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Wednesday 29 January 2025
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Top marks for umpire
WAYNE Hinton has been umpiring football for 45 years. His decades of hard work saw him recognised with an Order of Australia medal last weekend. The Mornington resident said the role “matures you in a big way and now that I’ve been doing it so long, I just love meeting the boys out there or the girls out on the ground. Sometimes there’s tricky situations, but at the end of the game a lot come up and say thank you.” See story page 6. Picture: Yanni
Minister ‘hijacks’ adventure park appeal Brendan Rees brendan@mpnews.com.au RESIDENTS fighting a proposed major development of an adventure park in Boneo have been left seething after the state’s planning minister intervened before a planned tribunal appeal. The proposal involves a $47.7 million expansion for a leisure and recreation facility at The Ranch, a 200acre adventure park at 810 Boneo Rd, which sits within the green wedge. Under the plans, a new indoor and outdoor skateboarding facility would
be added, along with mountain biking trails and BMX tracks, dry-ski snowboarding slopes, and two wakeboard lakes. Despite the proposal attracting 107 objections, Mornington Peninsula Shire councillors granted an amended planning permit last September (Residents’ fury over $47.7m expanded sports park in green wedge, The News, 18/9/2024). The Ranch owner Jodi Neary told councillors the project would be a drawcard for visitors, providing a “fun, inclusive, safe and inspiring environment for people of all ages, abilities
and backgrounds”. But opponents have cited environmental and green wedge zone concerns, as well as visual bulk and landscape impacts and amenity impacts, and increased traffic. Among those fighting the plans for the “theme park” is Simon Stuart, a third-generation farmer who runs a beef cattle farm near the proposed facility. He along with another objector had sought to appeal the proposal at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT). Stuart said the case was set to be heard initially with a compulsory con-
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ference at VCAT on 18 February, followed by a nine-day hearing between 28 July and 7 August. But they suffered an unexpected major blow after the state’s planning minister Sonya Kilkenny used her call-in powers to prevent the matter going to VCAT. According to a state government letter seen by The News, Kilkenny said she had decided to call in the matter “as I consider that the proceedings raise a major issue of policy, and the determination of the proceeding may have a substantial effect on the achievement or development of planning objectives”.
Kilkenny also referred the matter to the Priority Projects Standing Advisory Committee (PPSAC) for advice and recommendations “on whether the amended planning permit should be issued and, if so, the appropriate permit conditions that should be imposed”. The Department of Planning confirmed that the Planning Minister had called in the matter, and noted the PPSAC hearing process would be coordinated by Planning Panels Victoria with a directions hearing to be held in February. Continued page 3
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