Government has abandoned heritage listed Flinders Pier
Further to Sarah Halfpenny’s article about the cessation of works on Flinders Pier by Parks Victoria (Flinders Pier works halted as funding runs dry, The News 28/4/26), what is it about a state government department that can stop work, without notice to the local community, demolish a Heritage listed pier and leave new expensive timber work in the water without support?
A weak reason, without evidence, that they have “run out of money” rings hollow when, in the same breath, they announce a tender to be put for the multi-million dollar repair to St Leonards Pier and even the Portsea pier
Does this mean the government is going to start projects to keep the locals happy and abandon them when it all gets too hard?
And weren’t there many different consultant reports etc to determine the extent of the works needed?
We saved our pier and now need to save our history and ensure that the job is completed.
Mary Iles, Flinders
Pedestrian safety
It is good to see that in the 2025 Australasian College of Road Safety Awards that the Excellence in Road Safety Award recognised the Mornington Peninsula Shire for pioneering rural compact roundabouts, delivering low-cost, life-saving infrastructure.
It would be even better if the shire were just as proficient in considering the safety of pedestrians in its coastal villages and on rural roads. This is a matter that I raised with various shire officers over a period because a friend of mine, who is a stickler for the rules was hit by a 4WD from behind and was injured. The driver of 4WD did not stop.
My friend erroneously thought that walking on the left with the traffic was “the rule”.
In raising this with shire officers I suggested an article in “Peninsula Wide” or other publications might help educate residents. This hasn’t happened.
My local councillor, Michael Stephens, was most supportive and we had several e-mails and conversations which included how the shire could deploy some educative signage as well.
One of the traffic and transport engineers said, “I understand your concern that more awareness needs to be created among people about this rule”.
If this has happened the message has not reached the wider community as in my walks as I see people walking with the traffic frequently. On occasions I get to talk with those people and tell them of my friend’s injury and often get thanked for my concern for them.
In an email a shire officer suggested that I should write to the editor of the local paper. They certainly get that the “Mornington Peninsula News Group has been fighting for the community since 2006”, so here’s hoping there is some action on this issue before someone else gets injured.
Don Juniper, Bittern
Good news for Monmar
Many Victorians have fond memories of exploring Point Nepean, but few know its deep significance to the Bunurong, its First People.
According to the Bunurong Land Council Aboriginal Corporation, Monmar (Point Nepean) is among the peninsula’s most sacred sites, the traditional lands of the Burin’yong Bulluk clan.
So it was heartening to read that the new Education Field Station, funded by Melbourne and Monash universities and the federal government, will focus not only on climate science and coastal environments, but also cultural heritage (New research and cultural education centre set to open at Point Nepean, The News 5/5/26).
In the tens of thousands of years the Bunurong have inhabited Monmar, sea levels have risen more than 100 metres since the last ice age 20,000 years ago. Now, with global warming heading towards 2–3°C, scientists warn the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets may pass a tipping point of irreversible collapse.
The National Climate Risk Assessment projects sea levels could rise by more than half a metre by 2050 at 3°C warming, affecting 1.5 million Australians living on the coast. A La Trobe University study also found rising seas and erosion threaten hundreds of registered Aboriginal sites along Victoria’s coastline.
It would be wonderful if the new Education Field Station raises community awareness and protection levels for this unique First Nations cultural site on our doorsteps.
Ray Peck, Hawthorn
By-election reflection
Following the recent by-election result, I find myself reflecting not only on the outcome but on the conversations that led up to it.
In the weeks prior, I heard more than one declared Liberal voter insist they would be changing their vote this time.
Yet, when it came to the ballot, at least one such person I know did exactly the opposite.
It raises a broader question about how much faith we can place in what people say during election periods, and whether some are more comfortable expressing discontent than acting on it.
At the same time, I am increasingly frustrated by the renewed calls to rebuild Rosebud Hospital, particularly from those now out of government.
Even the current state government, despite its spending priorities, has not deemed a new hospital a viable project.
So how is it that the opposition can so confidently promise what was previously considered unachievable?
We cannot ignore the reality that major infrastructure is delivered by the government of the day.
Promising otherwise may be politically convenient, but it risks raising expectations that cannot be met.
At some point, we need to stop such nonsense and have a more honest conversation about priorities, funding, and what is realistically possible for our community.
Anne Kruger, Rye
By-election result
Well we’ve made our bed with the same old sheets – this time with a slightly faded Trumpy pattern on them – and now we have to lie in it.
Old habits die hard, apart from one daring, creative and productive anomaly with Chris Brayne.
I guess we’ll find it’s true that if you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got! Which is not much for the peninsula.
I look forward with anticipation and interest to seeing Anthony Marsh rebuilding Rosebud Hospital single-handedly.
Paula Polson, Dromana
Turning off the tap
The recent Nepean by-election results should be a wake-up call for every resident on the peninsula. We are being told by the political class that the only solution to the housing crisis is to “build more,” yet this logic is fundamentally broken.
We are currently in a cycle of importing record numbers of people to build houses for the very volume of people being imported. It is a circular, “Big Australia” model that fuels the interests of big-business donors and the banks while ignoring the reality on the ground. It is simple common sense: it is significantly easier and faster to “turn off the tap” of record-high migration intake than it is to keep throwing “towels” at the problem by trying to out-build the demand.
Families are already going backwards in this per-capita recession. Homelessness on the Peninsula is at record highs, while our own kids – who should be the ones being trained in trades to build our future -are being priced out of the towns they grew up in.
Working people need to ask: who is actually looking after them? The major parties are fixated on high-growth models that satisfy their corporate donors, while the Greens and various independents seem more interested in pushing niche agendas than the economic survival of the average Australian family.
With the general state election on November 28, the status quo is on notice. Between now and then, every candidate needs to be prepared to answer: are you here to serve the big-business growth machine, or are you actually going to put Australian families first and pull the economic levers that matter?
B. Parker, Mornington
Young paying for old
Last week Cameron Brown wrote: “old people should finance themselves rather than using young people’s income tax” (Aged cost shifting, Letters 5/5/26).
Basic maths: at whatever age, if the medium health fund rebate is removed a $4,400pa cost will increase to $6,400, this amount will drive an estimated 44,000 people back to public health adding $24m that needs funding from income tax.
The $4,000 cost is 9% of a couple’s annual aged pension if it increases to $6000 it becomes an unsustainable 15% of their pension. Estimates indicate if the full $2000 rebate is removed the number of people cancelling private health could double; others moving to lower cost options using it in conjunction the public health.
I assume Brown is still working, paying income tax and struggling with the cost of living; a common story for Australians bought upon us by all levels of inept governance.
And the immediate future does not look inspiring. The current federal government is trying to replace the $9b overspent by the NDIS due to incompetent management in an area much needed. Unfortunately, most of the $9b has been incorrectly distributed to people who prey on government schemes.
Our history, people over 70 years worked full time or had apprenticeships at 15 retiring 45 to 50 years later paying income tax to support the elderly without complaint, today’s government benefits were unavailable, employer 4 % compulsory super became law mid 90s i.e., half our working years.
A common story: married in the mid-sixties, lived in a converted garage before buying the first home, having first child mid-70s, house cost 7x salary ($2900), car, one year’s salary, received a child endowment of $2 per month.
I am sure today’s housing costs are around 9 x salary ($90k) however, a new small car ($24k) three months’ salary.
Bruce White, Safety Beach
ANZAC spirit?
Since the troop ship, HMAS Sydney, never actually docked at Vung Tau, and its crew got no shore leave there, Maureen Donelly’s “seventy-something gentlemen” (True ANZAC spirit, Letters 5/5/26) was probably a crew member of the Jeparit, a freighter operated for years with a mixed civilian and RAN crew.
Thus the gentleman may or may not have been a serviceman. In any case I do not believe that the “mess hall” at which he and his friends were refused service because one of them was aboriginal was either an Australian or American military mess.
Nevertheless I support Ms Donelly’s view that his group’s action in remaining with and supporting their Aboriginal friend showed the true ANZAC spirit.
However, for an ex-digger to make it clear by “Welcoming” his former comrades-in-arms to the country that they served, the country of their birth, that he considers that they do not belong there is the antithesis of the ANZAC spirit.
Many native-born Australians find “Welcomes to Country” offensive, and they are not appropriate to Anzac Day memorial services.
Albert Riley, Mornington
Housing need
The council rejected the 300 per cent differential rate for vacant commercial properties so that the shops can be turned into highrise housing to end the housing shortage.
Highrise housing attracts new shops and each unit attracts the city of Frankston vital revenue.
Empty shops give an impression that the city is in depression and Bayside Shopping Centre the main commercial outlets for food, restaurants and selling of merchandise.
I am not surprised that real estate agent Nichols Crowder has been actively opposing the new rate levee as they are in the business of renting premises for their clients and collecting rents so they have a pecuniary interest that the new rate is not put on commercial properties.
Councillor Kris Bolam has consistently been in favour of highrise developments for Frankston to increase rate revenue and increase population of Frankston.
The more ratable properties there are the more rate revenue and the less existing ratepayers will pay in rates.
Russell Morse, Karingal
What really happens
Remember when the government moved from 30-day to 60-day prescriptions in 2023, the pharmacy lobby (mainly the Pharmacy Guild) went hard. They said hundreds of pharmacies would close. In fact, more pharmacies opened after the reform. We were warned of medicine shortages and hoarding. No systemic shortages were caused by the policy. They claimed patient safety was at risks (overuse, stockpiling). Didn’t happen.
Then there are the wolf cries of the corporate mafia: Tobacco industry, “plain packaging will destroy us”; Mining industry, “the mining tax will kill investment”; Banking sector, “Royal Commission will destabilise the system”; Property developers, “planning reform will crash housing”.
What really happens. Policy threatens revenue model then industry predicts catastrophe and initiates a public fear campaign, Then policy goes ahead anyway. Catastrophe doesn’t happen. Industry gets compensated or adapts.
With the gas tax it is easier to sock it to the Boomers!
Boomers are seen to have it all. But younger generations fail to appreciate that we had no childcare centres, few kindergarten or services to assist us and/or our families, and there was no NDIS or assistance to help our older folk then to reel in excess windfall profits and then blow the dog whistle that it is solving the “inequality imbalance”.
We did benefit from a strong employment culture, but not everyone was paid well, especially women. So don’t think that all boomers had good times, some things were better for us, but not everything is worse now.
Around 60–70% of Boomers receive a government pension. And the housing catastrophe is 100% due to the government, not the boomers.
Compromise at 12.5%. Even at 25% the offshore gas tax is expected to raise less revenue than the country’s tax on beer.
It is no wonder people are turning to populist right wing parties like One Nation. They are fed up and see this as an answer. However, think of MAGA! And the duopoly know it and are doing nothing to change it.
Joe Lenzo, Safety Beach
BarleyCharlie@90
If they (those on the high grounds?) subsidies people buying petrol, does this mean they use more; realism, or winter, arriving before its time?
Albanese’s softly softly, hopefully, to speak up, particularly now, with so many weirdos being conned by Pauline Hanson, complete with the backing of Australia’s richest lady and the shifty Barnaby Joyce; net satisfaction plus 18, Albo at minus 10, Angus at zero, spot on, sadly.
Blaming the government for the sadness of that sweet tiny little five-year-old; low life, stooping at desperation?
Donald Trump the Master of Contradictions. Mind you, life is a matter of degrees, of idiots, Donald et al, sensible people, all (up to a point) with their (us) faults.
I’d steer clear of artificial intelligence; OK if it’s your go, but if one really wants self expression, understanding the meaning of “self” is surely a necessity?
A big thank you to those beautiful sales ladies working at Woolworths in Rye, zipping slow motion through the aisles on my scooter, treasures all.
At home the choice, television after 7pm; Collingwood (if winning) or lose, Midsomer Murders; empowerment?
Finally, with Albo, his love for Gough Whitlam years past, not forgotten. Warning, Gough made two bad errors with his Ministers, Just saying.
Has the rain stopped?
Cliff Ellen, Rye
