Tuesday, 17 October 2023

 Richard RIORDAN (Polwarth) (19:08): (375) My adjournment debate this evening is for the Minister for Emergency Services, and I am inviting the Minister for Emergency Services down to my wonderful electorate of Polwarth and to Torquay. The Torquay Marine Rescue Service is a wonderful local institution down in Torquay, which does a great job. It basically looks after everybody at sea – from the Port Phillip Heads all the way down to Lorne. It is a big area and it is a busy area. It is full of people all summer long, all winter long – all year round. They have participated in rescues from aeroplanes crashing into the sea, stranded yachtsmen, fishermen – you name it. They are on call all the time to help look after not only Victorians but many of the visitors to the wonderful Surf Coast region.

This marine rescue service is run 100 per cent by volunteers. They are on call 24/7, seven days a week. They are there to help look after not only their own community and the people that they know and love but also everyone that comes and wants to enjoy the Great Ocean Road region. The Torquay Marine Rescue Service, after much argy-bargy, has a large seagoing boat that is designed to be launched off the beach – which is the only alternative they have there in Torquay – at Fishos Beach. But the most important thing is they are in a mess at the moment because they have got a piece of equipment but they do not have the rest of the facilities around them to support that. They need a bigger garage to store it in. Currently it is being left out in the weather. It has really expensive equipment and kit on board that is now just sitting next to the edge of the road. This leaves it open to vandalism and theft, and we really cannot have such critical infrastructure in our community that looks after so many tens of thousands of people on our beautiful coastline sitting there not properly housed and looked after. Really, for most people it makes no sense to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on first-rate oceangoing equipment and then not store it properly, so that needs to be fixed.

The club also tells me that with the service, the volunteers, the guys there on training nights on Tuesdays and Wednesdays when they go down there, it is quite an effort to get it into the sea. The trailer is not fit for purpose, and they need a proper trailer. These are important bits of equipment, and quite frankly it is not good enough that if just for lack of funding and lack of support some pretty sort of basic kit is not made available and it ends up costing lives.

Any delay in getting a boat and a service into the water to rescue someone stranded at sea is not a good look. It is not what the volunteers want, and it is certainly not what the people of Victoria expect. So, Minister, you are welcome. Please make contact. We will go down and visit these wonderful volunteers. Let us work together to solve this.