One cold night in a car
Friday 31 July was the coldest night of the year, and my husband and I were trying to sleep in our car.
We’d barely settled when we heard a thin, high whine and thought a mosquito had got in. It took us a while to realise it wasn’t a mosquito. It was our blow-up mattress, slowly going down.
We were there for the Southern Peninsula SleepOut, the first one, run by The Ranch with Southern Peninsula Community Support. A car site, a food pack like the ones the centre hands to people doing it very tough, some soup, hot tea and a night to sit with something most of us look away from. The organisers were upfront, it wasn’t meant to be comfortable. That was the point.
But here’s what I keep coming back to. Ours was a night we chose, and we knew it ended in the morning. Nobody banged on the window to scare us. Nobody moved us on. We were uncomfortable, but we were never unsafe.
Lying there on our flat mattress, we talked about how we’d do this if it weren’t a choice. How we’d hold down a job, fronting up on no sleep and without a shower, hoping nobody could tell.
And this is our patch. Over the past year, 462 people here experienced homelessness. Of those, 251 were sleeping rough, and just over 30% of them were women. For too many people, a car isn’t the fundraiser. It’s the plan.
One cold night didn’t show us what homelessness feels like. But it made that problem impossible to ignore.
Kim Robbins, Safety Beach
Value for ratepayers and taxpayers
It’s good to see Jonathan agrees with me that the answer isn’t higher rates, but greater efficiency (Shire reform, Letters 4/8/26). The first question should always be, “How can we do this better?”, not, “How can we charge people more?”
I think my record speaks for itself. I’ve always argued the shire should improve efficiency before asking ratepayers to pay more. That meant challenging inflated or made-up costs, driving reform and recruiting a CEO with strong commercial experience to turn around the shire’s long-term financial position.
It also meant ending carbon offsets in India, stopping multi-million dollar service reviews that went nowhere, and questioning contracts that exposed the shire to significant risk for questionable value. Local priorities. Tangible outcomes.
Before politics, I spent more than a decade running businesses. You don’t grow by charging more. You grow through innovation, good cost management and delivering better value.
Perhaps Labor missed the memo. It might explain why we ended up with half a Flinders Pier.
Anthony Marsh MP, Member for Nepean
Waste saving
Councils seem to have their priorities mixed up.
Making ends meet is my concern also. I don’t mind paying for waste collection, though my hackles raise, when I have to pay fully for bins I can’t possibly fill in one, two, or four weeks.
My general waste is the size of a medium freezer bag for one week. I only put it out a quarter full four-to-six weekly to reduce the smell.
The recycling bin goes out in the same interval, the green waste two-to-four weekly and the glass bin lasts six-to-12 months before it is full.
The council let me share my bins with a neighbour before, but that arrangement has ceased due to unforeseen circumstances.
It would be wonderful to have waste collected, especially single households at different times and I would happily sign a contract for such an arrangement.
Or maybe someone can think of another way to make waste collection fairer? Otherwise, where is the incentive for reducing waste for people so inclined.
Lore Singer, Frankston
Council deafness
I have finally discovered how Mornington Peninsula Shire gets away with not doing the basic things.
The problem is, there is a heirachy of council staffers up to the CEO who have no idea what is going on, but think they do, and then there are the workers who do stuff (who are mostly contractors who do know, but cannot get funding to do things properly).
The deafness barrier acts between those two bodies and none of them know Auslan.
Additionally, because of the deafness suffered, only the self inflating things get done at any scale by council with the photo opportunities available, with space provided for a State MP in the shot.
The ratepayers are the major nuisance to all this. They want practical things done like fixing the same blocked drains that flood every time it rains, pits cleaned out, drainage updates, trees that are down removed, council road car destructing potholes fixed properly (with a plate wacker not the back of a shovel).
Now ratepayers ring up and complain wanting service for a real issue, this is where the deafness problem arises, so the issue is never addressed properly, or never done.
The council staff never know, the contractors and ratepayers know but cannot get things done. The CEO builds up his profile with shiny new projects, and so life goes on.
According to council news we are now in “Wombat season called ‘Waring’ by the Aboriginal people”. Thanks for telling us that. Maybe these wombats are causing the craters on the roads?
David Killin, Tyabb
Roadworks
After many months of work constructing a safety island 75 metres east of Marthas Ridge Dr in the middle of Craigie Rd, a new diversion lane east bound on the north side of the island was constructed.
During one of the wettest periods, with no run off diversions in place, flood water entered the excavations, inundating the freshly dumped rock, making this useless to compact. It had to be removed and again replaced. This process took weeks to master.
Finally a base layer of ashphalt was placed over the diversion lane’s crushed rock, this was installed temporarily for the traffic to drive over while the safety island was completed.
This then allowed a final wear course layer of ashphalt, by a “paving machine” to be placed in the new permanent diversion lane.
Ashphalt placed by a paving machine is usually smooth with even matching of existing joints. This has not been achieved on this project.
I question the skill of the paving crew, further the supervisors who have allowed the pavement to be finished and ride in places like a sheet of corrugated iron.
Where were the construction authority’s engineers or supervisors that have allowed this sloppy work to be called finished?
Eventually this work will deteriorate. Who then meets the cost of rectification? This is new work it should ride like smooth glass. The contractors should be called back to rectify the glaring defects.
Gerard van de Ven, Mt Martha
Environment credit
While Victoria is one of Australia’s most cleared states, I have always thought of the Mornington Peninsula as a well-treed landscape. So, I was surprised to learn from the Shire’s 2019 Biodiversity Conservation Plan that approximately 70 per cent of the peninsula’s original native vegetation has been cleared.
It was therefore heartening to see not one, but two, tree planting stories in your latest edition (Mount Martha students brave the cold for National Tree Day, The News 4/8/26) and (Second stage of Greenway tree planting begins, The News 4/8/26).
The Biodiversity Conservation Plan also highlights that while between one-quarter and one-third of Victoria’s terrestrial plants, animals and ecological communities are now considered threatened with extinction, the peninsula has fared a little better, with six per cent of indigenous plants and 20 per cent of fauna listed as threatened.
The Shire’s Biodiversity Progress Reports 2022–2024 (tinyurl.com/MPBiodiversity) make encouraging reading, outlining initiatives including an online local native plant guide, biodiversity mapping tool, “Bioblitz” surveys, the Birds in Schools program, fungi workshops and the Find an Environment Friends Group Near You tool to name just some.
While elected councillors understandably receive much of the attention, it is reassuring to know that dedicated council officers, environmental groups, volunteers and experts are working behind the scenes to protect and enhance the peninsula’s natural environment.
Maggie Cowling, Coburg North
Thriving together
I was thrilled to read about the tree‑planting efforts occurring on the Mornington Peninsula for National Tree Day (Mount Martha students brave the cold for National Tree Day, The News 4/8/26) and (Second stage of Greenway tree planting begins, The News 4/8/26).
It was especially uplifting to read about Mount Martha Primary School students out at the Briars on a cold morning, learning firsthand how spending time outdoors and restoring nature strengthens both community and Country.
The Sunshine Reserve planting I attended was just as heartening, with children enjoying pulling on gloves and getting dirty.
National Tree Day is a sign that community spirit and healthy bushland can thrive together.
Amy Hiller, Kew
Disaster in the making
Sometimes the stupidity and craven cowardice of our governments leaves you bewildered.
A foreign company called VOPAK is only a few steps away from getting approval to discharge 480 million litres of chlorine contaminated discharge into Port Phillip Bay, every day for a minimum of 10 years.
Why are they doing this? The process used by VOPAK converts imported frozen LNG to gas to sell to Victorians.
We are short of gas because we stupidly allow Victorian gas to sold overseas and it now looks like we will have chance to buy it back at inflated prices whilst placing the waters of Port Phillip at risk.
If this was a Hollywood script it would be rejected on the grounds of a total lack of credibility, but here we are.
Ross Hudson, Mt Martha
Wilson to save billions
Jess Wilson, the leader of the coalition opposition in Victoria, has a policy of severely cutting the public service expanded by the Labor government.
Wilson is not going to sack public servants but when their contracts run out then they will no longer have jobs and this way the government does not have to pay redundancy payments to the public servants affected.
Government services to Victorians will be adversely affected and this may also badly affect businesses in the CBD who depend on public servants going to their food businesses.
Pauline Hanson immigration policies is going to affect businesses who depend on skilled immigrants as pleas from businesses to allow immigrants into Australia has fallen on deaf ears.
Pauline Hanson has said that she doesn’t care about business and she will stick with her immigration policies which will mean that the government must now create skilled labor in Australia and not import it.
This is good as Australia will become self sufficient with plenty of skilled labour to supply business especially in housing and technology.
Russell Morse, Karingal
EV tax
There is a movement to tax electric vehicles to provide the road maintenance funds lost by EV’s not paying the fuel excise tax. This is going to be a debarcle.
It is suggested that electric vehicle drivers submit a photo of their dashboard odometer every year to provide a tax measure based on distance travelled. Has no-one thought that photos have been faked for years by Photoshop, and now with AI you can create whatever image you want. Oz EV’s will be the lowest travelled cars in the world. It would set up a them-and-us difference with ICE drivers.
A more equal system would be to eliminate the fuel excise completely. EV and ICE cars would be taxed the same. This tax would be based on the two things that cause road wear. Weight and useage.
The weight of a car or truck is a clearly fixed and documented thing. It can’t be fudged. The distance travelled is more complex, but it can be assumed commercial vehicles are on the road more than private vehicles, so a loading for commercial vehicles would apply, based on rated load capacity.
The beauty of this equal rego based tax is that it is state based, rather than federal. Instead of the federal absorption of the fuel excise into consolidated revenue, the states can use it to patch state roads, and give what’s left to patch federal roads.
John Dusting, Mornington
The simpler life
Each week I look forward to the “100 Years Ago” column, which offers a brief window into the lives of people who lived without television, mobile phones, or the constant buzz of modern life.
But this week’s entry, on July 22nd, brought a snigger. It was an in-depth wedding newspaper article, yet why would a groom buy a “toilet set” for his bride? And what was a xylonite one? I googled it, of course, and soon chastised myself for my lack of knowledge, not for the oddity I had assumed.
Indeed, it was of great value a century ago; it was innovative, expensive, and a mark of modern comfort. It is funny now, but also strangely touching.
Reading these snippets from a century ago reminds me how different daily life was.
Socialising was not squeezed in between notifications; it was the centrepiece of community life. People gathered to dance, sing, play games, and compete, talking, performing, and taking part. Even the smallest events were infused with a sense of occasion.
The “toilet set” made me laugh, but it also made me think. A hundred years ago, people celebrated progress in ways that now seem quaint, yet their lives were rich in connection, creativity, and community spirit.
That is the real gift worth remembering, and something we need to consider instead of AI slop, robots (there is a difference), and a future filled with the unknown.
Anne Kruger, Rye
Tree change
Our neighbour’s birch tree overhangs our house, the leaves clog our roof gutter and the roots invaded our sewage drain. We didn’t create the problem, yet we have to pay to fix it.
How fair is that?
Council advice is “talk to your neighbour”. Well, yes, we tried that!
Friends suggested we poison the tree. Silly advice, as we would be liable if we damage the tree, plus dead branches might fall on our roof!
How do you deal with this in the real world of neighbours who just don’t care?
Rosemary Borage, Balnarring
Cliff everlasting
Cliff Ellen writes like each week will be his last on earth. He will probably outlive most of us.
Terry Miles, Rosebud
BarleyCharlie@90
“You can’t be serious?” A Royal Commission? Yet another, dreamt up by the Opposition based on resentment, et al. The interests of ALL Victorians, miles off their selfish (radar?) greedy world. And Labor, assisted by the mainly right wing press, sucked in.
Being a Collingwood supporter “Whoa is me” I survey the world outlook (wars, heatwaves, deaths, starvation) and so a balance of MY reality, as in letting them fight among themselves; the new coalition re “The Liberals, Nationals and One Nation”.
The Public Service, politicians, state or federal, like taxi drivers, exist with that small percentage of crooks, including heavily biassed letter writers and football followers.
We live with the big question – Do We Ever Learn? Mind you, if I could learn it would be inadmissible, ignored, at 90+ including those over 80.
This is not to say I’m not happy; in fact most days, apart from my tremors, I’m as happy as the famous Larry; a bowl of cherries, small percentage bruised, beaten by Geelong?
Ever onwards to 91+ time permitting. The nightly news, car crashes, home invasions, the magic words IF the coalition gets in; cut cut cut. To SBS, serenity – the cookie crumbles.
Cliff Ellen, Rye
