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Wednesday 19 June 2024
For all advertising and editorial needs, call 03 5974 9000 or email: team@mpnews.com.au www.mpnews.com.au TWELVE-YEAR-OLD Zoe Whitbourne and her father Craig will be walking more than 80 kilometres to raise money and awareness for the type 1 diabetes research being carried out at St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research (SVI) in Fitzroy. Craig Whitbourne was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes 25 years ago when he was 15 and was devastated when Zoe received her diagnosis in 2022 at the age of nine. “Type 1 diabetes can be unpredictable and time-consuming. Despite my experience living with this disease, watching Zoe navigate the grief, anger and sadness of this diagnosis is very difficult,” Mr Whitbourne said. Type 1 diabetes is a life-changing disease that is newly diagnosed in about 3000 Australians each year. It is a chronic autoimmune disease in which the body's immune system destroys its own insulin-producing beta cells. The 134,000 Australians living with the condition are unable to produce insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugar levels, and require daily insulin injections
or the use of an insulin pump, as well as constant blood glucose monitoring. SVI director, Professor Tom Kay and Professor Helen Thomas are leading the research into revolutionising type 1 diabetes treatment and recently published the results from their BANDIT clinical trial, which demonstrated that a commonly prescribed rheumatoid arthritis drug called baricitinib can suppress the progression of type 1 diabetes. “Synthesised insulin has been the treatment for type 1 diabetes for hundreds of years, but it is completely inadequate when compared to the body’s natural insulin. Through our research, we are finding ways to stop the destruction of the insulin producing cells,” Kay said. The Whitbournes will begin their walk at Dromana pier on Wednesday 10 July and finish at Heidelberg Football Club on Saturday 13 July. For details about their walk, visit their donation page. To find out more about SVI visit svi.edu.au
Family walk to help diabetes research
ZOE Whitbourne celebrating a birthday and (inset) with her father Craig. Together the pair plan to walk more than 80 kilometres to help raise money for diabetes research. Pictures: Supplied
Investigations into wind terminal effects Keith Platt keith@mpnews.com.au REACTION has been mixed to news that studies will resume into the environmental effects on Western Port of a terminal to assemble offshore wind turbines near Hastings. Business lobby group the Committee for Frankston and Mornington Peninsula “welcomes the news” while the Save Westernport group has said the Port of Hastings Corporation will need to prove “that all environmental impacts can be managed”. Plans for the terminal to assemble and ship wind terminals offshore to Gippsland were put on hold in January when federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s rejected the project for having “unacceptable and unmiti-
gable risks to the Ramsar Wetlands of Western Port” (Federal veto a blow to terminal plans, The News 10/1/24). However, the Port of Hastings Corporation has announced that work on the Environment Effects Statement (EES) process for the Victorian Renewable Energy Terminal is “progressing” and that it “will develop the terminal project in consultation with Traditional Owners, local communities and industry”. The port authority said the “comprehensive assessments … [would] recognise the important environmental, heritage and community values of Western Port”. The resumption of the environmental studies has been confirmed by the state Ports Minister Melissa Horne and the Energy and Resources Minister Lily D’Ambrosio.
The Committee for Frankston and Mornington Peninsula issued a news release saying the state budget included $17 million to continue planning and designing the renewable energy terminal at Hastings. It sees the assembly terminal as a “crucial part” of Victoria’s offshore wind industry and in May called for the EES process to continue following the awarding of feasibility licenses by the federal government off Gippsland. Mornington Peninsula Shire Council, which will also decide on the wind terminal application, is a community partner of the committee but does not have a representative on its board. The proposed terminal is earmarked for 25-hectares on what is known as the Old Tyabb Reclamation Area between Esso’s Long Island Point jetty and the BlueScope Steel wharves.
“The Port of Hastings has many attributes which make it an ideal location for an offshore wind assembly port, including large areas of appropriately zoned land close to deep water channels and proximity to proposed offshore wind farms off the Gippsland and southern ocean region coasts,” the Hastings port corporation said. Save Westernport says while the project is central to the state government achieving its emissions reduction targets (75-80 per cent by 2035 and net-zero by 2050) they must not come at the expense of Western Port’s “critical biodiversity and precious internationally recognised Ramsar wetlands”. “Like many people, we assumed the federal decision would override the state’s plans for Western Port, but in this case it seems the Victorian government is free to take a second bite of
the cherry,” the group’s president Jane Carnegie said. “We have made it clear to the port that as they prepare their EES, we’ll be watching every step of the way ... the bar will be very, very high.” Carnegie said the project would have to be “substantially revised … including the large areas of capital dredging and land reclamation initially proposed in the application”. “And this must be the only project under consideration in the Port of Hastings. Without doubt, Western Port has no capacity for the enormous, environmentally disastrous ‘zombie’ HESC coal to hydrogen project: ... [and] we call on the Victorian government to reject that exploitative carbonintensive project once and for all” (MPs under pressure over hydrogen, The News 13/11/23).