Port Phillip Conservation Council Inc. wrote in November 2000 to the Ministers for Defence, and Environment and Heritage, with copies to Hon. Sherryl Garbutt MLA and the shadow ministers and all Federal and State MPs with electorates touching on Port Phillip. Its letter expressed concern that the large area of coastal open space land that presently forms the historic Point Cook Airfield might be converted to housing or other intensive development. The Royal Australian Air Force began there, but it no longer needs the site. 

Replies were received from both federal ministers. They were moderately encouraging to the viewpoint put by PPCC Inc. that it was important for Port Phillip and for the future amenity of the rapidly expanding residential areas on the north-west of Port Phillip that large areas of open space near the sea be retained. The only specific detail in the replies related to the small areas subject to heritage controls.

The federal MHR for Lalor, Julia Gillard, has begun a campaign to save the airfield land from sale, and raised the matter in a speech in federal Parliament. There is also a local committee, with links to local municipal councillors, that has been working to have the whole airfield retained for environmental, heritage, and tourism purposes. 

Both major parties in the Victorian Parliament established a bad precedent when they voted in favour of an ad hoc expediency to facilitate the creation of a three-level car park, with two levels underground, on the St Kilda foreshore near the protracted St Kilda Sea Baths redevelopment. The Car Park site and the Sea Baths are at the right in the photograph below.

The Minister for Environment and Conservation, Hon. Sherryl Garbutt MLA, in the second reading of the Land (St Kilda Sea Baths) Bill 2000 explained that the Sea Baths were the subject of a 50-year lease under the Land Act 1958, and that lease had 45 years left to run. The adjacent underground car park, which was part of the $42,000,000 development, could only be leased, under the Crown Lands (Reserves) Act 1978, for a maximum period of 21 years at a time. The Government, and the developers, considered that the car park needed the same length of tenure as the main project, so the Government’s solution was to introduce this special legislation to provide an exemption for the Sea Baths project. 

Port Phillip Conservation Council Inc. had written to the Opposition asking it to oppose any exemption to the well-established 21-year limit. It said that a longer period allowed such larger-scale projects that the concept of each generation having control over public recreational land would become a fiction. 

Mr Victor Perton MLA, the Shadow Minister, said that the Opposition reluctantly supported the Bill. He said that the Bill was the result of a lease entered into by Hon. Barry Pullen the day before the Kirner administration lost government, and that Hon. Marie Tehan, as the relevant Minister later, had indicated that she would introduce the necessary legislation. He was supported by Mr Murray Thompson MLA, the Chairman of the Opposition’s Committee on Conservation and Environment, who told Parliament of the case that PPCC Inc. made against the Bill, and read out sections of our letter on the subject. 

The General Meeting of PPCC Inc. in April 1999 adopted Policy Statement No. 9 "Parking and Access of Vehicles on Public Foreshore Land". The policy specifically opposes any increase in parking provision on public foreshore land. An underground car park reduces the apparent visible effects of the infrastructure required for car parking, but it still allows as many cars (or more cars, if it is multi-level, as in this case) to be concentrated in a single area as a surface level car park. It thus still intensifies the environmental impact on that area. It also creates a more urban ambience – at odds with the original coastal ambience. The greater capital cost of underground car parks, once they are established, makes them much more permanent (witness the 45-year lease). Their greater need to produce income spawns projects to lure more visitors, unrelated to the original, natural, features of the coast. 

The consequences of our 19th Century forebears’ enthusiasm for sea bathing structures, and the pretext for further inappropriate exploitation of the coast that precedent unleashed on the coastal sites involved, is still affecting Bay foreshores adversely, at St Kilda and Brighton, as late as the 21st Century. 
 

Late last year the Mornington Peninsula Shire Council reviewed its policy on its administration, on behalf of the State Government, of licences for the presence of "bathing boxes" on beaches. The President of Port Phillip Conservation Council Inc., Geoffrey Goode, addressed a Council meeting and suggested certain further improvements to the generally good policy changes being considered. The Council voted to accept most of the changes in a staff report, and also one suggested by PPCC Inc. 

The State Government initially responded to recent damage to "bathing box" structures at Mt Martha North beach, caused by stormy seas last year, by refusing to consent to their replacement or restoration, on the grounds that the site was prone to damage by stormy seas. The Shire concurred with that view, and it had much trouble getting owners to remove debris from the damaged structures that was left strewn around the beach and adjacent waters. Olwen Bawden, as PPCC Inc.’s Secretary, had a letter published in The Age on 17th February 2001 supporting the view. 

The owners of the structures, holders of annual licences for the structures to be where they were before the sea moved them, lobbied the Government, and succeeded in changing its official view. 
  

On 5th February 2001 spokesmen for PPCC Inc., and Brighton Foreshore Preservation Association Inc., one of its 15 Member Organizations, addressed a Victorian Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal panel reviewing, at the groups’ instigation, Bayside Council’s approval of a restaurant and large car park almost on Port Phillip. The VCAT finding in March effectively disallowed the appeal. 
 

Stephen Morey, because of work demands, including the completion of a Ph.D. thesis, did not stand again for the Committee. His valuable contributions as PPCC Inc. President, 1989-96, and since then as Secretary, were very warmly applauded by the AGM. The new Secretary is Miss Olwen Bawden, of Kananook Creek Association Inc. and the new Committee members are Mrs Patricia Carden (Brighton Foreshore Preservation Association Inc.) and Ms Anne Martin (Carrum Residents Action Group Inc.) 

One of the first actions of the new Committee was to convene a meeting, suggested by Cr Johanna van Klaveren, of Kingston Council, of councillors from Frankston, Kingston and Bayside municipalities to explain the views and work of PPCC Inc. and to discuss coastal issues with them. Councillors from each of those three Councils attended, five in all, and a useful and cordial exchange of views and awareness of positions resulted.