Western Port
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23 August 2016
Your guide to what’s on this weekend for peninsula families
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Tuesday 23 August 2016
5973 6424 or email: team@mpnews.com.au www.mpnews.com.au Looking good: St Joseph’s pupil Madison Cruickshank, right, tries on a helicopter pilot’s helmet during the Navy 723 Squadron visit to Cyril Fox Reserve, Crib Point. Left, Sub Lieutenant Frank Tachibana (right), Lieutenant Tristram Gleeson (centre) and Sub Lieutenant Olie Bohling fielding questions from Crib Point Primary pupils.
‘Bird’ goes to school HMAS Cerberus teamed up with Crib Point Primary, St Joseph’s Primary and Perseverance Primary, French Island, on Friday to give 300 pupils a practical insight into flight as part of Science Week. The pupils inspected the Navy Bell 429 helicopter and met its crew at Cyril Fox Reserve, Crib Point – directly behind St Joseph’s. School competitions all week, and the screening of the movie Paper Planes, added to the excitement of learning and discovery. The Navy 723 Squadron operates Bell 429 Global Rangers and AS-350BA Squirrel helicopters for air-crew training, all-round duties and to support air capable ships. “The squadron and aircrew were happy to help inspire young minds by showing them their bird in action,” Crib Point Primary School principal Tina Coumbe said.
Reprieve for councils facing the sack Keith Platt keith@mpnews.com.au MUNICIPAL officers have been accused of blunders and mistakes that have seen councillors across the state fail to fulfil a state government directive to adopt a new code of conduct. The government last week was forced to take urgent legislative action to avoid sacking 13 councils and standing down nine individual councillors after a report from the Local Governance Investigations and Compliance Inspectorate.
The report listed Frankston as one of the councils that failed to meet the signing deadline and Mornington Peninsula Shire councillor Hugh Fraser faced being stood down for adding “signed under protest” to his signature. “I signed off on the new code of conduct in front of the CEO Carl Cowie as required and within time. I have had no contact from them as to a problem - which I would have thought to have been a courtesy if there was a problem, which there is not,” Cr Fraser told The News in an email last Wednesday. “As you know, I together with the mayor Cr Graham Pittock, Cr Tim
Rodgers and Cr Tim Wood QC voted against council adopting this code of conduct. It contained a number of irregular, to say the least, clauses as to delegates, confidentiality, and no criticism clauses inserted by management and councillors which limit what councillors can say, discuss and do.” Cr Fraser, a barrister, believes the code of conduct will restrict his input to the shire's Audit Committee. Frankston MP Paul Edbrooke told parliament on Thursday that the Acting Local Government Minister Richard Wynne “blamed administrative blunders and incompetence in council
administration and said they had failed in their duties”. Shire CEO Carl Cowie did not respond to requests for comment from The News. Among the 10-page list of expectations and behaviours, the code adopted by the shire makes it punishable for councillors to divulge confidential information, accept gifts other than of “token value”, “malign” other councillors for their decisions, and use council resources such as mobile phones and cars, for personal use. The code backs up state government reforms introduced last year to deal
with rogue councillors, who will now face an independent conduct panel that can impose six-month suspensions. After the meeting in June Cr Fraser said the council was trying to push through changes before the deadline, calling the draft put up by management a “scissors and paste” job, inconsistent with the Local Government Act. Cr Fraser said the act already contained confidentiality clauses to promote transparent council business, but that the revised code of conduct departed from this and would prevent debate. Continued Page 8
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