Tuesday, 24 May 2022

Great Ocean Road community consultation

Mr RIORDAN (Polwarth) (19:09): (6370) My adjournment debate this evening is for the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, and the action that I seek from the minister is that I would really like to take the minister for a tour along the Great Ocean Road to visit the communities that she has inflicted the Great Ocean Road Coast and Parks Authority on. This time last week I invited the minister to come down to Peterborough—

Mr T Bull: You going to buy her a coffee?

Mr RIORDAN: I would buy her a coffee, absolutely, member for Gippsland East. I invited the minister last week to come down with me to Peterborough and to talk to the 150 or 200-odd people that came to the community hall there who were none too satisfied with the way their part of the Great Ocean Road is being treated, but I want her to come and talk to all the other communities, whether they are in Torquay, in Anglesea, in Aireys Inlet, in Lorne and Apollo Bay—all those beautiful spots. It would be a great day out, because the minister does not let anyone on the Great Ocean Road Coast and Parks Authority talk to me or to the community unless there are departmental officials accompanying them.

The minister is well used to sending the bigwigs from town down to talk to these wonderful people in their community, so I am sure she could come down as well, and what we will do is just sort of ask the question: why, for example, is this new authority threatening to throw the kids off the skate park on the foreshore at Apollo Bay? It has been there a long time, the community has fundraised it and there is nowhere else to put a skate park, but they want to get rid of it. She can come down and tell the community why the Skenes Creek caravan park is now going to be into its third summer closed because there is no money left to fix it up; she can come and tell that community why that is taking so long.

She can come and talk to the community in Lorne, and she can tell them why a simple plan just to fix up a restaurant and a few toilets is now in its 10th year going nowhere fast and has not been resolved. She can come and talk to the Anglesea and Apollo Bay surf clubs and tell them why they are going to change the contracts that those surf clubs had that provide those wonderful community services and why they are all suddenly going to be paying so much more as community groups—a much bigger tax to the government to keep their surf clubs open.

She can come and tell the Pilates teachers and the other health workers that offer very low-cost, family-friendly exercises on our foreshores in Apollo Bay why they are going to be charged $200 a week to offer health classes. I mean, that makes no sense. You can go into the botanic gardens for free and do exercise. You can go into the Treasury Gardens and do exercise, but no, we are going to tax them senseless along the Great Ocean Road to do exercise. There are lots of things not going right, and I would love the minister to come with me for a lovely drive along the ocean road to check it out.