A0020093K Victoria
PORT PHILLIP CONSERVATION COUNCIL INC. 
Telephone +61395891802, +614429176725                18 Anita Street BEAUMARIS VIC 3193 
Facsimile +6139589680                                                                                ggd@netspace.net.au
www.vicnet.net.au/~phillip                                                                                   18th April 2005
 
President's Report to April 2005 General Meeting
 

In my last report to an April General Meeting, in 2003, I pointed out the Bracks Government’s achievement of its historic majority in both Houses of the Victorian Parliament, and that its posting, to every metropolitan household in the leadup to that election, of Melbourne 2030 - its plan for dealing with the expected addition of another 1,000,000 people to the Melbourne metropolis over the next 25 years - was no barrier to its electoral success. Much of the rampant overdevelopment that is steadily demeaning Port Phillip is related to population increase. The Channel Deepening proposal is not unrelated to Melbourne 2030 and is, despite glaring faults in its EES, not yet defunct. The Victorian Government strongly favours channel deepening in principle, and the Independent Panel does not oppose the intention, but rather its major operational details. The Minister for Planning has ordered a Supplementary EES.
 
I also warned that public and private organizations were using the weakly-opposed 2030 Plan as a pretext for huge marinas. A 1.5 km long Safety Beach marina is messily underway even though neither it nor Blairgowrie’s recent marina are among the 6 “Safe Harbours” the Victorian Coastal Strategy designates Port Phillip sites for. The Royal Brighton Yacht Club marina, also not included, has been and is still expanding. The 6 VCS “Safe Harbours” are:
     •  No. 1 - Queenscliffe Council has endorsed the $20 million redevelopment proposed at the existing harbour,
     • No. 2 - the Port Bellarine Tourist Resort Act 1981 needs only dates amended to give it force (leases still run),
     • No. 3 - a Werribee South EES has begun for a marina on 27 hectares of seabed, and 7 hectares of land
      • No. 4 - no further development proposals seem to have been made for Mordialloc Creek yet,
       •  No. 5 - Frankston Council persists in its 1997 proposal to fill 35 hectares of seabed in front of Olivers Hill, and
     • No. 6 - Mornington Yacht Club has a marina plan for Mornington harbour opposed by MEA Inc. & PPCC Inc.

In that climate, it still shocks that at Leopold, without Coastal Management Act 1995 consent, Crown seabed (zoned PCRZ in the Greater Geelong Planning Scheme) has had a channel cut in it and two rock groynes built on it, joined to a large deeply excavated area on the private land abutting the high water mark there that has filled with sea water.
 
In March the Committee of Management resolved that PPCC Inc. should write to the Premier advocating public acquisition of the 40 hectare Ansett land at Mt Eliza, whose title extends to the high water mark, as a key part of a Mt Eliza Coastal Park that would increase the security and public enjoyment of the Green Wedge at the coast.
 
The 2004 Annual General Meeting authorized the Committee to seek advice on apparent attempts by Mornington Peninsula Shire Council to circumvent a 2003 VCAT precedent, which forbade it to build a skateboard ramp at Rye, and to fund Parks Victoria, which manages Rosebud Foreshore Reserve, for it to build a Rosebud foreshore ramp. The DS&E has been told of our concerns. It will require a 14-day advertising on site soon, and it will consider submissions when determining whether consent under the Coastal Management Act 1995  should be given.
 
PPCC Inc. and Brighton Foreshore Preservation Association Inc. seem to have failed in attempts to protect the overdeveloped Brighton waterfront north of the foreshore reserve owned by Bayside Council from having a bridge-like bicycle road dominating it, with highly undesirable over-water sections. PPCC Inc. and Beaumaris Conservation Society Inc. have found that Bayside Council has concreting of the cliff-top sandy walking track as an option for a route to complete the Beaumaris gap in its bicycle road. If this gap is to be closed, our first preference is to extend the present 2-lane section of Beach Road, to provide width for the bicycle road to be entirely on the road reserve for Beach Road. Our second is to intrude minimally into vegetation on the edge of Beach Road. The road should not go on the cliff edge. PPCC Inc. and Mordialloc-Beaumaris Conservation League Inc. have opposed a Kingston Council plan for a road in their section not on the edge of Beach Road. Building of the whole Bay-wide bicycle road should have been fully pre-planned before it began, and not treated, as it has been, as a piecemeal war of attrition, with the bicycle road as the inevitable winner and the remnant foreshore environment as the seemingly inevitable loser.
 
We thank Jenny Hassell, who had to resign as Secretary; Jenny Warfe, who took her place; and Stephen Calvert-Smith, who attended two of the four Committee meetings held since October 2004 as a Deputy Committee Member.
    
Geoffrey Goode, President