Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

In the few minutes that are left for me following earlier abridged versions of my contribution to the debate on the appropriations bills, I would like to focus on one particular project. Last time I had the opportunity to speak I was able to point to the collaboration that is so essential to achieving outcomes in local communities; that rarely are there opportunities where one individual or one organisation can achieve meaningful things and that a partnership is needed. In our community in the electorate of Dunkley, on the northern Mornington Peninsula, we have had some good successes of late. I mentioned the basketball stadium for the Mornington District Basketball Association at the Mornington Secondary College. That is a collaboration that is seeing an important facility available to the southern area of the Dunkley electorate, and I used that as an example. There are many others. There is the rose garden in Mornington. There is the work that we are trying to do in securing support for the traders and community at Mornington on law and order initiatives. Our work is trying to make sure that our region, with its growing population and growing demands, has the policing resources that are required.

There is also the outstanding Investing in Our Schools program that has been a breath of fresh air for so many communities in the Dunkley electorate. These are communities that may have stable populations, but an ageing population has seen student numbers decline. Under the punishing formula that the Bracks government applies to capital investment in school infrastructure, if you are in an established area with static or declining student numbers your prospects of getting funding for capital improvements for your school are extremely remote. It is just devastating for those school communities that work so hard over so many years to accumulate funding themselves only to find that the process that the Bracks government oversees in allocating capital funding can be very punishing. Thankfully, through Investing in Our Schools, that collaboration and spirit of cooperation and partnership that has delivered so many benefits to the Dunkley community is alive and well. I am hopeful we can continue in that spirit into the future.

It is the kind of collaboration that has seen the unemployment rate in the Dunkley electorate decline incredibly. When I had the honour of being first elected to represent the people of Dunkley, the unemployment rate was of itself a source of great hardship. I have said before that our best export was capable people leaving to go somewhere else in search of work. Thankfully, that has now changed and the unemployment rate in the Dunkley community is around what the national unemployment rate is. There are genuine opportunities available within our region. I aim to keep working to make sure that a delicious world of possibilities is within reach of all people in the Dunkley community. That is what I aimed to do 10 years ago and it is what I aim to continue to do as long as the community supports that work.

An area that I would like to talk about today is the Frankston safe boat harbour. I am sure that the member for Isaacs and others have heard this topic in its various guises talked about for so many years. It is the time now where this project—this important community infrastructure—is going to be brought forward and transformed from a discussion, debating point or topic occasionally bringing derision and conflict amongst some. If it is ever going to happen, now is the time. Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Lindsay, as your community models itself on the Riviera characteristics of Dunkley, I am sure that you have been following with great interest this subject. You would be mindful of the fact that planning approval exists for what is known as option 3, which is not quite the full-blown option that some were advocating but which is a meaningful option for a safe boat harbour in the Frankston community.

Port Phillip Bay—a wonderful body of water, an important leisure and tourism resource and an important economic and ecological jewel for the Greater Melbourne population—is starved of a boating activity node in the area of Port Phillip Bay that I represent. With such a large, vast, wide body of relatively shallow water, when the weather turns it can be very dangerous. For people wanting to recover their boats at the dilapidated, run-down and terribly deteriorated boat ramp facilities at the base of Olivers Hill, just the act of trying to lift those vessels out of turbid water is very frightening. What have long been needed, particularly to cope with those changing weather conditions and to reinforce the seaside character and coastal destination reputation of Frankston, are some proper boating infrastructure facilities.

This has been discussed and there have been ideas to establish it at the mouth of Kannanook Creek. That in itself would have been an engineering feat of biblical proportions given the amount of lateral movement of sand. It would forever be dredged and it would change the beach character. All of these insights have been gained over the years. So the debate has delivered a clear benefit in that there is now a proposal that an area at the base of Olivers Hill, free of the lateral movement of thousands of tonnes of sand on the seabed from Olivers Hill around to Black Rock, just around the corner, is a location for a safe boat harbour. We know this is the place. We know it will serve an important function. We know that there are many in our community who would love to see that asset available. We are encouraged that the environmental assessment points to the fact that it can be achieved without detriment to the beach or the marine ecology in that area but to the benefit of our region.

The Frankston City Council has been conducting some work, because it rightly recognises that a facility of this kind needs many partners. Today I am calling for the Commonwealth to be a partner, for the council to be a partner and for the state government to be a partner, to build a foundation where the private sector can be tantalised with this delicious opportunity in the Dunkley community. We have planning approval for a facility. It is now at an important stage where market sounding, the concepts and approval framework and land use planning constraints can be put to the private sector, to commercial participants and partners, to verify that what we imagine and envisage can actually be delivered. That market sounding exercise will verify some of the figures that sit behind this project. That will confirm the feedback we have had from potential private sector proponents.

But it will also highlight the fact that this is a project that cannot afford too many passengers. The base infrastructure will always be a community asset. It is my firm view that the community, through its governments, should be making a contribution to those community assets. Looking at the harbour infrastructure, we see that a breakwater wall is required. Whatever happens on those facilities, whatever opportunities there are to generate economic and employment benefits, we need that breakwater so that the boat launch and recovery function of the current dilapidated Olivers Hill boat ramp can at least be remedied. It can be made good. It is my view that there is a role for governments in part funding that breakwater. That would then provide the basis on which the private sector could engage in the more commercially orientated activities. So this idea is to differentiate the private benefit to those that may be fortunate enough to store or berth their marine facilities and marine vessels there, but it also recognises that there is a public good and that public good is supported by a financial contribution towards the breakwater. So when the bay turns violent and aggressive with weather changes, and when those horrible north-westerlies blow in and people see vessels washed up on the foreshore, when people who see the bay as a leisure and recreational opportunity are terrified about how they are going to get to safe land when the seas change, they can be supported in those public goals by the breakwater. The state government also needs to participate.

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