Media Releases

Bendigo has shared in another round of funding from the Flood Recovery Community Infrastructure Fund.
MP for Northern Victoria Region and Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development, Damian Drum, announced today that seven projects in the City of Greater Bendigo, and nine in Loddon Shire would get more than $200,000.
Projects in the City of Greater Bendigo in the latest round of grants were:
Phoenix FM - Repair roof leaks - $100 (Fully completed)
Aged Care Services - Replace damaged carpet - $8,500 (Fully completed)
Bagshot Hall - Replace damaged floor coverings. Supply crushed rock to driveway to provide access to site - $2,575 + $850 (Fully completed)
Chinese Museum - Repair roof leak. Repair and replace damaged fire indicator panel due to water damage - $178.75 + $2,846.25 (Fully completed)
Dudley House - Repair roof leak - $66 (Fully completed)
Jaara Building - Inspect and dry carpet. Replace underlay - $513 (Fully completed)
Peter Krenz Leisure Centre - Undertake sanding, linemarking and coating to 1/3 stadium flooring as a result of flooding. - $12,174.98 (Fully completed)
More than $180,000 in grants were announced for Loddon Shire projects, mainly to make up for shortfalls in insurance payouts on damage to community facilities.
These included:
Bridgewater Bowling Club - $166,748.49
Bridgewater Public Toilets - $1,686.75
Pyramid Hill Pool Complex - $9782.21
Pyramid Hill Tennis Club - $13,177.27
Pyramid Hill CERT Hall - $33,249.25
Pyramid Hill Preschool - $5,800
7East Loddon Preschool - $3,774
Newbridge Public Hall - $34,165.28
9Boort Gun Club - $8,341

Mr Drum said even though it was now a year since last summer’s devastating floods, many small communities were still struggling to get back to normal.

“The Coalition State Government stands solidly with their communities in that work,’ he said.

August 19, 2011

National MP for Northern Victorian Region, Damian Drum, has urged the State Government not to give up the fight to protect northern agriculture from imported New Zealand apple diseases.
Speaking in State Parliament, Mr Drum said the Federal Government had failed to protect Australian apple and pear growers from disastrous apple fireblight from New Zealand.
The Federal Government has decided to allow the importation of NZ apples after years of debate over the risk of bringing apple fireblight to Australia.
Growers at Harcourt and the Goulburn Valley have begged governments to keep the risk at bay by maintaining the ban on NZ apples.
Mr Drum told parliament orchardists had “little or no confidence in the Federal Agricultural Minister, Joe Ludwig.”
He said: “His lack of due diligence on this issue may give Australian apple and pear growers an industry-threatening disease without the resources to cope,”
He said the federal decision to allow NZ apples into the country was a blow to the people of the Goulburn Valley at a time when many were still reeling from job losses at Girgarre and Mooroopna.
“Furthermore, Harcourt apple growers who have just emerged from years of drought and are now looking for a period of consolidation, do not need to have the threat of fireblight hanging over their heads.”
Mr Drum has called on State Agriculture and Food Security Minister Peter Walsh to lobby the Federal Government and to do whatever was possible to avert the threat to an entire industry.
The decision to allow NZ apples into Australia comes just a month after Mr Walsh issued a warning at a meeting of federal and state agriculture ministers.
He said he held grave fears draft recommendations did not do enough to protect the local apple and pear industry from the risk of fire blight.

“I am not convinced that New Zealand has demonstrated adequate protocols to ensure organically grown apples will not be the vehicle for fire blight entering Australia,” Mr Walsh said.

http://www.premier.vic.gov.au/media-centre/victorian-government-reforms.html

Coalition State Government support for Bendigo’s Discovery Science and Technology Centre has helped put a new twist on a very ancient story.
The Government has agreed to inject $50,000 a year for four years to help keep the Discovery experience fresh and alive. The funding was confirmed in the State Budget.
The centre is putting the finishing touches to an innovative way to look at our night sky – through Aboriginal eyes.
Nationals MP for Northern Victorian Region, Damian Drum, said that the state support had helped Discovery staff create a computer program which showed the Aboriginal equivalents of the ancient Greek and Roman constellations.
“It is fascinating that both the European and Aboriginal star gazers came up with much the same way to try to make sense of the night sky.
“Where European astronomers saw constellations such as the Scorpion and Orion, the Aboriginals of pre-European Victoria saw things such as the snake and the emu.
“I understand the work which is going on in Discovery will be the first time that the Aboriginal view of the night sky will be seen in a working planetarium,” Mr Drum said.
Discovery planetarium co-ordinator, Craig Kendal, said Discovery was excited by the project.
“We’re still working out some of the technical details, but it’s coming together well.”
Craig said a lot of the Aboriginal star information had been lost, but luckily, one early European settler had preserved many oral traditions in a book in the mid-1800s.
“It is likely that the Koori people had better night vision and that the night sky was darker then, because some of their constellations don’t make sense until you pull out a telescope and see that there are stars there, but fainter than we can now see in the modern skies with our naked eye.”
He said that there were “spooky” similarities between some of the ancient European and Aboriginal features.
“It makes you wonder just how far back some of these traditions really go.”
Both societies also had similar uses for watching how the constellations moved across the sky, such as indicating when it was the right time to look for certain foods , to illustrate fables and histories, and for navigation.

Businesses and primary producers hit by the recent rain and hail storms could be eligible for assistance through the Rural Finance Corporation, Nationals MP for Northern Victoria, Damian Drum, said today.
Assistance measures are also available for the first time for primary producers whose crops were damaged by hail.
“Many farmers in our region are devastated by the floods and storms.
“Many were looking at bumper harvests after more than a decade of crippling drought, only to see their hopes dashed first by floods and rain and then by locusts.
“It is heartbreaking.”
Victorian Flood/Hail Damage Grants are available to eligible primary producers and small businesses through the Rural Finance Corporation which can be contacted on 5448 2600, by email on admin@ruralfinance.com.au or on the internet at www.ruralfinance.com.au.
Help is also available for people whose homes have been flooded in the recent heavy rains.
Applications can be made by telephoning 1300 650 172 or at www.dhs.vic.gov.au/emergency.

Entire community must commit to looming locust battle
With only weeks left before Victoria faces billions of locusts taking wing, The Nationals MP for Northern Victoria Region, Damian Drum, has urged the State Labor Government to do all it can to control locusts hatching on Crown land.
Speaking in State Parliament this week, Mr Drum asked Environment Minister Gavin Jennings to guarantee that locusts hatching on Crown land would be sprayed before they took wing.
Mr Jennings replied that the Government would “work co-operatively” with all land-holders to eradicate the locust risk.
But under further questioning, Mr Jennings conceded he had not had discussions with his counterpart in New South Wales to ensure a cross-border assault.
Mr Jennings said there had been departmental contact, but not ministerial.
“I just hope this does not mean we assume locusts will respect man-made boundaries,” Mr Drum said.
“This State Government has been big on lecturing farmers and local communities on their obligations to try to knock down this plague before it takes to the skies. I would feel more comfortable if I knew the Government was as committed as the community is.
“The Nationals have said all along that the Government should have purchased the chemicals to spray the locusts to ensure that there would always be enough spray to tackle the threat.
”In response to my criticism of the Government’s funding arrangements for the locust spraying program, Labor came up with a new $2 million advertising campaign urging farmers to do even more.”
Mr Drum said experts predicted the locusts would begin hatching in late September and through October and there was little time left to prepare.
“Industries estimates say these locusts represent a $2 billion threat to the Victorian economy. For many farmers, this could be a matter of their economic survival.
“We all have to do what we can, and that includes the Government.”

August 17, 2010
Locusts: Labor’s cheap plan risks massive disaster
Nationals MP for Northern Victoria Region, Damian Drum, has warned that Labor’s flawed, cheap anti-locust campaign was not enough to deal with potentially “the greatest agricultural disaster we have ever witnessed”.
“The Government’s penny-pinching efforts risk billions of dollars of losses. It is short-sighted and its must be changed.”
Under Labor’s plan, landowners would have to pay up front to have chemicals on hand to battle plague locusts later this year, but they would be reimbursed only for chemicals used.
“The farmers do not have the money to go out and spend a couple of thousand dollars in anticipation.”
Mr Drum feared that many farmers will try to get access to chemicals when the locusts hatched, even though there was a real chance that at that time there might not be enough insecticide to meet the demand.
“The Government has committed more than $40 million to help fight this coming plague, but it has made a deep and significant error in rolling out its war against locusts.”
He urged the Government to change its plan so that the Government bought the stocks of insecticide and then made it available wherever it was needed.
It was also worrying that the Government’s plan would pay for only enough chemicals to spray a property once. Follow-up spraying would be at the farmer’s expense.
Mr Drum said it was a looming tragedy for farmers who, after 13 years of failed rains, now had fantastic crop growth and forecast high commodity prices, only to now face a record plague locust threat.
Swift action was needed to put together a more effective campaign.
“One analogy would be sending our troops off to war and making them take their own bullets, saying we will reimburse them for bullets used on receipt of an empty shell. I don’t think that would work,” Mr Drum said.
Media inquiries: Damian Drum: 5443-6277, 0407 576 604

June 17, 2010
Bendigo people pay up for Labor’s water mismanagement
Bendigo people now faced huge water bill rises for the very simple reason that the Labor State Government has lost control of any reasonable water management policy, Nationals MP for Northern Victoria, Damian Drum, said today.
He said he was astonished that the Essential Services Commission had accepted the Government’s argument that it needed to massively jack up water prices because of “uncertain and unforeseen” circumstances.
“Those circumstances were simply this: the drought is grinding on, and Bendigo people are being really careful about their water consumption.
“Yet Labor, and its water authority Coliban Water, say they did not foresee that there would be low water supplies and that Bendigo people would heed the calls to conserve water.
“What an outrageous admission. The Government says it did not foresee there was a drought or that people would work hard to use less water – and that means those same people now have to be punished for it.
“In most people’s minds, that’s a disgraceful argument.”
It meant households in this region would pay $110 more per year. More rises were signalled for the next three years.
Mr Drum said Coliban Water was just an instrument of the Government.
“While they were going on with all the pipe and channel photo opportunities, they failed to mention people would pay through the nose for this even though they were getting and using less water. John Brumby, Jacinta Allan and Bob Cameron love being seen in town opening things and issuing press releases, but where are they when people realise the size of the bill they’ve left behind?”
“In 2006-07 Coliban Water notched a $16 million loss. The following year it was $29 million and last year it was $29.5 million. That’s $74.5 million in cumulative losses in THREE years.
“We don’t know how much of our money they’ve sent down the drain this year, but it is now reasonable to expect the tally will top $100 million. We will have to pay for this – and we will have to go on using less and less water.
“Last year, Premier John Brumby assured Coliban water users that all was well, despite the staggering losses. Mr Brumby told the media that these were just “one-off” losses and that the long-term position was that Coliban Water was ‘lowly geared, that is they have low levels of debt, and they are well supported by the Government’.
“We now know that’s a lie. The Government is simply buck-passing the cost of the mismanagement to the men and women of northern Victoria.
“There are disturbing suggestions around now that Coliban Water has thrown many millions of dollars away buying water we will never see.
“For example, Coliban Water bought 6,900 megalitres from New South Wales, but it is understood to have been unable to get much of that water to consumers in Bendigo and Ballarat, partly because people were being so good at NOT using water.
“Under the complicated carry-over water rules, many millions of litres we have paid for will now not be delivered.
“Coliban Water senior staff have admitted this at Water Service Committee meetings in our region.”
“A Coalition Government will not allow this appalling behaviour to continue.”
Media inquiries: Damian Drum: 5443-6277, 0407 576 604

Drum calls for common sense in red gum log “jam”
The State Government has been urged to give a Koondrook timber mill permission to use river red gum logs which are now being felled by government employees but left to rot on the forest floor.

Nationals MP for Northern Victoria Region, Damian Drum, told State Parliament that workers from DSE and Parks Victoria were cutting down some red gum trees up to 80 centimetres in diameter as part of an “environmental thinning” program.

But rather than allow the trees to be removed and milled, they were being left on the ground to rot and to become potential bushfire hazards.

More than 130 years of controlled red gum timber harvesting came to an abrupt halt recently when the State Government declared a series of new national parks.

The move has meant Koondrook sawmiller, Arbuthnot, was having serious difficulty finding red gum saw longs to complete the massive restoration of the historic Echuca wharf.

“A win/win outcome is possible here if the Minister for the Environment Gavin Jennings would specially allow Arbuthnot Sawmills access to that timber,” he said.

Mr Drum said he had had discussions with Mr Jennings about the potential solution to the Echuca wharf project, and he was sure Mr Jennings was aware of the issues.

Mr Drum told Parliament: “The action I ask of the Minister is that he issue a directive to the Department of Sustainability and Environment in northern Victoria, allowing Arbuthnot Sawmills access to these downed sawlogs, ranging from 40 centimetres to 80 centimetres in diameter, and that he direct DSE to take up full dialogue with Arbuthnot so that they can work out a way forward.

“Projects such as these thinnings will remain the lifeblood for sawlogging companies.”

He also warned the State Labor Government that it and Mr Jennings in particular would be guilty of creating a deliberate and un-necessary build-up of dead timber and fuel on the forest floor, boosting the threat of bushfire.

Giving the sawmill access to larger logs would help control the bushfire risk.