Hansard debates

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (14:15): I rise to oppose this bill, and I do so with a profound sense of disappointment. The Great Ocean Road is an extraordinary asset for Victoria and for Australia, and yet this bill fails to do it justice, to create the governance which could truly enable residents and local businesses to thrive. Prior to entering this place I was a local councillor in the Corangamite shire, which is responsible for the iconic Twelve Apostles site, road and hinterland and coastal towns like Port Campbell and Princetown, and it had council jurisdiction over these areas. It presented a significant cost burden to local ratepayers, with virtually no economic benefit. It is estimated that less than 20 cents in the dollar gets returned to the local communities and ratepayers. As for the Twelve Apostles site itself, which Parks Victoria currently manage—which in reality is effectively a lavatory block in a container and a very inadequate car park—the visitor experience is appalling. This land, incidentally, is all privately owned and could be managed and developed so much better if the government agency was out of the picture.

I would like to acknowledge my colleague in this area Richard Riordan, the member for Polwarth, who has been working with me, since long before we both went into Parliament, to try and get some better system for managing this very important area. Certainly we were very passionate about having one authority, but that is not what we have got here. There is no doubt about the potential of this area. The 243 kilometres of natural heritage-listed road between Torquay and Allansford is Victoria’s top tourism attraction; 2.6 million people visit each year—that is more than the number visiting Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef combined. Tourism accounts for 13 per cent of the economy across the entire area and contributes $1.5 billion to our state economy.

The problem is clear. The Great Ocean Road itself and the surrounding land is currently managed by at least 14 authorities, and for any issue which involves full consultation, like planning, the number of bodies involved is at least doubled. Different public entities are responsible for strategic development and implementation, land use, planning and development, infrastructure delivery, asset maintenance, emergency management, investment facilitation, destination promotion and the management of the environment and local ecology. We have Barwon Water, Colac Otway shire, the Corangamite Catchment Management Authority, Corangamite shire, the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, the Glenelg Hopkins Catchment Management Authority, the Great Ocean Road Coast Committee, Moyne shire, the Otway Coast Committee, Parks Victoria, Surf Coast shire, VicRoads, Wannon Water and the Warrnambool City Council. Any consultations then also include local Indigenous groups and foreshore committees, plus the CFA and Environment Protection Authority Victoria. This is quangos on steroids.

Unsurprisingly there is vast duplication of effort, inefficiency and waste. The experience for local residents and businesses trying to navigate the layers of government is even more damaging. I often hear the same complaint. Even if a bureaucrat can be found, they do not want to take responsibility for anything that might be somebody else’s job. When something needs funding the buck gets passed too. There is a merry-go-round which exasperated residents and local businesses just cannot seem to escape.

So in my view there is a real opportunity for a bill. The road is managed now piecemeal, like a series of separate local residential streets, when in reality it is an asset of national and international significance. This fabulous area deserves far better governance. That is why prior to the last election I was a strong supporter of the Liberal Party’s proposed solution. We wanted a Great Ocean Road authority with bite, and that is why I am so disappointed with this outcome. We only get one shot at this, and the bill the Labor government has proposed bears all its normal hallmarks: consultation, shared responsibility, overlapping powers, talk shops, brakes on development and inaction—everything in fact except the streamlined governance the Great Ocean Road really needs.

Alarmingly also there appears to be no budget. With no identified new funding, what is it going to do? The people of the Great Ocean Road tell me that they need resources, they need infrastructure. These things need cash not committees. Worse still is the suggestion that existing revenue streams will be diverted to the new body. Money could be taken out of the communities on the Great Ocean Road and spent on funding offices, visions, strategy documents and partnership agreements.

Princetown, for example, currently earns nearly $200 000 a year from its caravan park. Will the new authority, bereft of other funding, continue to spend the money as Princetown does on the community itself—the sports clubs, the CFA—or will it go to consultants? I have no doubts on that score myself, I am sorry to say. It is already clear that no money will be saved, no duplication removed.

The minister in her second-reading speech in the Assembly noted that there would not be a single job lost, and the Premier’s press release following the bill’s passage in that house notes:

All staff working for existing committees of management that will be eventually incorporated into—

the Great Ocean Road Coast and Parks Authority—

… will retain their jobs, conditions and working locations.

How is that streamlining the operation? In short, this bill adds no new resources, cuts no bureaucracy—in fact it increases it—and in so doing dilutes the scarce resources that communities already have to meet their infrastructure challenges. In centralising the administration I have no doubt that the resources will be centralised too.

My next concern relates to the area covered. Surely the extent of the authority’s operations should be a decision for Parliament to make as we pass this bill, not the executive council. The powers and responsibilities are laid out in this bill, but with such significant consequences it seems extraordinary that the area covered is not clearly determined. The issue of planning powers makes it hugely significant to local councils and communities, and it strikes me as deeply inappropriate that a decision of such significance can be taken outside of Parliament. It is a further reason that I cannot support this bill before the house today.

Finally, I would like to touch upon the related point of representation and local control. Who will be in charge? The structure of the bill in my view will exclude the very local people who could wrest control back to their communities. It excludes all board or committee of management members of responsible entities—that is, the local bodies—from eligibility for appointment as directors of the authority. This is hugely counterproductive. It will result in capable local people being ineligible and the balance of directors therefore coming from outside the communities affected, most likely from inside the tram tracks of Melbourne. To add insult to injury, it then makes no provision for local input into decisions. There is a mechanism for consultation with Indigenous communities. There is provision for ministerial input, but there is a telling lack of any way for local people to become directly involved.

Given my fears for the composition of the authority’s board of directors, this is even more significant. We are told already that the authority’s headquarters will be in Torquay, as the Premier’s media statement in February revealed. This decision was clearly taken before the bill even came into the house, in itself a deeply presumptuous and arrogant way to operate. It is an inauspicious start for the authority that its operations are conducted that way, but one which I fear is entirely in keeping with this government’s methods.

I am voting against this bill because in its current form it fails to address the problems it sets out to resolve. Not only does it miss an important chance to improve the governance of the Great Ocean Road, but I am convinced that it will in fact duplicate more, centralise more, cost more and do less. I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill in every form.