Thursday, 21 March 2024

Lake Mountain Alpine Resort

Cindy McLEISH (Eildon) (17:24): (605) My matter this evening is for the Minister for Environment, and the action I seek is for the minister to review and change the decision to close Lake Mountain two days a week during the coming snow season and provide assurances to the local community as to the long-term survival of the mountain. I ask this as Lake Mountain is critical to the livelihoods of many in Marysville, and people in the area are up in arms. Lake Mountain is a smaller, lower altitude mountain just out of the town, and the economy of Marysville is closely linked to the success of the mountain. We have a tourism agenda in Victoria to get people into the country midweek, and this is having the absolute opposite effect, where we are closing the mountain midweek.

Marysville, along with other communities in Murrindindi shire, has suffered a lot with floods and fire, storms, power outages and certainly the closure of the timber industry. Loss of income for Marysville because of the closure of Lake Mountain is very problematic. There have been whispers on the street for a few weeks, and it was announced on Facebook last week that the mountain would be closed on those two days. It begs the question of whether it has actually been thought about properly, because if there is a heavy snowfall and there are not people on the mountain to address it, when the mountain reopens on the Thursday then half of the time will be spent clearing snow.

It certainly flies in the face of the objectives of the new body, Alpine Resorts Victoria, which was set up in February 2022. At the time, Minister D’Ambrosio, when introducing it, said:

The Victorian Government is committed to supporting the economic recovery and long term financial sustainability of the alpine sector.

And:

The establishment of Alpine Resorts Victoria will achieve savings through improved coordination, efficiencies of scale and reduction of duplication.

If this is the case, they should be making enhancements at Lake Mountain, not making cuts. Over the last five years they have had several changes of management, which has not helped, and at each change less and less communication with stakeholders seems to occur. The local businesses rely on the three months of the snow season to get them through the rest of the year.

There is no accommodation on the mountain for staff, so the local businesses fill that gap. Here is what it means: one accommodation provider who invested many, many thousands of dollars to upgrade their facilities to have the workers there was not able to get an answer this year on whether there would be another agreement. But with a little action, finally they found out via email that no-one was going to be staying there this year. They are all going to be moved to Healesville and bussed up. Healesville is on the other side of the Great Dividing Range. This is not just one accommodation provider, but others also have now had bookings for the middle of the year cancelled. We have school groups who come midweek. They are not going to come on the weekends, so this opportunity is now limited to three days a week. This is the wrong decision, and I implore the minister to change it.