Darren Cheeseman (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Saturday morning I went with my son Isaac down to the beach at Fairhaven along the Great Ocean Road. We went down there because from two days before my office had been receiving reports from the Fairhaven community that their very fine surf life saving club was in some trouble. So I went down there and inspected for myself the state of the Fairhaven Surf Life Saving Club. What I witnessed was truly remarkable. Through the course of this winter there has been a number of very severe storm events and storm surges. As you would expect, surf life saving clubs are built on top of dunes very close to the beach that they serve. Of course, with these very substantial storm surges at Fairhaven there has been an enormous amount of erosion taking place which has eroded away access for the surf life saving club to the beach. More importantly, the surf life saving club is now placed literally right on the edge of a cliff and if we continue to see storm surges then we can expect the club to be washed away.

This surf life saving club has been there for many years. In fact, they have been working really hard to secure fundraising dollars and money from the state government to rebuild their facility to support the Fairhaven community. The state government department responsible, the Department of Sustainability and Environment, had given them coastal consent to rebuild their facility. I am now told that the Department of Sustainability and Environment are considering withdrawing that coastal consent because of the state of erosion that is taking place along the Fairhaven foreshore. It reminds me of the importance of tackling climate change. Whilst this particular event is clearly not climate change related, it is true to say that with sea level rise we are going to see an enormous number of public assets along Australia's coastline eroded away, placing many billions of dollars under threat.