Political failure has left the Flinders Pier a dilapidated mess
I think its sort of encouraging that sounds coming out of Heritage Victoria and Parks/ Transport, sort of indicate (in a political sort of way), that work on the Flinders Pier has not stopped (Flinders pier future uncertain amid funding concerns, The News 12/5/26).
But after so many years some of the finer detail seems to have been lost.
During the Save the Pier days, so many years ago, nine different languages were being spoken along the pier.
Many of them came from western Melbourne like Yarraville.
Peninsula people, just think about that. How many of us from the peninsula go to Yarraville?
They arrived early morning for a day’s fishing: Mum, Dad, kids, grannies and a few uncles with the full day’s equipment.
At 8am, almost any day, snorkelling school children with their teachers suited up and joined “David Attenbough’s dragons ” under the pier.
But now, a dilapidated mess of fences and desolation, and a pier very literally different to what it was seven years ago.
Forgive me for asking how it’s possible to make such a dreadful mistake on the costing for Flinders Pier?
To get almost at the end , and then say, oops, no money. STOP. What a colossal waste of money.
All this while Dromana’s pier and forecourt achieves embellishment, not to mention other watery venues being enhanced in Port Phillip.
Forty-five thousand people signed a petition to save the Flinders Pier. They signed from all over Australia. We have all been let down.
Madam Premier, cant we get this mess finished?
Dr. Neil D Hallam (Marine Biologist), Flinders
Biodiversity
Good news that Mornington Peninsula Shire is considering joining the growing trend to build biodiversity in suburban streets by replacing grass with native species for birds and insects (Nature strip greening push backed by councillors, The News 19/5/26).
But there are benefits for humans too – no mowing and a variety of flowering native plants to admire.
While it is a global trend, Rotary Clubs have typically led nature strip planting in Australia. With a local species list and thoughtful design, plantings can allow safe access to vehicles.
Given there are 110 birds, 55 insects and over 1600 plants on Victoria’s threatened species list, putting biodiversity back into our nature strips is clearly needed.
Yvonne Parker, Portarlington
Council conservation
It’s disappointing to read that the Allan government has yet to provide a wildlife plan for the Peninsula (Council backs new wildlife protection push for peninsula, The News 19/5/26).
On the upside, however, the Mornington Peninsula Shire Council looks set to implement a Wildlife Master Plan and is keen to embrace the green by rewilding nature strips (Nature strip greening push backed by councillors, The News 19/5/26).
Indigenous vegetation corridors are vital for native species to thrive, as are broader wildlife protection measures.
Across Australia, local councils are stepping up on environmental conservation when state and federal governments fall short. If we want future generations to experience Australia’s extraordinary natural heritage, the time for leadership is now.
Isabelle Henry, Ascot Vale
Protect our environment
It was interesting to read that twenty years ago, UNESCO granted the Mornington Peninsula and Western Port Biosphere Reserve status (Protect Western Port, Letters 19/5/26).
Early accounts describe kangaroos “so plentiful that they resembled flocks of sheep”.
Much of the peninsula originally supported she-oak forests, moonah woodland, wetlands and heathland. After the 1840s, extensive clearing for grazing, orchards, timber and fuelwood dramatically altered habitat and reduced wildlife populations.
The Mornington Peninsula National Park, declared in 1995, at least protects and preserves some of this natural environment and remaining flora and fauna.
So it was pleasing to read that the motion from Cr David Gill calling for a Wildlife Master Plan was unanimously supported by the Shire Council (Council backs new wildlife protection push for peninsula, The News 19/5/26).
There is evidence we are living through the sixth mass extinction with the current speed of vertebrate genus extinction thirty-five times that of the last million years.
Research from Stanford University attributes the extinction entirely to human activity.
Unlike past geological extinctions, the current loss of species is driven by human population growth, overconsumption, habitat destruction, the wildlife trade, and climate change.
Protecting what remains of our amazing natural world for “our grandchildren and future generations”, as Cr Gill argues, must be a top priority.
Ray Peck, Hawthorn
Wildlife preservation
Mornington Shire is to be congratulated for supporting the Wildlife Master Plan (Council backs new wildlife protection push for peninsula, The News 19/5/26).
The plan is designed to try and protect and preserve local wildlife.
Australia has demonstrably the most dismal record of wildlife extinction over the past 230 odd years.
It is estimated that between 35-38 mammal species, nine bird species (31 if sub-species are included)and at least three reptile species have become extinct in the time period since 1788.
The mammal extinctions represent 35% of global mammal extinctions. A record to be truly ashamed of.
If the peninsula can do its part, no matter how small, then surely this is a good thing that the whole community would back.
Ross Hudson, Mt Martha
Health rebate debate
Bruce White argues removing the private health insurance rebate would push older Australians back into the public system. But this overlooks a basic fact: the rebate itself is already funded by younger taxpayers, and none of that money goes to public hospitals. It goes into individuals’ pockets and then to private insurers. If the same billions were directed straight into the public system, it would fund more beds, more staff, and shorter wait times — benefits shared by everyone, not just those who can afford private cover.
It is also a myth that older Australians with private insurance always use private hospitals. Many still end up in the public system because private hospitals often cannot provide the emergency, intensive, or complex care required for older patients. So the public system continues to carry the highest‑cost patients, insured or not.
If affordability for pensioners is the concern, the solution is targeted, asset‑tested support, not a blanket subsidy that sends billions to private insurers and is paid equally to high‑wealth households.
Redirecting the rebate to public hospitals would strengthen the system far more effectively than subsidising private premiums.
None of this is about blame. It is about maths and sustainability. Today’s young workers face housing at 9–12 times income, student debt, higher effective tax rates, and the largest cohort of retirees in Australian history. Hardship is not unique to any generation; many younger Australians today also live in garages, work multiple jobs, and pay for private insurance. The difference is not effort – it is the structural cost environment.
Respectfully, nostalgia is not a policy argument. The numbers matter – and the numbers show a structural imbalance that needs to be addressed honestly.
Cameron Brown, Capel Sound
Wood-fire season
Shire, EPA, are you listening?
The temperature has plummeted. The wind is absent.
A contingent of peninsula residents happily fire up their Coonara’s or equivalent, using whatever wood they can lay their hands on.
A further contingent of residents turn on their split-system heating devices which suck in their unwitting or may be selfish, neighbours shared pollution of gases and ultra-fine particulates.
These can make their way into respiratory channels navigating past nasal hairs migrating into lung air sacs, alveoli, onwards into the bloodstream; subsequently into the body organs.
In the healthy and young population some harmful substances are removed by coughing, diligent phagocytes. Not to mention the potential of some of the 4,800 per- and poly-fluroalkyl (PFAS) forever chemicals, and increased nitrogen dioxide invasion, doing their worst.
As we age lung elasticity decreases rendering toxic gases, fine particulates, difficult to remove. The irritation stimulates mucous…where stasis-of-fluid occurs opportunistic viruses and bacteria can inhabit to replicate resulting in respiratory disease, or more.
Winter is not always to blame for cold and influenza viral increase in the population some is a lack of ‘Love your neighbour’ or Shire’s lack of care for inhabitants’ health.
Yaqirah Herut, Mornington
Statue opposition
It has been announced that Daniel Andrews, our incompetent former Premier, will have his statue produced for $134,000 and placed among other people who have worked for Victoria and Australia.
I am hoping and certainly not holding my breath that a wise person in our state government arranges for Andrews to pay for his own statue and installs it in his own garden.
How can anyone in our state government agree to putting Andrews’ statue in a prominent place in our city and in company with others who have completed positive initiatives to improve our state and country .
Andrews as leader, created a debt of $200b, cost $1b in a contact cancellation, managed to spend $25m on one weeks security for covid isolation in a city motel, lead a team of people that under-forecast the costs of a freeway and train line plus other major projects by billions of dollars that has put the state into a debt that will take two generations to pay off.
Why oh why do we have people who feel we need to praise and give awards for incompetency.
Bruce White, Safety Beach
Census failure
It is census time again and census night is the Tuesday 11 August 2026 and the Australian Bureau of Statistics has sent a letter to long term accommodation houses (rooming houses) saying that a person living in the rooming house is to undergo up to one hour of training, supply people with census forms, collect completed forms, follow up with people who have not completed or return their form.
It is quite obvious that the ABS wants rooming houses occupants to fill forms and be involved in census night. Of course what the ABS wants to achieve will not be achieved.
I only found the letter addressed Guest House & Other Accommodation and not to one individual. I found the letter by accident and nobody in a rooming house will want to be the person responsible to give or retrieve forms.
No doubt there will be fines for not co-operating.
It is clear the ABS public servants do not live in rooming houses.
What has to happen is that either the ABS staff puts a form under every room door or give it to an occupier or get the rooming house proprietor to give and collect forms .
These ABS promotes the census by saying allocating funding for education, health and education and infrastructure , planning for aged care and improving the wellbeing of older Australians improving access in regional and rural communities.
It is very well to collect numbers but the bottom line is will parliaments give the infrastructure when the federal government is already a trillion dollars in debt and the states are billions of dollars in debt?
It is time to revalue the need for national censuses and go for the cheaper options. It costs Australian taxpayers millions to run a census.
Russell Morse, Karingal
An anti-letter
Someone made a statement on a Facebook saying they were sick to death with all the letters Lenzo was writing to the local paper week after week.
I suggested she write a letter to the editor and drafted this for her.
I open this paper each week with a mixture of anticipation and dread, wondering not what is happening in the world, but what fresh instalment of “The Lenzo Chronicles” awaits us in the letters section.
At this point, I suspect Lenzo believes he is not merely a contributor but the unofficial editor-at-large, ombudsman, historian and possibly Minister for Public Morality.
There was a time when letters to the editor reflected a broad range of community voices. Now it feels more like a weekly subscription service to one man’s grievances, observations and philosophical reflections on absolutely everything.
Rainfall? Lenzo has thoughts.
Council bins? Lenzo is outraged.
International affairs? Naturally, Lenzo has prepared a detailed briefing paper.
I half expect next week’s edition to feature Lenzo reviewing restaurant meals he hasn’t eaten and critiquing sporting matches he didn’t watch.
The truly remarkable thing is not the frequency of the letters, but the stamina. Most people struggle to reply to a text message. Lenzo apparently produces enough commentary each week to sustain a small regional newsroom.
I mean no disrespect. In fact, I admire the commitment. But perhaps, in the interests of biodiversity and preserving endangered alternate opinions, the rest of us could be granted a small patch of the letters page before it becomes officially rezoned as “Lenzo Weekly”.
Yours faithfully,
A Fatigued Reader
Joe Lenzo, Safety Beach
BarleyCharlie@90
Shrouded, in negativity or positivity; that is the question? Al Jolson “April Showers”.
Expect nothing regret nothing, works for me. Spending time on my old computer, outdated, a large part of everyday activities, particularly Facebook, public, not private.
Also an hour daily (one pot, beer) at/in the smoking area, RSL, alongside those glitzy poker machines, guaranteed to extract 18 cents in every dollar; why?
A consistent stream of gamblers having a quick break during their free spins. In conversations, the mention of Facebook and more than often reply “Not for me” almost as a warning of unspecified dangers, and an inference of time wasting; funny? Other than Powerball (the impossible dream?) the question (only to myself) of nice people saying goodbye, consistently, to those cents of every invested (?) dollar, carefully avoiding the dangers of Facebook?
Life remains, as always, a Cabaret! The budget, and the lady from Oakleigh “Never again will I vote Labor.”
With the Libs in disarray, the One Nation option, God only knows where the lady is coming from; no mention of her preferences for poker machines?
And the ISIS brides and children returning to Australia; watch your backs, weevils in the woodwork; seven years, refugee camp Syria, we wish them well.
Angus (nuclear) Taylor as a choice, for Albo, boiled bland lollies to milk chocolate, an Opposition leader (ban non-citizens?) about nothing?
And Chalmers half-way house? – “Negative gearing to new home construction from next year, and the replacing of the 50 per cent capital gains discount with inflation-adjusted indexation.” A relief to have a real Treasurer despite the half-way comment?
And still the AUKUS cash drain game? And us, as in all of us, in one way or another; a peculiar obsession. What’s yours?
And those innocent Palestinians living/surviving (?) in Gaza?
Suggest “Be happy” in place of “Greed is Good.” Just saying?
Cliff Ellen, Rye
