Letter to the Editor

This week we celebrate National Volunteer Week, giving us all the opportunity to promote the role of volunteers in our community and to say thank you to the more than 6 million Australians who give their time in the service of others.

Member for Hastings, Neale Burgess has condemned Daniel Andrews for ripping off Langwarrin sporting clubs, while gifting hundreds of millions of dollars and priceless waterfront land in the heart of Melbourne, to the AFL.

Every year, 430 locals in the Hastings electorate are diagnosed with cancer, and 135 lose their lives to the disease

Mr BURGESS — On another important matter, I would like to put on record my change of mind on the government’s exclusion zone laws. At the time the bill was debated I found the argument for keeping people with different views on such an emotional topic separate compelling, but my training as an officer of the court has prevailed in circumstances where my conscience should have. After discussing these laws with a range of people, including Kathy Clubb, it has become apparent to me just how damaging these laws are.

Mr BURGESS (Hastings) (09:39:23) — Unsurprisingly, the Labor member for Carrum has again been caught out in Parliament for misleading the Carrum community, this time about the Andrews government’s plans to build train stabling in the backyards of Kananook residents. Is there no limit to what this member will allow her government to do to Carrum residents? Carrum residents must be wondering where the person they elected to represent them has gone, why she is allowing the Premier to force the Eel Race Road closed, and why another Labor MP was able to say no to the Premier’s sky rail and get it underground instead, but she has just stepped out of the way and let him introduce it.

Mr BURGESS (Hastings) (19:08:21) — (14 335) My adjournment matter tonight is for the Minister for Education, and the action I seek is that he provide an urgent solution to the myriad of issues facing Cranbourne South Primary School in my electorate. I have met with the school’s very passionate principal, Monique Corcoran, and its very strong school council on a number of occasions to hear their very serious concerns about the welfare and safety of their school community and the learning of their students.

Mr BURGESS (Hastings) (17:24:06) — It is a pleasure to rise after the member for Yan Yean. As always, the further she goes the further she stretches it. Again today she has done exactly the same thing, talking about how the Labor Party has always been the friend of workers.

I was very proud to be invited to judge the 2018 Western Port Festival High Street parade in Hastings on 24 February. It was great to see so many people and small and large local businesses participating in the parade, as well as a huge community turnout lining the streets to support their local parade and festival. Congratulations to the organising committee.

There may never be two greater examples of the arrogance and ignorance of this Andrews Labor government, led by a common rorter kept in his position by pathetic excuses for MPs who will do anything, lawful or unlawful, to keep their snouts in the public trough. Not content with describing to Neil Mitchell their blatant theft of public funds as being worth the illegality of their actions to Victorians because they ‘got such a great government’, the Minister for Small Business said yesterday in another place that it was a good thing that this government was destroying more than 800 school cleaning small businesses, and the loss of all those jobs in those businesses and their employees, because a small number had underpaid their workers. His incredible arrogance and ignorance completely blinded him to his own staggering hypocrisy that while he and his Labor colleagues rorted $388 000 and spent more than $1.5 million trying to cover it up, not one of them is going to even lose their job.

Sincere thanks to the Western Port flotilla of the Australian Volunteer Coast Guard for the opportunity to witness the commissioning of a second coast guard vessel, CG204, at the Western Port marina in Hastings on 3 March. The boat was custom‑built for us here in Victoria and will proudly bear the name Sealite Rescue in honour of a truly inspirational local Somerville business that took on the world and won.