Author: Mike Hast

THE smiling faces of defeated state premier Denis Napthine and former Mordialloc MP Lorraine Wreford continue to stare out over Nepean Highway almost five months after last November’s election. The two pollies’ faces are on a huge billboard in the front yard of a house on the corner of Parana St and Nepean Highway near the Bridge Hotel’s car park near the border of Aspendale and Mordialloc. It reads: “Lorraine Wreford MP. Liberal for Mordialloc. Part of Denis Napthine’s team.” Mordialloc’s one-term Liberal MP defeated Labor’s Janice Munt in 2010 as the Ted Baillieu-led Liberals rolled Labor MPs in the…

Read More

ANALYSIS FEDERAL Environment minister Greg Hunt has rejected claims his government is trying to take the southern brown bandicoot off the threatened species list. He was responding to an article pub­lished in The Times last month (‘Bandicoot under threat from govt’, The Times 26/1/15). “The Threatened Species Scientific Committee (TSSC) is conducting an independent assessment of 80 species, including the southern brown bandicoot, as part of its normal process,” he told The Times in a statement. But an investigation by The Times has found that the bandicoot is one of just five species being considered first-up by the committee and…

Read More

THE federal Department of the Environment is trying to take the southern brown bandicoot off its threatened species list. The move has angered conservationists in Frankston and Mornington Peninsula regions. They are calling the proposal sneaky after the release of a so-called “consultation document on listing eligibility” in early January that called for evidence by 30 January about why the bandicoot should not be delisted. Forensic zoologist Hans Brunner of Frankston and wildlife expert Mal Legg of Rosebud are leading a campaign calling on Environment Minister Greg Hunt to reject the move and retain protection of the bandicoot. Mr Legg said…

Read More

FEDERAL MP Bruce Billson has been forced to defend the Coalition government’s asylum seeker policy after a protest outside his office – not by placard-waving radicals but a loose alliance of peninsula church leaders and local branch of Amnesty International. Six leaders protested outside the MP’s Frankston office on Monday last week after failing to obtain an appointment to meet Mr Billson, who is Minister for Small Business in the Abbott government and the MP for Dunkley, which stretches from Seaford to Mornington. They have been invited to meet Mr Billson on 22 December after first requesting a meeting almost…

Read More

THE state government issued one licence for scallops to be hand-harvested in Port Phillip earlier this year, ending a 17-year ban on commercial harvesting, but one of the men who proved scallop viability continues to lobby for a second licence. On 20 February 2014, government agency the Department of Environment and Primary Industries announced that Port Welshpool-based fisherman Bruce Collis and his company Vicfish Pty Ltd had won an auction for the licence. Mr Collis paid $180,000 for the right to harvest 12 tonnes of scallops a year, with no more than two tonnes coming from any one of six…

Read More