Oct 08 2024

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The next Council must act to preserve our greatest natural asset

Opinion | by Hugo Armstrong, Albert Park Sports Clubs Association.

Whether you’re playing a game, walking the dog around the boundary, or just standing in the rain cheering the kids on, community sport is fundamental to the physical, mental and social health and wellbeing of our wonderful Port Phillip community.

For more than 150 years, amateur sports clubs here have shaped the local identity of our communities and allowed people to connect and make friendships, including the evolution of South Melbourne and St Kilda VFL/AFL footy clubs with deep roots in the Reserve.

Managing and investing in local sport is normally the domain of local government. And yet for two decades our Council has deliberately turned its back on our largest and most high-profile park – the world-famous Albert Park Reserve.

Albert Park Reserve is the largest community sporting precinct in Victoria.

It provides two thirds of all the open space within the City of Port Phillip boundaries.

Unusually, however, the Park is crown land – controlled by the State Government and managed by Parks Victoria but underfunded, overused, occupied and chewed up annually by the Grand Prix.

It is in poor condition.

At present more than 7,000 club members or regular participants, of all ages and genders, play sport in Albert Park Reserve, the great majority of them Port Phillip residents.

Add to that the terrific parkrun event with up to a thousand participants including so many locals, every weekend.

And all the dog walkers, joggers and nature lovers.

The Albert Park Reserve is critically important to the welfare of so many people in Port Phillip.

Yet Port Phillip Council invests nothing and has no say in the management or direction of the Park upon which our community depends.

It would rather sponge off the miserable financial allocations of the Victorian Government than harness the Park as a key tool to help meet the recreational needs of the Port Phillip community.

This practice discriminates unfairly against the thousands of residents who happen to use Albert Park rather than one of the other parks within the municipality, which are fully resourced and managed by Council.

The Albert Park Reserve and MSAC are too important to the wellbeing of our community (and to delivering Council’s own strategic goals) to allow outside parties to call all the shots.

The Albert Park Sports Clubs Association has been approaching all candidates to have the Port Phillip Council adopt a more strategic approach in future, and to earn a seat at the table managing the Park by investing in its facilities.

The future of Albert Park Reserve is a key strategic issue for the next Port Phillip Council. We encourage all residents to ask candidates during the campaign how they will act to protect local amenity by investing in Albert Park Reserve, more actively pursuing the interests of community, and seeking a formal role in its management.

Albert Park – our wonderful local park – is simply too important to be left just to the State Government.

Hugo Armstrong

President, Albert Park Sports Clubs Association

albertparksportsclubs@gmail.com

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