Mr NORTHE (Morwell) (17:19): (2593) My adjournment matter is for the Premier, and the action I seek is for the Premier to sit down with three of my local volunteer organisations—those being Latrobe Valley Squash, the Morwell clay target club and the Traralgon and District Art Society—and discuss what assistance and solutions the state government can provide in finding new homes or appropriate facilities for these same organisations, who have been either moved on from their current premises or asked to vacate their premises. This comes on top of unfortunate goings-on in recent times, whereby Hazelwood Pondage has closed to the public and a number of organisations in that particular precinct have shut their doors. The Latrobe Valley Yacht Club, the fly-fishing club, the Latrobe Valley Game Fishing Club and the triathlon club are all gone from that particular precinct, and at the same time we have lost our really important Sailability program, which provided sailing activities for persons with a disability.
Now we have the situation where we have three other organisations in the same or similar boat across my community, one being the Morwell clay target club. They are currently based on land in Morwell. The land is owned by Energy Australia. Energy Australia require that land for their mining purposes in the future, so the club has been asked to vacate. We have found new land for them, which Energy Australia have been generous enough to donate, but they do not have any funding for infrastructure purposes to build new facilities or set up their infrastructure as it is on site, so we seek the government’s support for that.
The Traralgon and District Art Society—the Leader of the House may know about this, but as part of the Regional Rail Revival program, the southern platform of the Traralgon railway station will be upgraded, and that is a good thing. But that is currently the home of the Traralgon and District Art Society. Negotiations have been going on for some time, but as I stand here now the art society have not been given a new home. They have been told that they could potentially come back to this site, yet nothing is concrete. Unless there are some negotiations happening very quickly, I worry for the future of the art society.
Finally, Latrobe Valley Squash, or LV Squash, they were told to relocate from their home in Morwell due to the GovHub being built. Whilst it is true that council, Regional Development Victoria and the government have provided funding to upgrade squash courts in Churchill, this was never the preference of LV Squash. They are looking at a Moe site to develop their cause, and we again call upon the government to work with LV Squash and the local community to ensure that they have a future home as well.
