Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just over a year ago I attended a rally on the Rosebud foreshore with members of the Rosebud community and my colleague Martin Dixon, the state member for Nepean. That was a rally in support of a Rosebud aquatic centre, a southern peninsula aquatic centre. It is a project to which the local community has been committed for some years. It is a project which is a personal passion, a commitment, a goal and something which will be achieved. The benefits of this project are very clear. It will, firstly, provide health benefits, whether it is for local youth, whether it is for families, whether it is in terms of safety and teaching young children to swim in a safe environment so as to equip them for a coastal environment. In particular, in what is demographically the oldest electorate in Victoria with the highest concentration of seniors along that stretch of the Mornington Peninsula—which is Dromana, McCrae, Rosebud, Tootgarook and Rye—it will provide hydrotherapy and services which are desperately needed by senior citizens. So the benefits, firstly, in health are clear. Secondly, there are the economic benefits to the community of having an aquatic centre which will help with tourism throughout winter and which will help ensure that the peninsula is an all-year-round destination for families. Thirdly, it is about the amenity, the quality of life, for the southern peninsula. So those benefits are clear and real and desirable.

The challenge is the delay in support from the Victorian government. For some years now the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment has been aware of and has stood in the way of this project. This project is wanted on the foreshore by the overwhelming majority of local residents—I say ‘by the overwhelming majority’ because there are a small number who take a different view, and I deeply respect their views and their right to those views. But the overwhelming majority want to use land which is already built upon, or land which is already disturbed. Indeed, the old pool was on the foreshore. It was not immediately on the foreshore. It is a deep foreshore. It was back about 50 to 70 metres from the foreshore. That same strip of land remains available, whether it is there or whether it is further towards the village centre. Either way, that land has been disturbed for many years. It is not pristine. It awaits some sort of community benefit. I urge the Victorian Premier to step in and say, ‘We recognise that the community have been disadvantaged, that they deserve the aquatic centre,’ and that the state government will no longer stand in the way of the efforts of the local community to take control of their own future, to establish an aquatic centre and to give themselves a healthy future.