Author: Neil Walker

GOTYE has gone back to The Basics and the band is dropping in on Mornington as part of their national tour in support of their latest The Age of Entitlement album. Guitarist Tim Heath says The Basics drummer Wally De Backer, known as the solo artist Gotye, is heading back to Australia from the US where he is recording the follow-up to his commercially successful Making Mirrors album which spawned the global smash Somebody That I Used To Know. Heath says November’s Mornington gig, the last in the tour, will be “pretty energetic and perhaps emotional” amid hints The Basics…

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WORK will start on the new Frankston War Memorial next month at Beauty Park after Frankston Council approved the final design of stage one of the $480,000 project. Councillors agreed to give the go ahead to construction of the war memorial, to replace the existing war memorial in Davey St, at a meeting last Monday evening (12 October). A tender was awarded by council in July to Convic Pty Ltd to design and build the memorial (‘New design for war memorial gets nod’, The Times 20/7/15) after months of disagreement between councillors over the scope of the memorial. The new…

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A COLLEGE with a campus in Frankston has been criticised over its marketing practices in a Senate inquiry into the funding and management of vocational education and training (VET) providers and by an education sector regulator. The Senate inquiry report released this month named Evocca College as one of several registered training organisations (RTOs) across Australia to face accusations of targeting vulnerable students with little or no chance of completing courses to boost enrolment numbers and hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of profits. Evocca denied the allegations in submissions to the inquiry. The inquiry found evidence of “rampant abuse”…

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A SECOND series of SBS TV show Struggle Street looks set to be filmed in the western suburbs of Sunshine rather than Frankston. Several families in Sunshine have reportedly been “test-filmed” by the production company behind the controversial series labelled “poverty porn” by some community leaders angry at the portrayal of Mount Druitt in the first series of Struggle Street that aired earlier this year. A suggestion by a leading bookmaker that Frankston could be the location for a second series of Struggle Street led councillors to write to the Australian Human Rights Commission in protest (‘‘Fair go’ for Frankston’, The…

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MORE than 43,000 homes across several suburbs including Frankston, Baxter, Langwarrin and Karingal will have access to the National Broadband Network by the end of 2017 as part of an “accelerated plan” announced by the federal government. Dunkley Liberal MP Bruce Billson hailed the planned connection of “superfast internet” for many suburbs in the electorate, including some who have struggled with slow internet speeds, as “critical for our community”. “I most recently met directly with representatives from NBN Co to discuss solutions for some of the internet ‘black spots’ in Baxter, Frankston South and Seaford,” Mr Billson said. “I was…

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