MORNINGTON Peninsula Shire is set to convene a meeting with all surf lifesaving clubs on the peninsula to discuss “urgent and priority needs” to tackle a rising concern of drowning incidents.
According to the shire, the Mornington Peninsula has either the highest drowning toll or close to the highest toll historically of any municipality in Victoria. Over the past year, eight people have died at Mornington Peninsula beaches and waterways.
In acknowledging the alarming rate, Cr David Gill led a motion at the council’s 22 April meeting calling for council to meet with surf lifesaving clubs “because they are the ones that deal with the hard end of this”. The motion will also seek advocacy for more government funding to “tackle the comparatively high drowning rates on the peninsula”.
“We are constantly at the high end, if not the highest end of drownings,” Gill said, adding volunteer lifeguards were “the ones that risk their lives to save others”. “Having those clubs in the room together to discuss their priority needs, I think it’s just something we can do,” he said. “We have the opportunity to do these things now; we have to promote to the state government our needs here, so this is the way you start.”
Gill added he was also shocked to learn the state government provided paid advertising to regional community newspapers regarding water safety campaigns, but not to metropolitan community newspapers. Mornington Peninsula News Group, the publisher of this masthead, is classified as a metropolitan community newspaper and as such does not receive any state government advertising aimed at reducing drownings. Gill said this was despite the peninsula covering about ten per cent of Victoria’s coastline and having the most swimming pools of any municipality in Victoria.
There were also more deaths on peninsula coastal areas between 1 July 2023 and 30 June 2024 than there were in any other Victorian municipality, according to Surf Life Saving Australia’s annual National Coastal Safety Report. Sorrento beach alone is one of the busiest in the state, attracting some 650,000 visitors each year.
“We’re in a bad situation,” Gill said, adding “we need to talk it over with the state government because that information that I got was pretty shocking that we don’t qualify to have the advertising and their program for saving lives in our local papers.” “We are the candidates constantly for things to go wrong with people in water, kids in water, and yet we’re not seen to be significant to have us funded in ways that other areas are.”
Councillors voted unanimously in favour of the motion. “Anything we can do to get to clubs together and as a group advocate for more funding and see what they need from state government is going to be great,” said Cr Kate Roper.
Cr Max Patton acknowledged the important work of the Mornington Peninsula Back Beaches Collective, which has been committed to making the peninsula’s back beaches safer and stopping drownings. He also said the motion was timely given the newly formed Bass Coast and Mornington Peninsula Cross Council Working Group Water Safety Framework was announced during a launch at Portsea Surf Life Saving Club in March. The two councils have teamed up with Cardinia Shire, City of Greater Dandenong, City of Casey, and Belgravia Leisure to work on anti-drowning measures.
Life Saving Victoria’s research and evaluation manager Hannah Calverley, who is also the co-author of the framework, said, “It’s great to see council taking ownership on this important issue, and doing it so promptly in light of tragic drowning incidents that occurred over the patrol season”. “LSV is supportive of councils and communities taking action in this space, particularly in areas with high drowning risk like the Mornington Peninsula,” she said.
The council currently provides an annual subsidy of $87,975 to support a drowning prevention service for tourists and residents across the summer period, when volunteer club services are not patrolling.
But a shire report noted, “the funding is a direct cost shift from the state government, as they hold the responsibility to for funding of these emergency management service functions”.
First published in the Mornington News – 29 April 2025
