THE two business lobby groups Committee for Mornington Peninsula and Committee for Greater Frankston are set to merge next month.
While members’ votes are yet to be cast, the CEO of the peninsula committee Josh Sinclair last Friday said he was certain of the outcome.
“It’s happening,” Sinclair said. “It is expected that in August the Committee for Greater Frankston will wind up at their [annual general meeting]. Their members will be encouraged to join the new merged organisation, and we’ll be taking a handful of their board members across to ours.
“We’ll be the Committee for Frankston & Mornington Peninsula and the feedback we’ve received already has been extremely positive – including from local MPs.”
Soon after the Frankston committee was formed in February 2017 feelers were put out to see if “movers and shakers” on the peninsula wanted to join.
The answer was “no” and the Committee for Mornington Peninsula was formed less than two years later with former Liberal Dunkley MP Bruce Billson as its president. Billson resigned in 2021 to take up the role of the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman.
The now Liberal MP for Flinders Zoe McKenzie was on the committee’s board and its executive officer Briony Hutton was the Liberal Party’s unsuccessful candidate for Hastings in last year’s state election.
The committee appeared to realign itself politically and broaden its member base with the appointment earlier this year of Sinclair, a former Labor Party candidate (“Lobby group aims to be bipartisan” The Times 14/3/23).
Sinclair said feedback from local MPs – Liberal and Labor – about the amalgamation of the two committees had been “extremely positive”.
He said the boards of both committees had discussed “the benefits of a shared future”.
“We believe we can best do this by consolidating our resources, efforts, and members to advocate as a collective for our region – Greater Frankston and the Mornington Peninsula,” Sinclair said.
The benefits of being “one regional voice enables us to make stronger and more meaningful arguments to government”.
“Our region is bigger than other more vocal and politically powerful regions such as Geelong … By combining data, statistics, reports, and stories, we can take our advocacy efforts to the next level based on our scale, population, and GDP output.”
A report prepared for the Committee for Greater Frankston in 2022, Frankston & Mornington Peninsula Benchmarking Analysis, showed Geelong and the Bellarine has $6.2 billion ($22,823 a person) worth of infrastructure projects in the pipeline compared to $0.72 billion ($2317 a person) for Frankston and the Mornington Peninsula.
“Geelong will receive 10 times more money per person for infrastructure even though both cities and their neighbouring peninsulas have comparable economies and are similar distances from Melbourne,” the Frankston committee’s president Rod Evenden said.
Sinclair said the combined committee would now represent businesses and community organisations from Seaford to Portsea.
Frankston and the Mornington Peninsula acting as one region would enable “direct advocacy efforts with more senior state government and federal government ministers”.
“This political footprint will enhance our ability to work with all levels of government and across all political parties,” Sinclair said.
“We want to work proactively and collaboratively with government and the opposition at all levels … This is another positive step for the committee following our partnership with Mornington Peninsula Shire Council and new key members joining like BlueScope, and our clear demonstration of a non-partisan approach to local issues.”
First published in the Frankston Times – 18th July 2023