Tuesday, 14 November 2023

White Flat Oval

Joe McCRACKEN (Western Victoria) (17:23): (585) My adjournment matter tonight is about White Flat Oval in Ballarat, and my adjournment matter is to Minister for Police. I ask the minister to take urgent action to make sure that the criminal activity that is going down at White Flat Oval is stopped immediately. I met with a number of concerned locals again just last week. This includes the all-abilities football team. Kids with intellectual disabilities go down there and play footy. They have a great time down there. They go kick the footy. They look after each other. It is a beautiful, beautiful sight to see them actually looking after each other. But unfortunately they are heckled by some people that reside close by, who, in unfortunate circumstances, have camped near the grandstand there. It is resulting in these really, really foul exchanges happening and threats to these poor young kids. Those threats have been levelled at the cricket club users as well, and they have also been levelled at locals. It is really, really quite frightening. I was down there the other night when the swordcraft group was practising. They actually had to have a line down the oval to not go over a particular part so that they could cordon off the area to stay far enough away from some of the people that were taking residence there.

The local MPs have done nothing about it. Council appears to be disinterested. I really want to make sure that action is happening, because apart from being a really, really nice community asset, this is something that is concerning community safety. There has been a lot of talk locally about access to CCTV cameras, and the question was raised with me: who controls them? No-one really knew about it with some adjoining buildings. It turns out that the adjoining buildings are actually monitored, of course, by the police station. Who would have thought? The police can actually check the CCTV cameras and find out what is going on for themselves. I do not think that has actually happened yet, and I would ask that the minister actually intervene – that he checks the footage, sees what is going on and takes action – to make sure that this stops. It is really quite a serious matter, and I hope that the matter is taken care of urgently rather than being just another issue that is on the backburner, like so many other things in Ballarat are.