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Wednesday 5 June 2024
For all advertising and editorial needs, call 03 5974 9000 or email: team@mpnews.com.au www.mpnews.com.au Sea safe: Keona, Hugo, Zeke, Cynric, Macy and Joseph proudly show the work created by students at Our Lady of Fatima Rosebud to protect marine life. Picture: Supplied
Getting creative to spread the message STUDENTS at Our Lady of Fatima Parish Primary School, Rosebud, have been using their textile lessons to create an undersea wonderland. The completion of the colourful masterpiece, created with a lot of love and pricked fingers, is to celebrate World Ocean Day on 8 June. The school's Dolphin Research Centre ambassadors are using the display to highlight the danger of foil plastic, which is commonly used as lolly or biscuit wrappers. Students learned that the inside of foil plastic packages is shiny silver and glitters like a fish and, when ingested by marine animals, causes illness and death. The students also produced a motto to help sell their message: Foil plastic kills animals in the sea. So, when at the beach pick up 3. Visual art teacher Amanda Heggen said the students were hoping that more people would pick up foil plastic rubbish when they see it and be encouraged not buy items in that particular packaging.
Women’s group targets housing crisis Keith Platt keith@mpnews.com.au POLITICIANS can expect to face increasing pressure to provide housing for the homeless, especially women, on the Mornington Peninsula. A report on the “homelessness crisis” by community group Peninsula Voice showed that more than 1000 people couch surf, sleep in their car or sleep rough every night on the peninsula. Increasingly, these people are women and children fleeing family violence. Emergency accommodation is virtu-
ally non-existent and women on the foreshore have experienced family violence and sexual assault before and while on the foreshore. These statistics and first hand experiences of the crisis were given to Housing, Water and Equality Minister Harriet Shingh at a meeting of the Southern Women’s Action Network (SWAN) on Sunday 19 May at Mount Martha House. Pressure on politicians to ease the plight of the homeless on the peninsula will increase in the lead up to the October council elections and the next federal election, due before September next year.
“Housing for women, especially those over 50 years of age, is a critical issue that has reached a crisis point on the peninsula,” SWAN facilitator Diane McDonald said. “This is a beautiful place to live and many of us feel so fortunate to call the peninsula our home but it’s a tragedy when our fellow community members don’t have a place to live safely. Surely we must all do something, and quickly?” McDonald said women would not “stand by and watch more women end up camping on the foreshore or sleeping in their cars. Their lives and that of their children are at serious risk
of violence”. “We believe that women’s homelessness on the peninsula has been overlooked by all levels of government and we will not rest until our fellow community members receive better care and a safe place to live,” she said. “It’s imperative that all levels of government work together to start building affordable and supported housing and properly fund local support services on the peninsula.” Shingh told the meeting about state government policies and money available for housing projects. Shingh is one of five Upper House MPs for Eastern Victoria, which
includes the peninsula’s three Lower House seats of Hastings, Mornington and Nepean. Along with Tom McIntosh, Shingh is one of two Labor MPs representing Eastern Victoria. The other MPs are Renee Heath (Liberal), Melina Bath (The Nationals) and Jeff Bourman (Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party Victoria). The audience at Mount Martha House included housing case workers and speakers who told Shingh about the peninsula’s housing crisis and the lack of local community services, which is within her own electorate. Continued Page 7