NEWS DESK
Sustainable lingo rewarded IT WAS a small gallery that gathered at the shire’s Rosebud bunker for the council meeting of Tuesday evening, 15 March. And a diminished roll call of councillors: Anne Shaw and Andrew Dixon had been felled by ’flu; Lynn Bowden was also an apology. It was the day after the Labor Day public holiday and the festive feeling lingered. Fred Crump of Mornington had brought his kite, in the shape of an eagle, that had soared recently at the Rosebud kite festival. And he brought a question. Shire tree planting in Mornington Park, including a banksia that had been moved just a couple of metres, had been an unmitigated failure. Nearly all had died. When would the shire hire “proper qualified tree doctors”, he wanted to know. Responding, shire chief operating officer Alison Leighton said this was disappointing. “Council has recently instructed our contractors to increase the frequency of watering trees, particularly in the Mornington area,” she said. The shire needs its gadflies, its Fred Crumps, defenders of their communities. A little later we were given a glimpse of how shire officers prepare applications for state government grants – their strategy, if you like, to use a favoured bureaucratic term. It is bureaucrats versus bureaucrats. A word of explanation. In the shire’s reorganisational turmoil over more than a year, the word “sustainable” has been pitched in the bin. We are no longer “committed to a sustainable peninsula”. Our executive team is no longer labelled director of “sustainable” this or that. It was meaningless white noise. Good riddance.
So when Rita Kontos presented the Sustainable Transport Strategy (2015-2020) for adoption, Cr Tim Rodgers pounced. “Sustainable” must go, he grumbled. Ms Kontos, the shire’s “sustainable” transport project coordinator (a title CW confidently predicts will soon change), defended stoutly, if wordily, and ultimately successfully against the formidable Tim Rodgers-Hugh Fraser tag team. It boiled down to this: when applying for state or other government funding, you play their game. If “sustainable” is part of their lingo, and your funding application might get knocked back if you don’t use the word, bung it in, at every possible opportunity. And, as Ms Kontos explained, there are several transport “strategies” – known to to plain folk as “plans” – each with its own meaning. The common or garden “transport strategy” differs from the “integrated transport strategy”, which contains far more transport elements than the “active transport strategy”. There’s one more, which I must mention here, at peril of causing readers’ brains to explode. It is, of course Ms Kontas’s “sustainable transport strategy”, which incorporates “active transport” (cycling and walking), community, public transport, ride sharing and any other identified sustainable modes of transport. Stay with me, Dear Reader. We have
now arrived at the gist, the nub, the denouement, of the tale. Here is the crucial exchange, verbatim: Cr Fraser: Have the department actually made it plain that you have to use the word “sustainable” in the title or is it simply that it’s obvious from the contents of the document itself? Ms Kontos: The funding that will be made available will be made available for active and sustainable transport projects. Naming it anything else when in fact it is mainly focused on sustainable transport projects would not be a reflection of what the document actually is. Cr Fraser: So what you’re able to confirm to me is that the government criteria specified for funding, if we should seek it, requires a reference to how it’s sustainable. Ms Kontos: It may not require the term sustainable to be mentioned. However, the funding will be made available for sustainable transport strategies. So I think we would be better placed if we had the name kept as it is so that we can confidently apply for this grant without necessarily making an excuses or a long description of why it’s not called a sustainable transport strategy. This makes perfect sense to devotees of “Yes, Minister”. CW feels a certain sympathy and admiration for shire officers who speak one language outside their work hours and another when they enter the shire portals. It is said one only truly speaks a second language when one dreams in it. Do shire officers dream in bureaucratese? David Harrison
Sorting time: Mt Eliza Rotarians Carolyn Such, Linda Morris, Judy Thompson and Janet Richards sort through items for their club’s annual garage sale being held at the Peninsula School on Saturday 2 April. Picture: Yanni
Boomer times help stock garage sale DOWNSIZING baby boomers are among the main contributors of items for this year’s Rotary Club of Mt Eliza’s garage sale. The club has been collecting and sorting goods for the past three months for next month’s sale of collectible items, including artworks, books, bric-a-brac, furniture, kitchen ware, plants, pots, tools, sporting goods, toys and games, CDs and DVDs and second hand clothes. Breakfast and coffee will also be available. The annual garage sale is one of the club’s main ways of raising money for Rotary programs, many of which are community based. The garage sale will be held 8am-3pm Saturday 2 April at the Peninsula School, Wooralla Drive, Mt Eliza (entrance gate 2, Melway 105 F/G4).
LETTERS Continued from Page 20 I would suggest our prime minister have another cabinet reshuffle before he dares and calls a double dissolution election, because I don’t believe Greg Hunt is up to run the portfolio he has held for far too long. Rupert Steiner, Balnarring Beach
Suicide alarm The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures on suicide show this is a national calamity. On the Lifeline Facebook page was reference to the trending up of male suicide figures since 2005 to three quarters of the total, representing 41.5 men a week. The Age had a front page heading mentioning the 12 per cent increase in suicides of younger women (that men were 75 per cent of the total was mentioned on page seven). Suicide Prevention Australia has described suicide as a “human behaviour - a response to unbearable psychological pain”. Lifeline CEO, Pete Schmigel stated: “Devastating is the only way to describe the increase in deaths by
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suicide in Australia”. Jasmin Newman writes on Facebook that “systems and structures should be working with men, not against them, family court, child support agencies, family violence, and child protective services, and of course financial ruin, homelessness, and helplessness, when they feel everything is taken away from them”. It is time we all realised the huge deficit in management of suicide completions. Tony Nicholl, Mt Eliza
Independent preferences The push for “senate election voting reform” is nothing more than a big push by the political mafia (Greens, Coalition, and Labor) to control our democratic process and enhance their positions of power without restraint. The candidates that get elected as independents are the only thing saving us from total domination by the political mafia. We need people like Ricky Muir to balance the power. From what I hear he is doing a great job representing his constituency, better than any of the political mafia in
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Southern Peninsula News 22 March 2016
the past. Jacqui Lambie is also doing a great job in looking after us. How do I know? Because I follow her and what she is doing. Both Ricky and Jacqui are outside-the-box thinkers. We need these independents to save us from the political mafia. Joe Lenzo, Safety Beach
Unlock the beach A few weeks ago I visited Blairgowrie beach, as I often do for a walk on the pier and along the sand. I parked as usual in the public car park above the beach and walked down the “Public access to beach” steps. Two things I noticed immediately: there was loud music on loudspeakers and commentary on some sort of competition coming from the Blairgowrie Yacht Squadron which spoilt a beautiful Sunday morning. The other thing was that there was no access from one side of the beach to the other. There is a new concrete boat ramp and separate concrete pier which effectively blocks
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walkers and beachgoers coming down the steps from the car park. At the bottom of the steps in front of Scott’s Shed there is a chain wire fence and a padlocked gate. Why is there a locked gate on the beach? To get to the other side of the beach I had to duck down low and walk under the new concrete boat ramp and refurbished pier. It was lucky the tide was out, otherwise I would have been stuck on the Camerons Bight side of the beach. I was not the only beachgoer that day who was frustrated by the locked gate at the bottom of the carpark steps. The gate and fence should be removed so we can all walk freely along Blairgowrie beach. Coral Ware, Rye Letters to the editor can be sent to The News, PO Box 588, Hastings 3915 or emailed to: team@mpnews.com.au Letters should be kept to a maximum 300 words and include name, address and contact phone number for verification purposes.