PP2005A: April 2005 Newsletter of Port Phillip Conservation Council Inc.

	PORT PHILLIP Newsletter of Port Phillip Conservation Council Inc.
A0020093K Victoria		PP2005A April 2005 http://www.vicnet.net.au/~phillip

A Mt Eliza Coastal Park: PPCC Inc. Urges State to Buy Key Ansett Land

Port Phillip Conservation Council Inc. has written to the Premier, Hon Steve Bracks MLA, asking that the Victorian Government publicly acquire a 40 hectare area of attractive open space land at Mt Eliza for a Coastal Park. The land, shown in the photograph below, has a substantial boundary on the high water mark of Port Phillip Bay. It is now held by the estate of the late Lady Ansett, who died recently.

Foreshore at Gunyong Creek, Mt Eliza

PPCC Inc. last year studied a report endorsed by its Member Organization, Mt Eliza Association for Environmental Care Inc, that recommended that this land should contribute to a Mt Eliza Coastal Park. The report assessed the environmental values of the land, particularly the flora and geological aspects of the well-vegetated foreshore section, and provided good grounds for measures to protect those values.

The letter from PPCC Inc. to the Premier points also to the importance of the 40 hectare holding as being most exceptional in having its freehold title extending to the high water mark of Port Phillip.

Furthermore this key parcel of coastal open space forms, together with adjoining open space, an approximately 200 hectare area of open space having a Green Wedge zoning that is some 2 kilometres in width from its boundary with the coast all the way to its 2 kilometre boundary on the Nepean Highway, which is a kilometre from the coast there. This Green Wedge land, which is part of the Green Wedge that runs further east, inland to the Mornington Peninsula Freeway, is by far the largest area of coastal open space between Melbourne and Point Nepean on the east coast of Port Phillip, and undoubtedly provides the main break in the 80 km long continuous intensively built-up area along the Port Phillip coast from the mouth of the Yarra River to the remnant open space at Point Nepean.

By contrast, the western coast of Port Phillip is well served by relatively vast areas of publicly-owned open space, although they lack the topographic and geological interest of the land that PPCC Inc. is proposing as a Coastal park. One of the gems there is the Point Cook Coastal Park and the Cheetham Wetlands. That area of 1000 hectares is a large open flat landscape that abuts a 7 kilometre stretch of coastline, and is a major refuge for indigenous flora and fauna and migratory birds. It also effects a complete separation between Altona and Werribee, and the coastal and inland development that is rapidly intensifying at both of those places.

Unlike public ownership as a Coastal Park held under the Parks Victoria Act 1998 (the basis of Point Cook Coastal Park’s tenure), or the greater security of explicit listing in the National Parks Act 1975, Green Wedge zoning by itself is not as secure a protection. There is an inherent conflict between the ambitions of the private owner and the public regulator that the public ownership arrangement is intrinsically free of.

Channel Deepening - Independent Panel Report Has Probed Deeply

The Planning Minister, Hon Rob Hulls MLA, has released to the public the full report of the Independent Panel established to examine the Port of Melbourne Corporation’s Environmental Effects Statement on its proposal for large-scale deepening of the shipping channels in Port Phillip. Mr Hulls also determined that the Corporation must produce a supplementary EES on a wide range of important and pertinent matters not yet satisfactorily resolved.

The Victorian Government has been well served by the professionalism of the Independent Panel that it set up to advise it on the largest proposal in Victoria ever to have been subjected to EES scrutiny.

The Government had, early in its life, revealed its view that the EES framework in Victoria was outdated and inadequate, and should be improved, but unfortunately it has not done that. The evaluation of the Channel Deepening proposal is thus being hampered by the use of the present outdated system.

Mornington Harbour - A Push Again for a Marina next to Mothers’ Beach

Mornington Environment Association Inc, a Member Organization of Port Phillip Conservation Council Inc, successfully alerted the Mornington community to the great disadvantages of an attempt, in 1993, by the Mornington Yacht Club to extend by building a marina in Mornington Harbour near Mothers’ Beach.

Mornington Harbour- Mothers’ Beach at top left

MEA Inc’s success became evident in 1994 when, after public input to a Panel, the then Planning Minister, Hon. Robert Maclellan, wrote to the then Shire of Mornington stating that “… the option for a marina in Mornington Harbour is no longer appropriate. Any future proposal for a marina in the vicinity of Mornington should be outside the Mornington Harbour, and would require an extensive, in depth study.” Mr Maclellan, as Minister, and the Kennett Government he was a part of, were not widely fêted for being overzealous in rejecting dubious plans.

MEA Inc. now opposes the Yacht Club’s new plans to replace 65 swing moorings on open water with 180 concrete pens for yachts and power boats, and build a big wave screen. PPCC Inc. has written to the Minister for the Environment, Hon John Thwaites MLA, giving its reasons for also opposing the plans.

Getting Around VCAT’s Order on Coastal Strategy: Rosebud Skateboard Ramp Saga

The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal gave a clear and important precedent when it undertook a review sought by Port Phillip Conservation Council Inc, under Section 82 of the Planning and Environment Act 1987, of the granting by the Mornington Peninsula Shire Council of a permit to itself to build a skateboard ramp on the Rye Foreshore Reserve (See PP2003A).

The Tribunal ordered that the Council’s permit be set aside, and that no permit issue. It declared that weight had been given to the approval of the proposal given under the Coastal Management Act 1995, but that the inconsistency of the entirely non-coastal dependent nature of the skateboard proposal with the requirement of the Victorian Coastal Strategy 2002 that developments on the coast need to be restricted to coastal-dependent uses led to the decision it made.

Less than two years after that ruling, the good principle confirmed might be circumvented by having the authority representing the Crown - the owner of the Foreshore Reserve, which in this new attempt is the Rosebud Foreshore Reserve - be the proponent of a skateboard proposal. The Shire required a permit under the Planning and Environment Act 1987, but the organization managing the reserve, Parks Victoria, can have a permit issued to it that is, under Section 97M of that Act, exempt from review. PPCC Inc. is obtaining advice on this matter.

ã 2005 Port Phillip Conservation Council Inc. 47 Bayview Crescent, BLACK ROCK VIC 3193 A0020093K Victoria President: Geoffrey Goode Secretary: Jennifer Warfe Tel: (03) 9598 0554 Fax: (03) 9589 1680