Tuesday, 6 February 2024

Swan Hill drag strip

Peter WALSH (Murray Plains) (12:53): I was appalled by the recent actions of the Swan Hill Rural City Council, which unilaterally made the decision to close the drag strip at Chisholm Reserve Motorsports Complex permanently – this despite the council writing to the Swan Hill drag club the week before inviting the club to discussions about the drag strip’s future. Swan Hill drag strip was built a decade ago with a Regional Development Victoria grant of $2 million, money from council and volunteer contributions totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars, including major earthworks donated by local contractors. Swan Hill Rural City Council’s one job in this project was to manage the building of the actual drag strip, something it did an appalling job of. After several goes at remedial work to fix this mess, the council has now abandoned the project totally. Without warning, council staff cut the chains on the gate to the drag strip and, using heavy machinery, tore up the spectator mound, built and paid for by club members, including an irrigation system also built and paid for by the club. The dirt from the mound was then dumped on each end of the drag strip so no-one can access it.

What the council has done is effectively a huge act of deliberate vandalism of volunteer-built infrastructure at the drag strip. Community infrastructure like the drag strip is hard enough to get into our country community without it ending like this. I request the Swan Hill Rural City Council to review both its decision-making process and its decision to close the drag strip, which destroyed volunteer-built infrastructure.