Heat is on at Moonee Valley Council meeting
Moonee Valley’s council meeting got heated on Tuesday night over the introduction of paid parking and federal rules over citizenship ceremonies.
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Moonee Valley Council is showing no signs of backing down on its introduction of paid parking after a concerned resident questioned councillors over the changes on Tuesday night.
Maribyrnong Park Football Club secretary Tony Fisher asked why The Boulevard, which is used by hundreds of football players, parents and volunteers every weekend, was chosen as a paid parking site.
“The introduction of paid carparking in The Boulevard would appear to be contrary to council’s own policy of encouraging active participation in organised sport and casual leisure activities,” he said.
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Planning and development director Natalie Reiter said the street was chosen because of its “he very high parking demand”.
“A range of sites were chosen to introduce a low, $1 per hour fee for parking, largely chosen on the basis of encouraging turnover,” she said.
But Mr Fisher said the $1 per hour parking would “severely impact” members and volunteers at Maribyrnong Park.
“How do we elicit from council an assurance that this will not proceed and parking in the precinct will remain free,” he said.
Ms Reiter said $1 an hour for a limited number of places would not “severely impact users”.
“There’s a council resolution for us to proceed with the $1 an hour fee and a commitment to review that after six months,” she said.
Meanwhile, the meeting got heated over the issue of Australia Day.
Cr Richard Lawrence moved officers’ recommendations to agree to the revised Australian Citizenship Ceremonies Code that was presented to all local councils by the Federal Government.
But Cr Cam Nation and Cr Nicole Marshall both said the lack of information in the officers’ report on the revised code was disappointing.
“I am a little bit confused by this report and the lack of information in this report. It fails to outline the initial request for feedback to change the citizenship code,” he said.
Cr Nation said the most important part omitted from the report was the direction from the Morrison Government that all councils must hold citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day.
He also said the new rule that citizenship ceremonies cannot run on days when the federal or state governments sat made it hard to plan the council’s calendar.
“We are being dictated to by the Federal Government on how we hold our citizenship ceremonies. It is our ceremony,” he said.
Cr Nation said he wanted the council to follow in the footsteps of the Victorian Local Government Association and write to the Federal Government to back off.
“Take your hands off our citizenship ceremonies, let us do what we have been doing well and let’s take the politics out of an extremely, extremely important day for our people,” he said.
Cr Marshall agreed and said the new rules were “unnecessary and no more than dog whistling”.
“Council should be holding ceremonies when it is suitable for the people becoming citizens. I’m disappointed this has become about politicians,” she said.
Despite the objections by the two councillors, the motion passed four votes to three.
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