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Wednesday 21 February 2024
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JPs on hand to meet demand
Willing witnesses: Justices of the peace at Rosebud police station Rex Griffin, Marree Williams, Terry Walsh, Kit Hauptmann, Senior Sergeant Jason Iles, Eric Sangwell and Acting Sergeant N Burgess. Picture: Yanni
MORE Justice of the Peace services will be provided at Rosebud and Rye. Volunteer JP coordinator Kit Hauptmann said JP hours would be extended at Rosebud police station and a new service to start at the Rye Community House. Hauptmann said that starting in March there would be JPs at the Rosebud police station for an extra two hours from 4pm to 6pm on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month. The new JP signing service would begin at Rye Community House from 11.30am to 1.30pm on the first Friday of each month. “Our current commitment of three hours, two days a week, Monday and Thursday from 11am to 2pm, at the Rosebud police station still stands,” Hauptmann said. Hauptmann said it was essential that in today’s hectic, device-dominated lives that a justice of the peace was available at a known, regularly staffed, accessible venue to help people deal with the large volume of paperwork that must be witnessed and signed in a timely and efficient manner. “The additional lunch time hours at Rye will be an advantage to citizens whom, for many reasons, may not wish to go to a police station signing centre.”
Wards new names, new boundaries Keith Platt keith@mpnews.com.au NEW boundaries and nine new names have been announced for 11 singlecouncillor wards on the Mornington Peninsula. The changes will be used in the October council elections and replace the existing six wards, three of which have more than one councillor. The names of the shire’s 11 wards are Beek Beek, Benbenjie, Briars, Brokil, Coolart, Kackeraboite, Moorooduc, Nepean, Tanti, Tootgarook and Warringine. Briars and Nepean are the only
existing wards to retain their names, although each will be reduced in size and represented by one councillor. Briars ward currently has three councillors and Nepean two. The panel rejected changing Briars to Tichingorourke Ward and Nepean to Monmar. Ward names to be dropped are Cerberus, Red Hill, Seawinds and Watson. Six of the new ward names were on a list of 15 suggested by the shire. The changes to the municipal structure were announced in a December report by a three-person electoral structure review panel appointed last year by the Local Government Minis-
ter Melissa Horne. The panel said it decided the peninsula should continue to be represented by 11 councillors after considering the size and shape of wards along with the number of candidates who had contested past elections, incidences of uncontested elections and rates of informal voting. The panel said it had suggested Aboriginal ward names if it was the name of a place within a ward; the name was commonly used; and if it was registered under the Geographic Place Names Act 1998. The report said Cr Steve Holland had told a panel hearing last November that he believed reducing
the number of councillors from 11 to nine would save money and “allow equitable representation” throughout the shire. The panel said it found “no justifiable benefits in any nine singlecouncillor ward models to offset this increased [councillor] workload”. However, the panel had “agreed with the suggestion made by Cr Holland to simplify the names of wards based on significant features within wards”. Along with the new ward names and boundaries have come claims that the results may be subject to gerrymander, or manipulation, by political parties. “The result is a gerrymander be-
cause it is not based on the democratic, well established in Australia, system of only having a plus or minus deviation of 10 per cent to keep electoral areas as close as possible to even numbers,” Red Hill Ward’s Cr David Gill said. “My geographical area went up by nearly 10 per cent. It was 50 per cent of the shire, it’s now 60 per cent. “I believe only having [the local governmenr minister] in charge of electoral boundaries for local government leads to the possibility of the first political gerrymander in Australian history.” Aboriginal name for youth hub. Page 3
