Day: August 29, 2017

ABOUT 40 cooks and catering staff formed a picket line outside HMAS Cerberus yesterday (Monday 28 August) to protest over what they claim is substandard pay. The full and part-time staff, engaged by labour-hire contractor Broadspectrum, staged the protected industrial action, 5am-1pm. This meant senior Cerberus staff had to be rostered on to prepare and serve breakfast and lunch for the Crib Point base’s 800 trainees. The striking cooks and caterers say they have no grievances with the naval base – only its labour-hire contractor. The dispute comes after failed enterprise bargaining talks between Broadspectrum and the Australian Workers’ Union.…

POLICE carried six members of the Love Makes A Way refugee advocacy group out of the Hastings office of Flinders MP Greg Hunt after a four-hour sit-in. No charges were laid against members of the group, which included Uniting Church minister the Rev Alex Sangster and church members Kristen Furneaux and Jake Doleschal, after they refused a police request to leave the reception area about 6pm. They did not resist when being evicted. “The police were fantastic and very respectful and all the relationships were very cordial and polite,” Ms Sangster said after last Tuesday’s protest. The Love Makes a Way…

THE Mornington Peninsula’s plovers seem destined to be both victims and indicators of the pressures of population. The hooded plover has for years been fighting for its very existence, mainly on the peninsula’s ocean beaches. Its plight is so precarious that dogs have now been permanently banned on the sand within the Mornington Peninsula National Park. Rope barriers were erected along parts of Balnarring beach in Western Port yesterday to protect red-capped plovers, cousins of the hooded plover. Not regarded nationally as being endangered, the red-capped plovers are rapidly losing ground on the peninsula, again to off-leash dogs and foxes,…

PLANS to build a maritime centre at Hastings centred on the Otama submarine are not included in draft plans for the foreshore because they require state and federal government approvals. The draft Hastings Foreshore Precinct Plan – designed to “establish a consistent identity” for the Hastings foreshore from Hodgins Rd in the north to Reid Pde in the south – is now on public exhibition and open for public comment. Investigations conducted into forming the draft plan included consultations with 21 groups, organisations and government departments, but not the proponents of the maritime centre, the Western Port Oberon Association. The…

ROSEBUD Country Club member James Marchesani has strung four impressive rounds of golf together to finish tied second in the $1.5 million Fiji International on Sunday 20 August. Marchesani finished just four strokes shy of fellow Australian, Jason Norris, closing his final round off with four birdies and not a single blemish on the back nine holes of the Natadola Bay Championship Golf Course. Finishing tied third at the Victorian PGA Championship earlier this year, Marchesani was confident that he was building up to this performance. “I felt like my game had been warming up recently. I had played well…