Thursday, 28 August 2025

Adjournment

Great Ocean Road Coast and Parks Authority

Richard RIORDAN (Polwarth) (17:09): (1290) My adjournment this evening is for the Minister for Environment, and the action I seek is increased funding to the Great Ocean Road Coast and Parks Authority (GORCAPA). The minister will be well aware that following its formation back in 2020, the Great Ocean Road Coast and Parks Authority manages a vast area of the Great Ocean Road and hinterland. When the agency was set up in 2020, it managed around 950 hectares. That has now grown, and this coming summer it will be 170,000 hectares. It is an enormous and important area of our state. It will, over the coming spring and summer months, play home to many, many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of visitors. There are enormous resource constraints on the public foreshores, piers, jetties, beach accesses, public open space, rubbish collection, toilets – all manner of basic infrastructure that this authority is now responsible for.

It is of huge concern to the local community that this agency, GORCAPA, does not have sufficient ongoing funding to ensure the proper maintenance of these very, very important places and spaces. So the action I am seeking from the minister is to ensure that there is adequate funding – an increase in funding – for the authority so that it can maintain these very important places along the Great Ocean Road.

In particular I draw the minister’s attention to the inability in recent years of the agency to properly manage rubbish collection on foreshores after peak visitor times such as, for example, the Pier to Pub day in Lorne and other coastal events in Torquay, Apollo Bay, Anglesea and so on. I also draw the minister’s attention to the basic toilet facilities, which are very, very important, as people really only access the Great Ocean Road by car. They often travel quite some distance to get there, and they are an important amenity – not a very glamorous amenity, and certainly not an amenity that going to make postcards, but they are an important amenity – and they will need to be maintained and cleaned and managed effectively over the busy visitor period that we will be soon approaching, which extends from essentially the Melbourne Cup long weekend through to the end of Easter. Minister, I look forward to your prompt response and the support of this agency, which you and your government have set up but have not to date adequately funded to maintain the most basic of amenities in the region.