Social and environmental damage of unprecedented proportions looms over Westernport and will spearhead the suffocation of natural environment and democratic community on the Mornington Peninsula if projects on the drawing board continue to exert a heavy influence on local and state government and actually find funding. Report from Southern Victoria Community Action Group (SVCAG). SVCAG is an independent expert in its own right on these developments and should represent the regions' citizens, vote on reference groups and give advice. It has, however, been kept off the Port of Hastings Corp Community Reference Group. It is unacceptable to shut out citizens' groups from significant developments.
Yesterday a friend and I walked for four hours across the mudflats and estuarine lakes along a path and boardwalk among the mangroves of Hastings port - Ramsar-listed wetlands. We stopped on a bridge and recorded an amazing percussion symphony of frogs for about 15 minutes. Richard Laverack writes how furious he is at the imminent imposition the electorate 400 ha of heavy industry in a crazy plan to transport more and more imported cars in a world on the brink of fossil-fuel depletion and in a state where we still have refugees from fires caused by the hottest temperatures ever recorded. See inside for more.
Full steam ahead. Vast increase in population and infrastructure. Vast decrease in democracy. There is no plan B. Minister Pallas assured the audience they would secure the necessary environmental approvals/considerations. The EES is not a yes or no process. International migration levels never seen before...address future labour force. Long term drivers - migration. Health infrastructure needed - maternity wards. Taxpayers to bail-out developers to continue even more malignant growth. Hastings doomed according to plan. 
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