‘No more’ pokies spread - council
Helping hands: Chisholm TAFE students help prepare meals at a new Life-Gate kitchen trailer last month. Picture: Yanni
Breakfast club forms for needy Neil Walker neil@baysidenews.com.au BREAKFAST for the homeless and disadvantaged will be served up at Frankston’s Chisholm TAFE campus after the education institute stepped up to the plate to host a meals service from October. City Life, now known as Frankston Life, will partner with the Frankston Churches Breakfast Club and other providers to dish up meals at Building N of the Frankston campus. City Life and the breakfast club stopped providing meals to the needy in July 2016 before the charity’s leased Clyde Street Mall premises, were demolished to make way for a new apartment building. Frankston Council provided an interim meals service at community centres
but this ended last month. “At Chisholm, we believe in engaging with, and supporting the local community, and are proud to be involved with this initiative,” Chisholm CEO Dr Rick Ede said. Federal Liberal Dunkley MP Chris Crewther said the meals service hosted at Chisholm’s Frankston campus is “the result of many months of hard work that I’ve initiated and coordinated in conjunction with several local passionate organisations and people”. There is no federal or state government funding for the meals served at this stage. State Frankston Labor MP Paul Edbrooke said he also had been involved in talks to bring back a meals service. “It’s really a case of Chisholm being the good guys,” he said. Community breakfasts will be hosted at Chisholm TAFE’s Frankston campus on Monday and Thursday mornings,
7-8am, from 1 October. Frankston mayor Cr Colin Hampton said while council has no direct involvement in the establishment of a breakfast service “we support its progress and look forward to a successful venture”. “Council has had a long-standing commitment to supporting community breakfasts through our grants program,” Cr Hampton said. Mr Crewther thanked Theodora’s Cheerful Givers, Life-Gate Inc, That’s The Thing About Fishing, John Paul College, Community Support Frankston, Frankston Council, the Seaford Housing Action Coalition (SHAC) “and others” for help with the breakfast service. “Once those initial meals are up and running, and we have got the settings right, we will then look to expand upon the meals offered as well as the organisations involved in providing meals at the one location,” he said.
A PLEA to stop any more pokies machines coming to the Frankston area is being made by council to state politicians. Councillors at this month’s public council meeting unanimously decided to write to Labor Premier Daniel Andrews, Liberal opposition leader Matthew Guy and local Labor state MPs Paul Edbrooke (Frankston) and Sonya Kilkenny (Carrum). North-West Ward councillor Glenn Aitken raised a notice of motion at the meeting “requesting a moratorium and/or ban on any further gaming machines in the Frankston municipality”. Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation (VCGLR) statistics show pokies losses have averaged about $62 million each year for the past three financial years. There are nine pokies venues in the Frankston municipality and 519 electronic gaming machines, according to the VCGLR figures. Cr Aitken said pokies are “worse” than other forms of gambling such as horse and greyhound race betting and lamented “damage done” by the machines. “They are quite addictive and they’re designed to be addictive,” he said. “It really attracts people who are vulnerable to that type of gambling and it really destroys communities. It’s really very sad.” Council will seek a letter of support from the Alliance for Gambling
Reform, a group that lobbies all sides of politics to “reduce the harm” gambling causes. Alliance director Reverend Tim Costello, chief advocate of World Vision Australia, coincidentally told councillors he has moved to Frankston this year. The new Frankston resident addressed councillors at the June public council meeting and said state governments reap billions of dollars in revenue from pokies yet “councils get left to clean up a lot of the damage”. Mr Costello said individuals who become pokies addicts are often blamed by some for taking responsibility for their gambling. “We never blame the machine. The machine is built for addiction.” The alliance has asked Frankston Council to join the Alliance for Gambling Reform as a group partner at a cost of $25,000 to ratepayers. Neighbouring Kingston and Mornington Peninsula Shire councils are listed as alliance leaders on the group’s website. Neil Walker
Clarification AN article last week “Animal rescuers fee free” (The Times, 9/7/18) omitted to report registration fees are not payable for animals adopted from pounds for the first year only. Frankston municipality residents who adopt an animal from a pound after 2 July 2018 are eligible to have the first year fees waived.
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