, developer Watsons, and lobbyist and former Liberal MP Geoff Leigh were among those poised to share in a $500 million bonanza if the property was rezoned and developed.
At the time Mr Carpenter told The Age he had met Mr Guy, then shadow planning minister, twice at Liberal fundraisers before the 2010 state election.
In August 2017, The Age revealed that Mr Guy had dined on lobster and Grange wine with the alleged boss of the Victorian mafia, Tony Madafferi, and relatives in Victoria in April that year.
Alleged Melbourne mafia boss Tony Madafferi.Credit:Jason South
A Liberal insider had sought to use the dinner to extract donations from Mr Madafferi and his relatives and funnel them into party coffers. Mr Guy insisted he knew nothing about donations.
An invoice was issued by deputy Liberal leader David Hodgett in 2013, directing the developer to place a $10,000 donation into Mr Hodgetts electorate branch account for sponsorship of an industry forum.
In reality the industry forum was an intimate lunch at a private penthouse attended by two developers with Mr Guy and staffers.
Leaked Liberal emails revealed that at the lunch, plans by the developer to progress an inner-Melbourne development were discussed with Mr Guy.
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