CAN anyone explain why any State Government should consider, budget for and award grants of $100,000 to $5 million to private businesses catering to an upmarket clientele? (‘Sentinel Times’, 23.4.25.)
Surely there are more important things to spend taxpayers’ money on than paying to improve a selection of small and large private businesses? Why should taxpayers foot the bill for expanding a small restaurant at a winery or adding more rooms, car parking or a new wastewater retention storage system at expensive holiday resorts most taxpayers could never afford to stay at?
If such expenditure could be seen as acceptable, why, in the whole of Bass Coast, should only one winery and two expensive tourist resorts get taxpayer-funded improvements over other like tourist resorts or ventures, or non-like for that matter? Who decides who gets these windfalls, and how do they justify their decisions?
If the money must go to encourage tourism, here are suggestions benefitting far more people:
• Allow the division of the former Holden Proving Ground at Lang Lang into two – developed and undeveloped areas – and, with the help of the public, buy the undeveloped area to preserve our natural environment. Alternatively, buy it to use as part of the proposed treaty with First Nations’ people.
• Put it towards building or supporting more budget-priced holiday villages, preferably State or Council-owned and run, to cater for all, not just the well-heeled. (Maybe, the whole of the former Proving Ground could be bought, and the developed area converted for this purpose.)
• Put it towards the Dinosaur Trail between San Remo and Inverloch.
• Put it towards developing the old Wonthaggi Technical School site for either tourism, social housing or whatever the community decides most appropriate.
Wider-ranging suggestions include putting it towards one of the following:
• House the homeless people living in Bass Coast and elsewhere in the State.
• Add dental and mental health services to Medicare.
• Employ more medical staff to meet local medical needs.
• Improve roads for all.
• Support those currently unable to afford or access solar energy to do so.
Meryl & Hartley Tobin, Grantville
