Flat out questioning waste charge without service
Mornington Peninsula Shire Council has announced a significant increase in rubbish collection charges.
I live in an apartment building where the shire refuses to collect both domestic garbage and recyclables. Apparently this is because there is insufficient kerb space to accommodate the number of bins. Consequently, we have to employ a private contractor to carry out this task from our basement.
This all sounds fair enough until you consider that we are still charged the full waste services charge in our rates. I understand that the charge also contributes to other services such as street and beach cleaning. My guess is that the garbage collection and disposal component is the largest share of the charge, yet we get no relief from the full charge.
Direct contact with the shire has provided no satisfactory answer. Presumably, there are many other residential buildings such as ours being charged for a non-existent service. What private company could charge us for something it doesn’t provide?
Colin Mason, Mornington
Neglected beach
It is such a shame that Fisherman’s Beach, Mornington is being totally neglected. Having spoken to Mornington Peninsula Shire Council many times (as I know many people have) the southern end ramp path down there has been somewhat fixed.
A huge bump across the path is still there from the January floods (such a trip hazard) and I’m not sure why the workers don’t seem to see this. The wooden retaining walls are leaning over even though the northern end of the beach with the concrete wall is fine.
Having spoken to the council engineer his answer was they can’t fix global warming and it needs more consultation from various parties.
As it has been collapsing for a couple of years now are they just waiting for total disaster and then they can say “told you so”?
We Bay Belles swim there every day and I asked when we could expect a toilet upgrade, just a bit of a roof would be good as we swim even when it’s raining. Engineer’s response: “we can’t cater for 20 women anyway”.
I would have thought that we are out there staying healthy and connected, which is a big plus to our local society.
Jini Green, Mornington
Save the koala
We Aussies love our koalas and other unique wildlife. Sadly, however, Australia has the terrible title of the world’s mammal extinction capital.
As our climate warms and koala habitat is increasingly threatened, there is no doubt that we must protect and advocate for koalas and all native Australian species. I therefore applaud the Mornington Peninsula Koala Conservation group which has helped form Koala Alliance Victoria (“Alliance to protect Koalas” The News, 9/5/23). Although it is pleasing that there is finally a new Victorian koala management strategy, with koalas in Queensland and NSW suffering terrible declines due to disease, heat stress and habitat loss, it seems imperative that governments are held to account, and more is done to conserve and protect the Victorian koala population before it is too late.
Federally, reform of the outdated and ineffective Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act cannot come soon enough.
Amy Hiller, Kew
Time for a Voice
Anyone who has exposed themselves to one iota of the real history of how our First Nations people have been treated over the past 235 years – threatened, killed, dispossessed of land and access to food, dispossessed of culture, spirituality and language, enslaved, disempowered, racially profiled, children and women stolen, families fragmented, abused, quarantined, imprisoned – will understand the need for change.
Our Aboriginal heritage in this country has a very long and proud history of civilisation, cooperation and sustainability. The current prison and youth justice statistics are just one small, but very tragic, indicator of the ongoing culmination of unrelenting harm that has been inflicted since colonisation.
If anyone takes the time to actually read the Statement from the Heart (which has been overwhelmingly endorsed by First Nations people), it becomes crystal clear that The Voice is not about turning the tables to oppress the non-Indigenous residents of Australia. It is merely about taking a clear step towards that which is so evidently right and just, and a claiming with pride of our true identity as a nation. It is time.
Lynne Alexandra, Tyabb
Voice here already
As a believer in democracy, I have been relieved to read reports in other newspapers that support for the proposal that a racial minority of citizens be given constitutionally guaranteed publicly funded special access to the government and the executive is declining.
Perhaps people are realising that a minority capable of getting the federal government and all of the state governments to seek to give them special political privileges already has a “Voice”, and a powerful one at that.
Albert Riley, Mornington
Everyone can vote
I would appreciate someone from the pro Voice campaign explaining to me how giving special Voice powers to an ill-defined group loosely based on race is not the very definition of apartheid? Secondly, does this special group have another input to government outside of the ballot box? This totally defies the founding principal of democracy as one person one vote regardless of race, ancestry and religion.
These are two very simple questions which can simply be answered Yes/No. All the other arguments presented to date are full of words, waffle and feelings, very short on any facts.
My current understanding part of being an Australian is to be against apartheid and for one vote one person. Democracy.
Stefan Borzecki, Somerville
Unfounded fears
The Solicitor General Stephen Donaghue recently ruled that the Voice to Parliament would enhance Australia’s system of representative government and that the proposed wording of the amendment to enshrine the Voice posed no threat to Australia’s system of government. This should clarify concerns raised about a new “wheel of power” creating problems for our democratic processes (“Constitutional imbalance” Letters 16/5/23).
Legal concerns about the Voice have also been dismissed by an eminent group of former judges and constitutional experts as well as major law firms.
Unfortunately, the letter asserts the Voice will be a “compliance” advisory body. Incorrect – it is to be an advisory body only. The only obligation will be to listen to the views of First Nations people.
Maureen Donelly, Mornington
Elders should speak
Before I can make any clear decision on the Voice proposal, I need three questions answered: 1 Eligibility. 2 Aim. 3 Legal ramifications.
So, let’s look at eligibility first. If the prime minister’s launch of the final wording is a blueprint, then I have a problem. Of the 18 odd people on the stage, only one (Pat Dodson) was recognisable as a First Nations person.
Having visited remote communities across the Nullarbor Plain, in the Kimberley, in central Australia, outback NSW and north as far as Cooktown, I can tell you the people making the most noise about the Voice are not the ones whose lives have been ruined by grog and abuse.
My grandmother’s parents were both born in Germany, so does that give me the right to advise the German government? Of course not.
We have paled skinned Australian cricketers calling Australia Day a day of mourning and a federal senator running around with a feather in her hair as if she has her First Nation countries mixed up. How about we hear from remote community elders before making any decision, not their inner city paled skinned cousins.
Michael Free, Mount Martha
Informative ‘protest’
As a Mornington local I stumbled across an activity at Mornington Park on Mother’s Day (“Shire investigates park protest” The News 16/5/23).
My curiosity led me to the so-called protest site. There was no sign of dissent, riot nor demonstration (pictured above).
What I observed were many families and individuals in respectful silence and, in some instances, having a calm and mature discussion with organisers of the event, probably volunteers.
I suggest you thoroughly research the information conveyed on the signs displayed along the pathways. My initial question to you is what has become of empathy, respect, objectivity, critical thinking and humanity in our society?
I did ask questions of a volunteer of the event, and I simply couldn’t fault their responses: Firstly, the premise behind vaccine mandates related to transmission of the virus. The updated science has concluded there is no difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated persons. Numerous employees (police, nurses, medical professionals, council and state government employees, the list goes on) were terminated, careers extinguished and alienated from the community. Furthermore, families, friends and work colleagues have been separated.
I cannot disagree with the above.
Secondly, it was outlined to me that there are thousands of vaccine-injured Australians who continue to wait for processing of their compensation claims. Furthermore, the vaccine injured are rarely acknowledged within the broader community. To add insult, they are labelled “anti-vax”.
I thank the event volunteer who offered their time to enlighten me on the above.
Aldo Taranto, Mornington
Waiting for answers
Frankston MP Paul Edbrooke doesn’t like answering questions on investment, affordable housing and tourist creations activities.
I wrote to him before the election on the issue of high-rise student accommodation to elevate the shortage of housing.
Student type accommodation for renters can also bring down the cost of rents and house more people than the current one-storey social housing town houses which Housing Victoria rents out, which means more numbers being housed on the same size properties.
The Menzies government started a policy to house all Australians with high-rise units, which worked, and the slums of Melbourne were removed.
There must be high-rise units to alleviate the housing shortage, which is common sense.
I put to Edbrooke a suggestion for a steam train to Stony Point, a Ferry to French Island and bike tracks to attract tourists also a lift for Kananook station for train users to make it easier to leave the station platform.
Frankston has to accept the fact that there will be high-rises in Frankston as part of the immigration policies which are creating the housing shortage.
I await Edbrooke’s answers.
Russell Morse, Karingal
The Herd brainwashed
Egalitarian. It has a ring to it, though in reality a form of brainwashing; we the members of the herd.
Writer’s Festivals everywhere, one up the road at Sorrento. Not so much the writers, more the audience?
King Charlie’s coronation: “A historic event of enormous significance.” said [the prime minister] Anthony Albanese, pragmatist extraordinaire; enormous significance? Says our pragmatist on Julian [Assange] “I share the frustration”, [Libera; leader Peter] Dutton also says it’s time, but he will say anything to be noticed.
And then the budget surplus, merely a book figure, likely the best before the next election with rising interest rates threatening a credit squeeze/depression, not to mention the climate change reality. Add in spending on football grounds (with roofs) down south to bite his pragmatism backside.
Is anybody keeping count as to the number of times Albanese has mentioned his tough childhood, one similar to mine and thousands of others in similar situations, unaware of this hardship, no television back then, where is Toorak? Time he stopped that nonsense and counted his blessings, namely opposition leaders, Peter Dutton and Adam Bandt.
JobKeeper a whopping $2.86 a day, mini welfare payments, a drip in an Olympic pool. On the brighter side, no more Robodebt, sports rorts and $38 billion in JobKeeper payments to (perhaps) crooked businesses.
Cliff Ellen, Rye
End abattoir cruelty
The latest Department of Agriculture report on live export violations found non-compliance issues at seven slaughterhouses in Indonesia, to which Australian cattle are sent. But this review only happened after a PETA Asia investigation in June 2021 showing ineffectual or non-existent stunning, torture with steel rods or by breaking the animals’ tails, and steers still struggling up to 12 minutes after their throats were cut.
The largely ineffectual efforts of regulators only ever happen after PETA and other animal activists risk life and freedom to attain evidence.
ESCAS, the Australian regulatory system, was implemented 12 years ago, after the industry was too briefly shut down following revelations of horrors on Four Corners. ESCAS is supposed to be about detecting and stopping such abuses, but it is clear that exporters and abattoirs still either don’t understand the regulations or don’t bother to follow them because there are no meaningful consequences for non-compliance.
Waiting for the industry to take actions inimical to its own profits is pointless. The only way to stop these appalling cruelties is to ban live exports immediately.
Desmond Bellamy, special projects coordinator PETA Australia
First published in the Mornington News – 23rd May 2023
