Despite Cr Humphrey’s best efforts, sanity has prevailed on the Surf Coast!! In a motion passed 6:2 on 17th October, Surf Coast Shire Council resolved to “request the Chief Executive Officer prepare a community consultation framework on the issues surrounding the Pt Impossible optional dress beach and that a report detailing this framework be presented to Council”(Click here to read minutes, it starts on Page 48).

In a way, Council’s hands were tied, with the Minister stating “It would be imprudent to proceed further without appropriate local consultation being undertaken.” The Council acknowledges this with their conclusion “Clearly without undertaking such a process, the Minister will attach very little weight to Council’s request.”

There are a few interesting things to note about this motion that are worth discussing further:

• No timeframes are given for how long the Chief Executive Officer (Peter Bollen) has to prepare the “consultation framework”. This means it might be presented to Council next week, or more likely it will be presented to Council after a reasonable time for preparation, since any framework worthy of implementation needs to be properly developed, so that it will stack up to the Minister’s request
• The motion for consultation was passed 6:2, which is a departure from the original motion that was passed 5:2 in favour of revoking status. This tells us that at least a couple of Cr Humphrey’s supporters in the original motion are now willing to take a more moderate stance. This doesn’t indicate support for the beach per se, but we can probably guess Cr Humphrey is not winning too many friends in the chambers… There were only two people against the original motion for consultation, we believe it was Cr Humphrey and Cr Schroeter - it is surprising Cr Humphrey can find a supporter in Council these days, his activities have not done the image of the Surf Coast Shire any favours!!
• Cr Humphrey tried to get an ammendment to the motion through - even to the last, he’s trying to avoid actually consulting with the real users of the beach (ie true Victorian nudists!!). Cr Humphrey naively suggested that a single public meeting would be sufficient to satisfy the Minister’s request. Cr Humphrey was probably hoping that the only people who would show up at that meeting would be his neighbours at White’s Beach - he probably hoped that clear thinking and well-spoken supporters of the clothing optional beach would not bother coming along!! Well, just so you know Ron, Victorian nudists would have made the trip just for the satisfaction of dismantling your arguments in a public forum. The residents of the Surf Coast community deserve to know, in detail, exactly how well you represent their interests!
• In one statement in the motion summary, Council concedes “the people who legitimately and legally use Pt Impossible as an option dress beach and the broader community were not consulted prior to the Council considering the above action.” This flies directly in the face of the assertions made by Cr Humphrey, who still seems to think plenty of consultation has happened. Perhaps he thinks is neighbours count, since he hasn’t been able to give us details of the nudists he spoke to (we’re betting you could count the nudists who were consulted on zero fingers)

The only other point that’s interesting is the absence of any reference to Southside. Cr Humphrey indicated in one of the media articles that Southside wasn’t being considered as part of this process, so it does appear both Southside and Pt Impossible are safe for the time being. This doesn’t mean we can relax - the next round is probably just around the corner, so those letter writing skills won’t have gone to waste when we need to play our part in the consultation process!!

There’s plenty more in the motion minutes, check them out - we applaud Council for bringing sanity back into the decision making process. It’s unfortunate that it took a trip up to the Minister to make it happen, but we seem to be steering the ship in the right direction again.

Now we need to see how Mornington (Sunnyside) and Wyndham (Campbells Cove) will proceed. Mornington has been very quiet throughout the whole process, so we wait with some anticipation for their next move. Wyndham has indicated informally (via email to one of our representatives) that they have not planned for any consultation at this stage, but concede it will be required in order to proceed past the Minister.

Great work everyone - the game’s not over yet, but at least now we have some breathing space!! Don’t forget the beach cricket day (weather permitting), tell your friends!!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 20th, 2006 at 12:23 am and is filed under Beaches, General News, Pt Impossible. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.