Hansard debates

  Hon. J.  W.  G. ROSS (Higinbotham) --  It gives me great pleasure  to speak in
support of the Geographic Place Names  Bill. I acknowledge the contribution made
by Mr Nardella, and I thank the opposition for its support of the bill.
The title of the bill belies the ubiquitous impact of this legislation. The bill
has implications for  our national and local  identity; it has  implications for
the celebration of the lives of  certain people  and historic events; and it has
enormous scientific implications  for the way we handle the almost  unimaginable
quantity of  digital data on each of us that  is assembled as we travel from the
cradle to the grave.
I  want  to  elaborate briefly on  a  few aspects of the  legislation  by way of
examples and also record some important information that  I found interesting as
I analysed the aims of the bill.

The  first point  is that  the bill  has been influenced  by a  detailed inquiry
undertaken by  KPMG entitled 'Review  of Place Names Committee  -- Final Report,
November 1, 1995'.
Among  other  things the inquiry found that persons who may make submissions  or
objections to the Victorian  Place Names Committee  are not defined; time  lines
are  set  for  only  one  part  of  the  process  of  consultation;  ministerial
involvement in the process is partial; the 
cover of the Place Names Committee is illogical -- school names but not hospital
names are controlled; and, some names go through  the consultative process while
others arrive via maps and are registered without consultation. The inquiry also
found that the processes of the Place Names Committee may duplicate processes of
agencies that consult on name changes.  One  of  the  main  conclusions  of  the
inquiry was that the process may be very slow and duplicative.

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The  purpose  of the bill is to respond to existing shortcomings, make provision
for the naming of places and amend  the Survey  Co-ordination Act  1958 and  the
Local Government Act 1989. There are three  key  aspects  in  these reforms: the
first  is to recognise the primary importance of local government and  the  need
for community involvement in the selection of appropriate place names.
Within the bill the word 'place' is necessarily a technical definition and means
any  place or building  that  is  or is likely  to  be of public  or  historical
interest. In particular the bill specifies towns, suburbs and localities and the
streets  and  roads that lie within them as well as  topographical  features  --
items like parks  and  gardens  --  and buildings such as government schools and
hospitals.
In this place, particularly in relation to  legislation  such  as  this,  one is
always tempted to reflect on one's own electorate.

However, I resist the temptation to go too far down that track because this bill
specifically restricts its operation and does not apply to either the naming  of
electoral provinces or districts or to municipal districts or wards.
Nevertheless,  it  would  be  remiss  of  me  not  to  mention  in  passing that
Higinbotham  is  one  of the  two  electoral  provinces  that  are  named  after
distinguished Victorians. In the case of my electorate, George Higinbotham was a
former member of the Victorian Parliament and chief justice of the Supreme Court
and one of Brighton's favourite sons.
However, the lack of direct  application of  the bill to the naming of electoral
provinces does not preclude me from commenting on some important implications of
the  bill  in  respect  of  my  own  electorate and its historical and  cultural
implications.

Later  I  would  like  to give some practical and  scientific  examples  of  the
critical need for this legislation in relation to the processing of digital data
and its translation into information about all of us.
The original inhabitants  of  Higinbotham, of  course,  were Aborigines  and  in
particular  the  Bunurong people. The  Bunurong are generally  described  as the
coastal tribe that  frequented the Sandringham  district for thousands of years.
They made tracks along the foreshore  and  their  existence  is  still marked by
shell middens  and  freshwater wells discernible  at the base  of  the sandstone
cliffs at Beaumaris and Black Rock.

Now,  given the  rich history of Bunurong people and the  extent to  which their
lives were  documented, I  record my  disappointment that  as far as I have been
able to ascertain there is not one  street, road  or locality  in my  electorate
that celebrates their ancient history, and I take the opportunity of the passage
of  this important legislation  to  call on the  relevant municipalities to give
early consideration to correcting that anomaly. In so  calling,  I  add that the
most recent version of the Place Names Committee's guidance notes dated May 1995
says  that naming policies  which prevail in  Australia and internationally are,
inter alia, that the  use of traditional Aboriginal  place names is  encouraged,
subject to  authorisation from relevant  Aboriginal communities.  The guidelines
are particularly applicable in Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia.
That is not to say  that areas of my electorate have not recognised a rich Koori
history.  For  example, the  former  municipality of  Moorabbin  derives from an
Aboriginal word mooroolboon, which principally means a resting place.

However, the word also describes local activities such as  mothers breastfeeding
their  babies in  areas  where  food  was  abundant.  Another interpretation  of
mooroolboon is mothers milk.
The  Bunurong were never  numerous and their tribes  were quickly devastated  by
European settlement so that by the 1860s the Mordi tribe remained  as their last
vestige camped by the local creek . Given the lack of overall recognition of the
Bunurong I am  pleased to  say that  the legacy  of indigenous Mordi people does
survive as  a derivative name of  the  suburb of Mordialloc and  to this day the
Aboriginal flag maintains a quiet vigil on the south bank of Mordialloc Creek.
European traditions, of course, have been more fully preserved and the nostalgic
links  with  Mother  England  still  survive  in  the  localities  of  Brighton,
Sandringham and Cheltenham.

The pioneers of the locality are also well represented  in suburbs like Hampton,
which  was named  after Dyas Hampton, a sawyer  from Wiltshire  who came  to cut
trees on Crown land outside Brighton, and made his fortune supplying firewood to
Melbourne.
Thomas  Bent, after whom the  suburb  of Bentleigh is named,  was  the son of  a
ticket-of-leave man who had established market gardens in the McKinnon area in 
1851. Thomas Bent's formal  connection with Moorabbin lasted  more than 45 years
as the local rate collector and later a councillor in Moorabbin and Brighton. He
first came to state prominence in 1871 when he defeated George  Higinbotham  for
the  seat  of Brighton. His parliamentary service was not continuous but by 1904
he was Premier of Victoria until his government was defeated in 1908.

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As I move  around my electorate there is  barely a day that passes that I am not
reminded through the names of localities and streets of the history and heritage
of the locality. Last week in the  city  of Bayside I had occasion to visit  the
Sandringham  Primary School in  Bamfield Street. Streets signs  in that locality
are subtitled  as the historic  precinct  of Gipsy Village.  The  immediate past
mayor of Bayside, Cr Graeme Disney, recorded the history of the area and notes:
  There appears to be no foundation to the popular folk tale that  this area was
  once the camping place of a gipsy  king, Bamfield Moor Carew, and that a gipsy
  queen  lived in Queens  Square  and that their  children  were named  Francis,
  Susan,  Henry and  Arthur.  There is,  however,  some connection with  gipsies
  because  a grave in  the old churchyard in  Bickleigh, Devon (England) records
  the final resting place of 'Bamfylde Moore Carew, King  of  the  Gipsies;' who
  was born in 1690.

  Perhaps Holloway (who first subdivided the area later renamed Sandringham) had
  remembered the  grave from  his youth,  or had read about it,  and decided  to
  perpetuate the names.
Place naming is a constant process of evolution and  there is probably no better
example of how  communities  assert their identity  than the responses by  local
councils  in  my electorate to  the notification from  the  Australian Bureau of
Statistics  that  it  had  adopted  the  'suburb' in urban areas  as  the  ideal
framework for the Australian Standard Geographical Classification. Consequently,
the Victorian Place Names Committee requested municipalities  to  clearly define
their suburban boundaries. That need arose after municipal amalgamations  across
Australia wreaked havoc on the assembly and comparability of nearly  every piece
of  spatial and  time-series  data related to  the  quinquennial census and  its
utility as a population denominator.

How  the City of Kingston  approached the task is a  good example of how suburbs
might be defined and named in subordinate legislation under the Geographic Place
Names Act. First, the council adopted some guiding principles that were required
to be regarded in the naming process: the history of the area and the  community
of interest  within  the  suburb;  statistical  requirements  and the  need  for
boundaries to  represent  aggregations of ABS census collection districts; major
physical boundaries  such as freeways,  roads  and rivers, which  impose natural
boundaries on localities; minimisation of disruption to residents  by  perceived
impacts on property values; the cost of items such as stationery for businesses;
and Australia Post postcode boundaries. Next, the council developed a process of
community  consultation  by  asking its  representative  village committees  for
input. Draft maps were then shown in  customer service centres and libraries and
the community was  invited to participate by  notices in the council's newspaper
and other local newspapers.

Although  it differs in detail, that is exactly the approach  envisaged  in  the
bill. It  is  spelled  out in part 2 entitled 'Guidelines for Geographic Names'.
Part  3 provides  for  the registration  of  geographic  names  and  establishes
consultative  mechanisms by creating Geographic Place  Names Advisory committees
to the Minister  for Conservation and  Land Management. Those  expert committees
will have a  membership of professional people  representing a broad and defined
range of relevant scientific and cultural disciplines.
In  Kingston, the major changes proposed to the  Place  Names  Committee  in  my
electorate were to have  the Moorabbin  airport defined as a locality in its own
right; the areas previously designated as Cheltenham  East and Cheltenham  North
to  be included with  Cheltenham;  and similarly  the  area previously known  as
Moorabbin East to be incorporated into Moorabbin. 

In Glen Eira, I am quite pleased at the change of name of my locality from South
Oakleigh  to East Bentleigh because it will much more clearly convey my  address
in my electorate.  The other  significant change  in Glen Eira concerns the area
south of Patterson Road  currently referred to as Moorabbin. That will change to
Bentleigh and  properties in and beyond South Road east of Tucker  Road will  be
renamed as Bentleigh East. The process is continuing as I speak. Last Friday was
the deadline for East Bentleigh residents to have  their  say  on  whether  that
patch  of  East  Bentleigh  should  keep  its  name.  The alternative is for the
boundaries of  Ormond, McKinnon and  Bentleigh  to be extended  to East Boundary
Road.

In Bayside the following changes are proposed: that  the  middle of Charman Road
between Weatherall  and  Beach roads become  the divider between the  suburbs of
Mentone  and Beaumaris; that the area bounded south of South Road -- between New
Street  and the beach -- and the west  side  of New Street -- between South Road
and the  beach -- become clarified as Brighton and the south  side of South Road
between  Nepean  Highway service  road  and Hampton Street  become  clarified as
Brighton East and further west between Hampton and New Streets as Brighton.
My  objective in  detailing some of the issues  and processes  in the  naming of
suburbs in my electorate is to show,  in the most practical way, how the objects
of the bill relate to the real world and how choices on place names enshrine our
heritage, culture and present preference and ambitions.

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Before I conclude I shall touch on those aspects of the bill that relate to  the
maintenance of the Register of Geographic Names in a digital format and refer to
some  possible   applications  of  the  raw  data  and  other  implications  for
information creation.  Much of  the impetus for  reform was  to be  able to  use
digital geographic coordinates  for emergency service dispatch services provided
by ambulances, the  police and fire services. But there are more subtle uses for
a digital geographic data matrix  that  will  be  prepared  by  the Registrar of
Geographic Names and its potential for the merging of compatible databases.
The  quinquennial census in  Australia  is arguably  the  most comprehensive and
complete set  of high quality demographic  data regularly assembled  anywhere in
the world and is  the most obvious candidate for  merging. I am sure all members
will  have examined social  atlases of their  electorates for political campaign
purposes  and  decided  on the basis of such maps where, for example,  bilingual
campaign information can be targeted.

I  invite honourable  members  to  consider  how  merging  the Victorian  public
hospital inpatient management  information  system  and  home  addresses  of all
hospital patients could  assist in our understanding  of disease and the pattern
of distribution of medical procedures. It is now  possible  to map admissions to
hospitals by diagnosis and  to  determine the diagnosis-specific catchment areas
of  all our public treatment facilities. A merger of those databases would  also
mean that  at any time after patients sought treatment authorities would be able
to  monitor  epidemics in  communities,  interpret the  patterns  and  provide a
response within hours.
I conclude by describing the most sophisticated scenario that will be enabled by
the passage of the bill.

For example, in the case of the Victorian  Cancer  Registry  and  the geographic
distribution  of  any  form  of  cancer  not  only  could  we  map  the  spatial
distribution  of  the  disease  but  we   could  also  select  from  the  census
age-specific denominators and map the distribution of, say, colorectal cancer in
adult  males over 40 years of age. We could aggregate the statistics  across the
metropolitan area  and using the census make predictions of the expected rate of
colorectal cancer for each  suburb. Authorities would then have an observed  and
an expected rate of colorectal  cancer, and that would allow for the application
of probability tests such as the chi square test  to our suburbs. We could  then
map  the  likelihood  that the levels of cancer  found  were  abnormal,  and  if
required  seek  the  necessary   epidemiological  explanations.  This  would  be
tantamount to mapping hot spots of disease.

A golden thread runs  through the proposed legislation and tightly ties together
our history  and our  social and  cultural identity  and paves  the way  for the
application of some of the most sophisticated scientific and statistical methods
of information creation from raw numbers that are known  to man.  I commend  the
bill to the house.