Wednesday, 2 April 2025

Petitions

Silverleaves Beach, Cowes

Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:44): I move:

That the petition be taken into consideration.

[NAMES AWAITING VERIFICATION]

I thank the 4441 people who signed this petition, which should never have had to happen. As I start my contribution I would like to thank particularly Natalie Gray and Mary Hughes; Dr Stephen and Penny Lapin; Ken Hailey and his wife; Tristan White; Louise Hill; Eddie Lynch – and I thank Eddie for coming down today; the Silverleaves Conservation Association; the Bass Coast shire councillors, united by their concern on this, and particularly mayor Rochelle Halstead; and the 300 other people that stood on 6 January in the pouring rain to show their concern for what is happening at Silverleaves with the coastal erosion issue. They stood beside banksias that had fallen over and they stood near waves, concerned that on those windy nights at those high-tide times that they would actually come crashing into their backyards and into their homes. This is the reality of Silverleaves, a most beautiful community that have been drawn together out of adversity, and they should never have had to be in this position that we are debating in this motion today. I just want to read the actual motion, because it is in two parts. The petition says that we:

… call on the Government to urgently fund and implement the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action’s proposed geotextile revetment to protect homes, public infrastructure and public land in the short term, and –

and this is where it comes into effect –

work collaboratively with the Silverleaves community to plan and fund long-term solutions to mitigate and manage coastal erosion.

This government has known about this coastal erosion issue at Silverleaves since 2022. The erosion has been accelerating since 2022, and certainly it has been heavily impacting; it has been at an alarming rate of 16 metres in the past two years. What that says is that government must act, but it has actually had its head in the sand, and unfortunately now that sand has washed away due to erosion. The government knew about it in 2023. It knew about it when the department actually triggered a process, the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action’s (DEECA) own study. The Silverleaves Coastal Processes Study Summary was handed to the government in the middle of this year. The member for Bass has known about this since that time. She has not been beating her chest; she has not been beating a path to the door of the Minister for Environment. It has taken this community activism for this to occur.

In November last year I raised the issue. The government has had a DEECA plan for geotextile sandbag revetment, as it is called, for emergency works to sandbag that community while a long-term plan can be introduced and worked through with the community, but the government has ignored it. The concern that is facing these wonderful people of Silverleaves is that it was meant to be implemented over summer, because now we have got Easter around the corner, and indeed with those Easter king tides and the weather – we have got winter coming on – these people really face the loss of their homes and infrastructure because of this. This is too late, but thank goodness it is actually occurring today – and I know that many of them have been down on the beach today watching sand being moved. In fact it is going to cost the government more money for these short-term emergency works, because they are shifting sand today, and then later on, to be finished by August, they are going to have these sandbags completed for the short term. This is an action that should have been undertaken prior to this.

I say to the community: thank you very much for working with me and my colleague Dr Heath and others who were down there supporting you, and the council. You are activists – you should not have to be activists to save your own homes when government has been clear in understanding the urgency of this. The government came out on 7 March and they said, ‘$10 million – $10 million for Silverleaves, for Inverloch surf club and the Inverloch foreshore, for Loch Sport, for Tooradin, for Warrnambool and for Black Rock.’ Not $10 million each, but $10 million between them – that is insufficient. To come out on 7 March and say, ‘Look, we’re saving that,’ is actually unfair and unkind to these very good people – and I will be speaking at the end of this. I thank people for listening and I thank people for contributing. We need action on this coastal erosion, and this is the dearest priority going round.

Tom McINTOSH (Eastern Victoria) (17:49): I want to start off by acknowledging the community in Silverleaves, what has been happening there and obviously the concerns that locals have had. This is an issue that is touching on a number of communities across Victoria. I will come back to that, but I will just speak to the specifics of Silverleaves first.

The money, the $15 million that was announced in funding to address coastal hazards statewide – I will just correct the record there; it was $15 million – includes funding for Silverleaves, to protect the dune from further erosion with geotextile sandbag wall and maintaining safe access to the beach. Erosion at Silverleaves has been caused by a complex combination of natural coastal processes and historical interventions. The detailed designs for the interim measures at Silverleaves include the geotextile sandbag revetment work completed last year. As has been commented, the works began last week, and the works will continue.

I mentioned there are numerous towns across Victoria that are dealing with coastal inundation, with coastal erosion, whether we are talking Inverloch, Tooradin, Loch Sport, Lakes Entrance, around the peninsula, Point Lonsdale, Frankston, Queenscliff, Torquay, Port Campbell, Eastern View or Fairhaven. As a government, we are making this investment to get on and mitigate against the coastal erosion that is occurring in each of these scenarios, and it is about getting the right solution for each one of these situations. For every community, for every town, for the local residents and for the people that holiday in these places it is really important that we get this right, but it is also really important when we are talking about mitigation that we are very mindful of and acknowledge the underlying causes, which are going to get worse and worse. It is a conversation that we have been having for two to three decades now about our changing climate, and be very aware as water levels rise, as king tides, storm and weather events occur –

Members interjecting.

Tom McINTOSH: I am getting some comments from the other side. We know about the Liberal–‍National coalition position federally in this state for decades, whether it is here or whether it is on the international stage. I am getting told it is bad. This is a reality that we have to face. We have to mitigate against climate change, and we have to mitigate against local situations. To put our head in the sand and to ignore it and then to point to the outcomes is just, quite frankly, appalling.

I just want to put that on the record, because this government is committed to, as I said, dealing with the scenarios that are in these various towns around our coast. But we have got to be realistic, because for 10 years in a row we have had record after record smashed for global temperatures. We are 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, so it is absolutely crucial that as a community, as a state, as a nation and indeed as players in a global world we are taking action on climate change. It is absolutely crucial that we find the local solutions to these situations as they occur and that we support communities. I know from my conversations with Jordan Crugnale that she has been working with her local community to support them through this, working with the minister’s office and working with the department to find the right solutions and to implement them.

So again, to everybody in the local community, it is definitely a stressful time, as it has been for a number of other communities across our beautiful, beautiful coastlines of Victoria. I am proud to be a part of a government that is taking action not only to mitigate against more and more severe weather patterns, whether they are wind events or whether they are flood events, whatever they might be, which are also driving up insurance premiums that we are all dealing with and we are all going to deal with more and more every year, but also to do that mitigation work and act in local communities on the situation they face with the solutions that are appropriate to them.

Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:54): Mr McIntosh, you are not taking action, and that is exactly why we are here today. And it seems to be a pattern in Bass. There have been so many petitions qualifying for debate from that seat alone in this house, and I think that is telling.

Firstly, I want to commend Ms Bath for her incredible advocacy and also the incredible people from Silverleaves and the communities around for their passion and their fight. 4441 – that is how many Victorians have stepped outside of their everyday and signed a petition about the Silverleaves coastal erosion, which is amazing considering that there are only 300 people that live in and around that community. More than 10 times the population have come and signed, because this is an urgent issue and it is something that people want to see action on. They are unified and the concern is widespread.

These signatures draw the chamber’s attention to the coastal erosion emergency at Silverleaves and Cowes. They also reveal the Allan government’s continued lack of care and their complete disinterest in the lives of Victorians, particularly in the area of Bass. When it comes to the people living there, they have been completely neglected. The erosion is not a slow-moving environmental issue, it is an urgent escalating crisis. Since 2022 Silverleaves has lost up to 16 metres of the coastline – in just two years. The beach is literally disappearing before beachgoers’ eyes. Since 1953 the retreat totals 77 metres, and the rate is accelerating. This needs action, and it needs action now. Residents are not just concerned, they are fearful for their homes, their safety and their future. Families live in dread every time a storm rolls in. Public land and community infrastructure are under immediate threat.

Despite this clear and growing danger, the Allan Labor government has delayed any meaningful action. For all the government’s climate rhetoric, which we just heard about now – climate action – there has been a decided lack of action in Bass. In November 2023 Silverleaves residents expressed their desperation, declaring, ‘We will stand and we will personally sandbag the beach.’ In fact, Ms Bath, I think that is what a lot of them are doing today and so are unable to be here in this chamber.

In the same month during parliamentary question time I told the government that residents were fearful for their properties as foreshore cliffs were crumbling and mature trees were suddenly falling. I asked them why they had not even found a contractor to begin the erosion study. By January 2024 the government announced a beach study, with the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) committing a comprehensive assessment. While it aimed to evaluate the risk and proposed management options, the community remained in limbo, waiting for tangible measures and actions. Despite all of this, local MP Jordan Crugnale, Labor’s member for Bass, admitted that the government was ‘well aware’ of the community’s concern with erosion – well aware, but let me tell you what, doing absolutely nothing. If they were so aware, why did they fail to act before the problem became a full-blown emergency?

DEECA’s own report made it crystal clear that these works were urgently needed and must be completed by the end of summer, before Easter’s king tides came and the winter storms surged. So the Allan government has missed its own deadline. Funding was not granted until March this year, after the window of urgency had passed. As a result the bags will not be placed there until the end of August, months too late, leaving the community once again unprotected and just completely abandoned through the most dangerous part of the year.

I am sorry that I cannot go through this whole speech due to time, but the Labor government’s list of failings in this seat is just endless. It has gone on and on and on. That is why time and time again we have to petition the government so they will even listen, they will even take notice of the real issues that Bass is facing. It is not good enough. We need action, and we need it now.

Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (17:59): Before speaking on the substance of the debate I want to acknowledge the many people who raised their concerns about coastal erosion by signing this petition. I recognise that the impacts of sea level rise can be really confronting, and your engagement with this issue demonstrates your desire for action in the community. You are the community who are on the front line. It is your lives and livelihoods that are at stake. In my contribution I will echo a lot of the sentiments expressed in particular by Mr McIntosh. Coastal erosion is and will continue to be a reality across Victoria’s 2500 kilometres of coastline. Last year the government released the Port Phillip Bay coastal hazard assessment, which maps the areas along Victoria’s coastline that will be inundated by water when sea level rise reaches 1.4 metres, as projected by the CSIRO. The mapping is really confronting viewing and shows that much of our coastline will be uninhabitable by the turn of the century. It is clear that the time for action from all levels of government is right now, and it needs to be above politics. It needs to be above this partisan stuff. It is all of our communities who will be affected by this.

The approach we need to take is a complex one. Firstly, we have to acknowledge that climate change is driving sea level rise. Rising oceans are a consequence of two aspects of global warming: rising temperatures cause increased run-off from glaciers and ice caps as they melt, and it also leads to thermal expansion of water in our oceans as they heat. Without recognising that climate change is driving the problem, we have little hope of mitigating the impacts. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and are becoming the norm. Tidal storm surges exacerbate already high tides, and flooding forces more and more water out into our rivers, eroding both estuaries and our coastlines.

We need an approach that takes into consideration the solutions that have been identified by experts and by communities, as well as being informed by what the evidence says about climate change. There will not be a one-size-fits-all approach. There are not any simple answers to a lot of these problems. It may involve some very difficult conversations that we need to start having. In some places it might be a technological solution, something like a piece of built infrastructure like a seawall, but in others it might be retrofitting infrastructure. In others still it might be retreat. It might be rebuilding elsewhere. We have to start having some of these conversations.

These are matters that the inquiry into the climate resilience of built infrastructure has been looking into. It is an inquiry that was secured by the Greens, which I have been part of. I do not want to pre-empt the outcomes of that inquiry. It is ongoing at the moment. These are some of the things we have been hearing about and thinking about really deeply. This is not an easy reality that we are having to come to grips with here, but given what we know about the locked-in consequences – this is the climate change that we know is already baked in and what is coming – we have to turn the evidence we know about that into practice.

Communities have to be at the centre of our response, and they will need significant support in this transition. It is support that we are hearing through this petition that communities are crying out for. Resourcing must be expedited to support them, because it is only going to cost us more in the future if we delay this. In that sense, I really hear what the petitioners are saying. I will say that there is not going to be an easy solution to this, but we need everyone to come to the table, work together and keep communities and their health and wellbeing and their future livelihoods at the centre of what we are trying to achieve here.

Gaelle BROAD (Northern Victoria) (18:03): I am pleased to be able to speak on this petition this evening. I think it is very important to note there were 4441 signatures and that every one of them is someone who is interested in the outcome, because Silverleaves Beach is eroding away. The shoreline in this area has receded by approximately 77 metres since 1953. In recent years that seems to have accelerated. Since 2022, near Sanders Road the shoreline has retreated by 12 metres and the maximum recession measured in the area was 16 metres over two years. That is significant. I do want to acknowledge Melina Bath, my Nationals colleague, who has been a very strong advocate and a sponsor of this petition, and Dr Heath as well, because each of the people that have signed this petition wants to be heard. This is why we have petitions in this chamber – to be able to advocate for issues. They feel at the moment that the government is not listening.

The funding we have heard Ms Bath talk about has been inadequate. It is important to recognise that your home is your castle. Many residents are very nervous as this beach erodes away, and it may end up as a worst-case scenario. This whole situation makes me think of my dad. We had a road near our house – a very small gravel road – and as traffic went on it, it would often fill with potholes. My dad was not one to drive past the issue. He would take his tractor up and grade it, take some gravel and fill it, because he did not just want to go past the problem – he wanted to fix the problem. I think that is what is needed here. The government can do the studies – they can be aware – but they need to take action to fix the problem. Action is needed.

This petition highlights the need for action. This petition calls on the government to urgently fund and implement the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action’s geotextile proposal to protect homes, public infrastructure and public land in the short term, and work collaboratively with the Silverleaves community to plan and fund long-term solutions to mitigate and manage coastal erosion.

That is what we need from the government. That is what everyone who has signed this petition wants to see. They want to see action. We know, as has been talked about today, that the community has done the heavy lifting – literally; they have been doing the sandbagging. But now for further action we need the government to act.

Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (18:06): I would like to thank Mr McIntosh, Dr Mansfield, Dr Heath and Mrs Broad for their contributions, thoughtful that they were.

This is time for a reset now. The government is aware of this. They have been aware of it, but the issue has been highlighted. The next stage is working collaboratively with the Silverleaves community to plan and fund long-term solutions and to mitigate and manage coastal erosion. It is a huge issue. Inundation is a massive issue. Erosion is an issue.

This government now has the opportunity to turn over a new leaf and work with the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, the local council and the federal government to plan what comes next, because people’s homes are their castles, and if the government is just going to do this and then walk away, people need to know. They need to be aware of what is to befall them. Coastal adaptation plans involve taking a holistic approach and creating a vision for the whole community so that people have certainty in what they are living in and how they can invest – or not – in their homes.

At Silverleaves the state government has finally come to an understanding that this is a serious problem. The insurance companies know; their premiums are skyrocketing because of this coastal erosion. Melbourne Water, Bass Coast and VCAT have also reinforced the seriousness of this problem. The planning scheme also needs to create a commitment to Silverleaves and those other areas like Silverleaves we have mentioned through state policy and strategic planning.

This community matters, as all communities should matter. We need to be able to feel confident that this government will sit down and listen to this community and plan for the long term, not take the lax piecemeal approach which has brought us to this point where community activism has to force the hand of government.

I ask the minister to work with the community for the best outcome for that community.

Motion agreed to.