Where’s the plan?
The recent surprise announcement by BlueScope for a 65ha (approx 160 acres) logistics hub is not surprising.
Over the past decade or so, residents of Somerville to Hastings have been faced with one industrial proposal after another – eg. the container port and the coal to hydrogen trial project.
There was also the confusing marine industrial tech park consultation – firstly proposed for Somerville, then the Mornington Peninsula Shire put forward two other potential sites in Hastings and Tyabb. After a few years, Sealite obtained approval for Bungower Rd, Somerville.
The current major proposal for Hastings is the Victorian Renewable Energy Terminal. In the meantime, there has been a significant surge of new warehouses, factories, depots and other businesses.
Recent planning approvals for Tyabb (population around 3,500) include a plastics manufacturing plant, a battery energy storage facility and new factories and warehouses. These are in addition to the existing industrial precinct, the concrete plant, the Tyabb Resource Recovery Centre, the airport, and four schools.
Plus, the shire is advocating for the release of surplus port zoned land. It’s all so ad hoc.
Where is the overarching plan for this area? Where will the buffers be between residents and industry? What of protections against the cumulative light and noise pollution for residents and our internationally recognised wetlands of Western Port?
Where is the transport plan? The roads through Somerville and Tyabb are already heavy with B-Double trucks and other vehicles.
The community deserves much better from both state and local governments to ensure peace of mind and retention of the semi-rural atmosphere and historic charm. Protections need to be in place for wildlife and the environment, as well as peace and quiet and liveability. We should be aiming for a family oriented, sustainable and enjoyable place to live while supporting small local businesses.
Louise Page, Tyabb
Hospital reality
With the Nepean by-election approaching, there has been much discussion about the future of Rosebud Hospital. While it is encouraging to see strong interest in improving health services on the peninsula, voters must understand how these decisions are actually made.
Public hospitals in Victoria are funded and approved by the state government through the state budget. A local member of parliament can certainly advocate for upgrades, raise the matter in parliament, and lobby the health minister. Still, they cannot unilaterally promise or deliver a new hospital.
Ultimately, major hospital funding decisions rest with the government of the day.
Advocacy for better services is always welcome, but clarity about who holds the authority to fund and approve such projects is equally important for an informed community discussion.
Anne Kruger, Rye
Liberal promises
Promises,promises. Here we go again, the LNP promising everything,and giving you nothing.
This time they’re promising to renew the Rosebud Hospital. When they were in government, they couldn’t even refurbish one state school, even though the state minister for education was our member.
We’re still waiting for the overpass in Jetty Road that they promised a while back aren’t we?
The LNP don’t like spending money on us. They prefer to keep it in their coffers just in case big business needs a bail out or trying their hand at building a white elephant like the east/west tunnel, remember that?
Remember it cost us a $1b airtight contract pay out to one of their contractors. At the by-election please just think before you fill out your ballot paper.
John Cain, McCrae
Editor’s note: The East/West Project contract was signed by the Liberal Napthine government in 2014, only to be cancelled by the Andrews Labor government in 2015, incurring a $339m termination fee with East West Connect. The Victorian auditor-general reported that the true cost of the project’s cancellation was over $1.1b.
Koala shock
I was shocked at the vitriol on the News’ Facebook page regarding the proposal to limit speed on a 2km section of the Western Port Highway to minimise koala deaths (“Please present all of the ‘damaged koalas’ for examination”, The News 10/3/26). At the slower speed, the time “lost” would be a paltry 30 seconds.
Vehicle damage and injury would also be less likely.
Wildlife speed limits elsewhere show that most Australians are happy to slow down if it means protecting our unique wildlife. For those that aren’t, enforcement is needed. Speed cameras with revenue directed to koala conservation would be appropriate.
Ray Peck, Hawthorn
Sign vandalism
The wildlife sign served two purposes. (Wildlife safety sign vandalised in Boneo, The News 10/3/26).
It provided a warning to drivers that there may be wildlife around so be aware, crashing into a kangaroo is no good for you, your car or the kangaroo. Secondly by providing that warning the wildlife have a greater chance of survival should they venture onto the road.
Essentially nobody is harmed by this sign and in fact the benefits potentially great. So it takes a truly special kind of stupid that would cause someone to vandalise this sign.
I hope they a feeling really proud of themselves demonstrating to world their barely two digit IQ.
Ross Hudson, Mt Martha
Pedestrian risk
I frequently cross the pedestrian crossing Bentons Rd and Nepean Hwy on the Mornington side. Frequently, cars turning right from Bentons Rd do not give way to pedestrians crossing with the green man.
I have had a number of near misses and today three cars followed each other through the intersection as I went to step off the median strip.
Reporting to VicRoads has fallen on deaf ears. Their response was, if concerned, to report unlawful driving to the police with driver details, an impossible task when walking across a busy road. This intersection provides a crossing for many seniors and school children, mums with babies in prams and dog walkers.
It is only a matter of time before someone either dies or is seriously injured. It would not take much to rectify with a red light for turning cars when activated by a pedestrian.
Marg Stephens, Mornington
Go electric
Minister Bowen would be the one person who would welcome the war against Iran by the United States and Israel because it has created a oil/petrol shortage which will support the government’s change to all electric power cars.
Of course the petrol prices are increasing and there is price gouging going on in the honest free market and the government is powerless to stop it.
Australia has around 30 days supply of petroleum products which shows the farce the Australian government is in not having oil refined in Australia.
There is a call for more MPs to be elected in Australia making parliament membership bigger for what? So more members do not sit in parliament and do not read legislation.
Why increase the big bludge at taxpayers expense ?
Russell Morse, Karingal
China focus
Joe Lenzo is not often wrong but this time he’s right, describing China as an industrious, mostly peaceful nation unlike the war-mongering USA and others in his letter (Global alignment, Letters 10/3/26).
China is not a threat to Australia. Of course we should align much more closely with our most important and largest trading partner, we would be utterly mad not to.
China, an industrial, economic and manufacturing giant, has a great deal more to offer Australia than we have to them.
Why doesn’t anybody mention Indonesia, an industrialised nation of 280 million people on our doorstep? They have a different economic system to our broken one, they maintain their autonomy, are completely independent and unlike Australia are lapdogs to nobody.
In a few more decades they will have much more substantial industrial might, power and wealth, much more so than when a powerful Australia had it all before we gave it all away.
We must slowly disentangle ourselves from the USA and progressively engage more with China, Indonesia and the others in our region.
We should never buy the long range atomic submarines whose sole purpose is to assist the American fleet in their wars which have nothing to do with us, or in madness to threaten China.
Instead of gifting tanks to Ukraine we should have sent tractors to Timor.
Brian A Mitchelson, Mornington
Be careful
Recently I exchanged a couple of emails with the Mornington Peninsula Shire’s governance department. At the time I assumed the correspondence was simply between myself and governance. I treated it as a routine exchange where I clarified points and responded in good faith.
Later I discovered that this assumption was wrong. Communications with council officers are not necessarily confined to the individual staff member you are emailing. Emails can be circulated internally, forwarded to other departments, attached to reports or included in official records that may later be relied upon.
In this case the emails eventually came back to bite me. It was almost like I was being set up.
Do not assume that communications with the shire are conversations between you and the person you are communicating with. Unfortunately, it appears that correspondence is shared and sometimes used later in ways you may not anticipate.
Because of that it is wise to approach every email or written communication with a council officer as if it could potentially be read by others within the organisation or included in official files or used against you. Keep that in mind and choose your words carefully to avoid unintended consequences later on.
Joe Lenzo, Safety Beach
BarleyCharlie@Almost90
March 16, 2026. I’m with deceased performer Robert Duval: “You’ve got to keep it within your temperament.”
Stress, the power of superstition, four weeks annual leave, two days work from home, “Please sir “I want more” Oliver Twist?
Add in The Saturday Paper editorial – “It is a pure articulation of the unseriousness that has destroyed the two-party system. Dutton is a particularly bald example, but he is in no way unique. He was trained in a broken machine. He was shaped by John Howard’s shiftiness and by Tony Abbott’s brutality. The last element was Scott Morrison’s astounding emptiness.”
The real bottom line is who to believe, a shadow of a Liberal Party or Labor’s Albanese who clearly swims inside his caged waters.
Littleproud has departed his sinking ship, after seeing to the departure of Sussan Ley, a county boy in favour of shooting (erratically) from his hips. Not forgetting deputy PM Richard Marles, a talkfest, telling us zero, requiring a 2ml serepax to calm his shiftiness.
I’m thinking they (all parties) sit in their Canberra conference rooms and decide to release (in their humble opinions) whatever best serves their followers.
Bitter no, nothing matters, yes. A letter from Bob Hawke, a phone call from Gough Whitlam and a handshake from Pauly Keating.
My thanks to this newspaper, printing most of my letters the past 19 years. And my mighty Magpies for so many pockets of pleasure. Come 22 March, 90 is enough.
To maintain a degree of skeptism, about truth a necessity. And so it goes… “Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home for sending one slowly crackers” [Diogenes]. Not forgetting the wonderful Peggy Lee “If that’s all there is my friends, let’s keep dancing, let’s break out the booze and have a ball, if that’s all there is”.
Cliff Ellen, Rye
