Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Urban Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Southern Peninsula Aquatic Centre. This project is a proposal to provide the people of Rosebud, Rye, Dromana, McCrae, Tootgarook, Blairgowrie and Sorrento with a major public pool and aquatic centre, which will assist seniors, families and young people. It is a health project, it is a community development project, it is a seniors support project and it is, in my view, an outstanding project. It is modelled on the highly successful Hastings-Pelican Park swimming and aquatic centre on the other side of the Mornington Peninsula.

I want to make several points. Firstly, I declare my complete support for the project as it is proposed by the Mornington Peninsula Shire Council for the foreshore at Rosebud. Secondly, I voice my dismay that the state Department of Sustainability and Environment has delayed this project now for some years. The council has repeatedly sought approval for siting the aquatic centre on the foreshore. There used to be a swimming pool on this very site, so it is not as if it is pristine land; it is the site of a former swimming pool. It beggars belief that a bureaucratic entity has sat on the approval of the Southern Peninsula Aquatic Centre for some years now. My message to the Victorian minister for the environment, Gavin Jennings, is respectful but forceful: please take action now to ensure the approval of the Southern Peninsula Aquatic Centre.

This is a great project. It is a fantastic project for seniors, for families, for teenagers and for toddlers. It is about water safety for young children and giving them the chance to learn. It is about activities for teenagers and for our seniors. In the electorate of Flinders, we have the highest concentration of seniors in Victoria and the fifth highest concentration of seniors in Australia, and I suspect that the Rosebud-Rye-Dromana area has one of the highest concentrations—if not the highest concentration—in all of Australia of seniors in a small demographic area.

So to the Victorian minister I say: please get your department out of the way and stop blocking the Southern Peninsula Aquatic Centre at Rosebud. We had primary approval for up to $2 million of federal funding prior to the election. After the election that was cancelled with the abolition of the Regional Partnerships program. I say to the federal government: put in place an alternative, do it now and let this project proceed.