AS A somewhat new sitting councillor (Island Ward), I cannot let the misdirected fire in the Sentinel Times (19/08/25) – ‘The Tragedy of Bad Planning’ - pass without comment. I say “somewhat new” because, like six of the nine councillors, I came into Council at the last election, late last year.
The key argument being made by the writer to support that editorial headline rests on supposition about councillors’ capacity to get across the detail of reports placed before them.
Well, yes, we do have an awful lot of reading, but no report comes to us for assent without having been presented to us in briefings – and re-presented – with our input and agreed changes (those reports now going out for community consultation). We’ve been looking at some of those reports for months and wrangling with colleagues in other Wards over the budget and its priorities since November.
For the writer to posit that having a number of reports to give assent to is, ipso facto, evidence of ‘bad planning’ is a very long bow to draw.
And as for Berninneit, the writer is surely not suggesting that we be hoist on that petard; it was a decision of a past council. Whatever the writer’s views of the cultural centre, it is now ‘a fact’. As for my views, I am a supporter of Berninneit, although I question whether that past council, in green-lighting the project when it did, had its community priorities in the correct order.
My view is that the sporting precinct was then and remains now the key project for Phillip Island and Cowes. Had the allocation in this budget been made ten years ago, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. But, the planning works are underway, and we expect it to rapidly gather a head of steam with both council funding and grant funding once the first sod is turned.
The writer may have other views, but how can we possibly expect to garner the tens of millions of grant funding needed for the mooted Cowes Aquatic Centre, if we don’t have the ovals, courts and precinct underway? The writer also knows that a number of the projects being questioned, “to be overturned”, are legacy projects from the last council and underway with grant funding. Do we stop and give the money back?
As for giving us a whack for a fourth glass bin – a purple one – and the provision in the budget, well, that’s mandated by the Victorian Government (the writer should have known that).
We won’t get everything right, and we won’t please everybody. But we’ll listen, and keep listening, and we’ll do our best to truly reflect community priorities. It doesn’t make the job any easier having to bat away misdirected and unfair fire like that raised in this Sentinel commentary.
Cr Tim O’Brien, Island Ward
EDITOR: Even if, as you claim, you and all of your colleagues are across all of the detail in these weighty reports, how do you expect the community to offer meaningful feedback given the very short consultation period?