A postcard for ALL of our community from Progressive Port Phillip.

IN THIS EDITION

• It’s time to say YES! Our community stands up.
• Bingate – Council can’t get the basics right!
• A Port Phillip Council fit for the future – new wards coming.
• Pass the Parcel – community opportunity at risk.
• What’s the future for renters in Port Phillip?
• A land where the car is king – killing safer streets in Port Phillip.
• *PS Port Phillip event: “Why Local News Matters”.

It’s time to say YES!

In a couple of months, Australians will vote on whether to alter the Constitution and recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

It will be one of the most important votes in Australia’s history.

Voting YES will recognise our shared history, provide a permanent means of listening to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people about matters affecting their communities. It will make a practical difference with concrete results.

Voting YES will acknowledge and celebrate our country’s rich 65,000-year history, recognising Indigenous peoples’ profound cultural connection to this great land.

Voting YES will champion a future reflecting Australia’s diversity, unity, and shared aspirations, building a fairer and more inclusive nation.

We urge people to join the local YES campaign, Macnamara for Yes.
You can sign up here.

You can learn more about the Voice and the referendum at the upcoming Port Phillip Citizens for Reconciliation event at St Kilda Town Hall on Thursday 21 September at 6.30 pm.
More details can be found here.

Progressive Port Phillip would like to raise $1,000 for the Macnamara for Yes campaign, and we would like to do it with you.

Our plan is to match your donations DOLLAR for DOLLAR, up to a total of $500 in donations, plus $500 of our own funds.

To be a part of this offer, please make your donation via a secure funds transfer to our account details below:

Given that the Referendum will likely be set this week, we need to set an end date for this offer as 30 September 2023.

Please make your donation to the account above, THEN send an email to donate@progressiveportphillip.com with your name, contact details and the amount donated.

Any questions seeking more details can also be sent to this email address.

Once your donation clears into our account, we will send you back a thank you email with a receipt and then donate double the amount that you did to the Macnamara for YES campaign.

Thank you for your support.

Bingate.
Council can’t get the basics right!

When elected in 2020, RoPP /Liberal councillors vowed to focus on roads and rubbish in Port Phillip. Their efforts have resulted in a mess exposing a Council that can’t get the basics right.

Locals have dubbed the recent changeover in rubbish collection contractors, ‘Bingate’. Evidently new contractors were not provided with appropriate collection maps and schedules with the result that rubbish and recycling bins were left on streets for days.

Unlike residents in Stonnington, Bayside or Glen Eira, Port Phillip residents are being asked not to use household recycling bins for glass, and instead recycle glass at communal sites scattered across the municipality.

Currently there are around 50 sites for glass recycling (see them all here). Some are also for food and garden organics. But Port Phillip residents will not be receiving a fourth purple kerbside bin for glass recycling as most councils across Victoria have already implemented, or are planning to.

Half of the kerbside FOGO bins were haphazardly rolled out in January this year, just to addresses that council’s project officers guessed might be houses. Council then broadcast promises that the FOGO roll-out to the thousands of apartments in this city (and houses that missed out) would be finished in July.

FOGO-less residents were reassured that this was OK, they could still collect and drop their food and green waste at ‘hubs’, located in a number of parks, sometimes a kilometer or more from home.

Now, with a self-made landfill and recycling waste service crisis stumbling this council, the kerbside food and organic waste service (FOGO) still remains unavailable to many in Port Phillip.

This is in contrast to services every resident in most Councils across Melbourne can currently access. And this is despite a waste charge to help fund FOGO being introduced by Council more than 12 months ago.

A Port Phillip Council fit for the future

The state government is considering new ward boundaries for the City of Port Phillip.

A report from an independent review panel of the Victorian Electoral Commission will be handed to the government on 13 September.

Progressive Port Phillip made a detailed submission making the following points:

• We called on the panel to consult with local First Nations Peoples and especially the Yalukit Willam clan of the Kulin Nation, as there is currently no mechanism for First Nations Peoples to make direct representations to local governments in Victoria, unlike the proposed Voice federally and the First Peoples Assembly at the state level. One outcome could be to allow for an additional councillor representing First Nations Peoples.

• We noted the importance of the panel’s task: this is not just about drawing lines on maps; this is a key process in how the idea of community is articulated and how common interests are represented in the local government of Port Phillip and advocated to other levels of government and the broader society.

• We provided a map of possible wards shaped by geographic features, landmarks and activities (such as shopping, sport, transport and more) that help to define a sense of belonging in Port Phillip. and called for consideration of climate change risks and how to best govern for and manage these into the future.

It is the only submission that takes a holistic view of all the villages that make up Port Phillip; in this way, Port Melbourne, South Melbourne, Albert Park/Middle Park/West St Kilda, St Kilda, Elwood, East St Kilda and Balaclava/Ripponlea are recognised as distinctive communities of interest with a representative structure that would serve us better at the October 2024 Council elections.

You can read the PPP submission (and others) here

Pass the Parcel

No wonder many people can become cynical about government. Valuable land for community building could be lost because of ‘Utopia’-style governance.

The expansive 1.54-hectare Australia Post parcel processing site in Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, adjacent to the North Port Oval, is up for sale.

It’s a prized parcel of land in Fishermans Bend, Australia’s largest urban renewal area, which desperately needs good planning, more schools and more open space following the disastrous rezoning decisions of Matthew Guy a decade ago.

Australia Post is a Commonwealth government owned entity. The Victorian government desperately wants land for new schools that will be needed down the track. Port Phillip council is searching for new open space opportunities and to make sure North Port Oval can accommodate women’s sports as well its traditional offerings into the future.

You’d think with so much at stake, and with such a unique opportunity, that the three levels of government would get together to thrash things out. Instead, there has been an ugly stoush that will likely drive up the cost of the land and leave everyone with a bitter taste in the mouth. And there could be private bidders for the site too.

The local state and federal MPs, Nina Taylor and Josh Burns, and the Port Phillip mayor, Heather Cunsolo, need to get their acts together, stop the blame game and act to ensure that the site is retained at the lowest possible cost in the public interest.

What’s the future for renters in Port Phillip?

FORTY-NINE PER CENT of all residents in Port Phillip rent – 44% in private rentals and 5% in social and public housing – and rents are skyrocketing.

It was noted at a Council meeting recently that only ONE of our local councillors is a renter – and, as Cr Robbie Nyaguy has said, he rents from family giving him a security not afforded to most residents renting in Port Phillip.

Currently, there is little information on the City of Port Phillip website that might be useful for renters. If you search ‘Renters in Port Phillip’, you do get to a page called ‘The future of Housing in Port Phillip’ and reference to the development of a new overall housing strategy to inform planning for housing growth over the next 15 years.

A Discussion paper has been developed which will inform the strategy to be released in draft form in 2024.

As noted on the website FAQs on the Discussion paper:

“A lot has changed since our last Housing Strategy was developed, including population growth, changing housing needs, increased issues with affordability, and greater focus on sustainability. So, we need to make sure our plans are up to date and that we are anticipating and responding to the needs of future residents.”

Will we have a set of councillors committed to a progressive Housing Strategy to meet the needs of our renting population?

Council also has a specific affordable housing policy In Our Backyard: Growing affordable housing in Port Phillip 2015-2025, and it is coming to an end. The 2024 Council election will give us the group of councillors who will preside over a new affordable housing policy.

But what will they do for renters?

A land where the car is king.

RoPP/Liberal councillors are deliberately ignoring clear evidence about the safety of ALL road and public space users: people getting about our municipality on bikes or scooters, walking or driving.

They recently blocked Council advocacy for safer, separated bike paths connecting the Bay Trail to the new St Kilda Road Bike Path, following Kerferd Road to Albert Road.

This is despite 26 major accidents along Kerferd Road in recent years, many involving cyclists and pedestrians.

The ‘Shrine to Sea Project’ is a Parks Victoria led urban redevelopment for people – residents and tourists alike – to walk or wheel between St Kilda Road and Kerferd Pier, along attractive avenues with parks and paths. Community consultation commenced FIVE years ago in 2018. And there was strong support from community groups and residents.

However an orchestrated campaign lobbied marginal, local MPs and the State Government to have the bike paths (strangely) separated from the rest of the project.

The same online voices that weaponised – and cancelled in totality – ‘pop-up bike lanes’ in Port Phillip, re-appeared in yet another cynical use of this wedge politicking. ‘Lack of consultation’ was a falsehood that was again overused, together with the misnomer of ‘bike lanes increasing congestion on local roads’. Because getting people out of cars …

Council prioritised Kerferd Road Bike Paths in its ‘Move, Connect, Live Strategy’, which passed unanimously in 2018.

The State Government passed the fate of this vital link to Port Phillip, asking Council to approve it and welcome further state funding. But the State was hand-balling bike rider safety to a changed Council.

Rather than voting for increased safety and amenity, and the kind of planning needed for a sustainable future, RoPP/Liberal councillors voted for visionless ideology – placing cars and trucks over more vulnerable bikes and pedestrians.

Instead of safer roads and paths, they prefer a city where the motor vehicle is king. And what a fat king it has become.

Over half of new cars bought today in Australia are super wide SUVs, and our roads are feeling smaller and more crammed than ever before. In fact, many new model SUVs do not fit in our city’s parking bays anymore. Last month Paris started raising parking fees for oversized cars in an effort to discourage what is now called “auto-besity”.

In the City of Port Phillip there is less and less being done to encourage people NOT to use their cars to commute or for short trips. Safe and protected bike paths would encourage this step change.

In the same retrograde motion, RoPP/Liberal councillors voted down lowering the speed limit around this new park and recreation development. Local road speed limits – as we have around our primary schools – roads filled with SUVs doing the dash and drop-off – are there to help reduce deaths.

In Victoria, this last year alone, road fatalities jumped 23.2%, with pedestrian deaths up 8%. But it seems that this is someone else’s problem.

Crs Baxter and Nyaguy walked out of the council meeting in protest, accusing RoPP/Liberal councillors of lying about supporting bike paths, and discarding Council’s long established and well-consulted active transport policies.

More than one astute observer commented that the current council majority would not be likely to support the iconic Bay Trail bike path – along seaside Beaconsfield Parade – pioneered by South Melbourne Council in the 1980s – if that proposal were to come up today.

The current council majority is surrendering to the dominance of the car rather than embracing the freedom and joy – and the environmental and health benefits – of cycling and walking.

Read More:

• “There’s a key to getting more people on bikes – but motorists hate it” – Patrick Hatch, Melbourne Age August 26, 2023
• Road safety experts propose levy on large SUVs in city to curb rising Victorian road deaths – Daisy Dumas, The Guardian Australia, Thu 24 Aug 2023.
• Big, powerful cars getting more deadly – Bicycle Network, 1 August 2023.

*PS PORT PHILLIP PRESENTS
Why Local News Matters
A COMMUNITY DISCUSSION

6:30pm AUGUST 30 • THE PRINCE DECK
2 Acland St, St Kilda VIC 3182
REFRESHMENTS PROVIDED

In June 2022, collaborative local news startup *PS Port Phillip began a pilot: a test of our model in your community.

We believe that trustworthy public interest journalism is intrinsic to the health of vibrant communities and a thriving local democracy.

Please join us for a discussion on why local news matters, featuring a distinguished panel:

HEATHER CUNSOLO, MAYOR OF PORT PHILLIP
JACK LATIMORE, INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS JOURNALIST AT THE AGE
JOSH BURNS, LABOR MP FOR MACNAMARA
MARGARET SIMONS, MODERATOR FROM *PS MEDIA

CLICK HERE TO RSVP