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LETTERS ‘Underwhelming’ budget I was interested in what this year’s council budget would look like, especially in light of the state government-imposed 2.5 per cent rates capping initiative coming into full effect. What I saw was little creative thinking and a budget that – for an election year – attempts to not make waves. All this approach does is handball the hard decisions on to the next council and exacerbates the fiscal health of the city. I question the council’s wisdom in gutting the Capital Works Program (building new structures – sports clubs, libraries, playgrounds etc) in favour of ‘asset renewal’ works from $25 million to $15 million. For a municipality nearing 130,000 residents, delaying new or projected public works creates a backlog as public works must keep up with the pace of population growth. The councillors and bureaucrats claim the state government’s mandatory capping initiative is now forcing council ‘to live within its means’ but, ideally, the council should have been living within its means well before the government implemented statewide capping. The fact council faces a $43 million budget shortfall over the next five years is a testament to the lack of longterm planning to prepare for the implementation of rates capping. Despite the numerous public service cuts, there is next to no real reduction in the formal council workforce. The CEO is on public record stating that further “operations” (i.e. services) face the axe in the coming years, but there is no mention of real staff reductions to offset service cuts. This doesn’t make sense. Since when has the Frankston City Council workforce, paid for by the public, been more important than funding public services? The absence of a meaningful strategy to cauterise growing debt in quick fashion is not good fiscal management and this should be a priority but seemingly isn’t. Since the election of this council, every year the council has borrowed millions in loans. To date, the city currently owes $37 million to lenders. If this debt is not addressed, it will impact on future generations;
Protest for refugees COMMUNITY groups including Love Makes A Way, a Christian grassroots protest movement against Australia’s “appalling” treatment of asylum seekers, gathered early on Wednesday morning for a vigil at Frankston train station to mark the release of more than 2000 leaked incident reports from Australia’s detention centre on Nauru. The 2116 reports in the files, more than half involving children, were published by Guardian Australia last week and detail assaults, sexual abuse, self-harm attempts and child abuse in squalid living conditions. Protesters posted large paper dolls at the train station as a symbol of the children held in detention at Nauru. They then made their way to federal Dunkley Liberal MP Chris Crewther’s office to peacefully ask that Australia’s offshore detention centres be immediately shut down. Mr Crewther’s office did not respond before publication to a request asking if he agreed Nauru should be closed. Picture: Gary Sissons and the delivery of services that the public expects and pays for. This year’s budget plays it safe and fails to address some of the more pressing fiscal matters impacting rates and services – it doesn’t seek to boldly dent the city’s burgeoning debt, it doesn’t seek to bolster ‘rainy day’ reserves to cater for budgetary emergencies (such as natural disasters, superannuation payouts, litigation costs etc.), it doesn’t introduce a long-term rates structure plan that forecasts residential rates below the 2.5 per cent mandatory cap, it doesn’t look to sell or lease unused or stagnant council assets to cover increasing costs, it doesn’t increase the production of capital/public works and – frankly - it does not cut enough internal waste such as bloated wages, consultancy fees and discretionary expenditure within the organisation. Kris Bolam, former Frankston mayor
Time for the truth As taxpayers and concerned citizens of the Mornington Peninsula, we would like to know what our government knows about the living
conditions of asylum seekers and refugees on Nauru. We are entitled to be adequately informed because of the threats to the health of these children, families and adults, as well as Australia’s international reputation. Blaming of other organisations is not an acceptable answer. The Labor opposition should also tell us what it intends to do about the situation. It is a bipartisan responsibility requiring urgent action. It is time that the Prime Minister and his ministers act on the intolerable situation in our refugee detention centres. It is time to open these centres to proper public scrutiny and review. And time to settle refugees in Australia to contribute to our economy and community life. Ann and Peter Renkin, Shoreham
Children in danger After watching the last Q&A, on our beloved ABC, it became clear to me that our children’s
future is in great danger from the conspiracy theorists of the ilk of [One Nation senator] Malcolm Roberts. Again we saw an old man playing down and even denying that there is any conceivable danger from climate change to our future. To him and his likes, it is too inconvenient to change their ways of consumption and energy production, to enable future generations to have a reasonable chance of a halve ways decent life on this planet. Thanks Malcolm Turnbull for making it almost inevitable for what I see as crackpots getting a stage to spread their delusional messages. When will he call the next double dissolution of government, seeing this one went so well? Rupert Steiner, Balnarring Beach
Milk’s murky process Murray Goulburn, once a non-profit co-op for dairy farmers, becomes corporatised. Dairy farmers which were the reason for its very existence are placed second to shareholders. Profit becomes the goal as the company loses direction. Global milk prices bottom out. The company in an unprecedented move demands that dairy farmers pay back “excessive” profits for milk which has already been sold as it reduces its prices to rock bottom unsustainable levels. New Zealand dairy company Fonterra follows suite simply “because it can”. As our farmers go out of business, cashed up Chinese corporations buy up our farms to export milk, an absolute food staple, back to China following their own contaminated milk scandal. Meanwhile Murray Goulburn’s former CEO walks away with $10 million. Think what choice this will leave Australian families in future next time you buy a $1 a litre container of home brand milk from supermarkets which also don’t seem to give a damn about our dying industry. How can our politicians let this happen? Austin Sadler, Mornington
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Frankston Times 22 August 2016