Election shots

By Ed Merrison
WHERE in Knox to put new playing courts has turned into a pre-election political basketball.
Labor accused the Liberals of playing wedge politics by urging the State Government to let Knox Basketball Incorporated (KBI) build new facilities on the grounds of soon-to-close Ferntree Gully College.
Knox City Council also got involved in bickering in a week when KBI negotiated a new five-year lease for Knox Basketball Stadium in Boronia.
Federal La Trobe MP Jason Wood and Liberal candidate for Ferntree Gully Nick Wakeling issued a joint statement on Monday, 23 October calling on the Government to hand over part of the school site to KBI.
“The site would be ideal for KBI to build a new facility and would provide room for expansion without significant impact on the local community,” Mr Wood said.
Mr Wood said he opposed the school’s closure but letting KBI use the land would help the sporting organisation cater for its 1000 teams while retaining the school site in community hands.
“If the Government sells the land, the residents of Ferntree Gully get the double whack of having a school close down and losing the land forever,” he said.
Mr Wakeling said while the Government dithered he had moved swiftly to ensure the land would be used by the community under a Liberal Government.
He blasted Labor’s handling of the Ferntree Gully Primary School site, the use of which remains unresolved a year after it closed.
Placing KBI facilities within the Ferntree Gully College site was, Mr Wakeling said, a perfect fit.
“At the end of the day the community benefits,” he said.
“If you look at the primary school – an eyesore with a cyclone fence and weeds growing out of it – no one’s benefiting.”
But Ferntree Gully MP Anne Eckstein said it was inappropriate to discuss the use of the site while the college was still operating and before residents had been consulted.
She said she was angry at the way Mr Wood had intervened and accused him of trying to “circumvent the proper process of what happens to a school site”.
She said Mr Wood was raising expectations he could not fulfil before shirking the responsibility to another branch of government.
“It’s about wedge politics,” she said.
“He wants to ride in like a white knight and get someone else to provide the money.”
But Mr Wood admitted he was being political and said at election time politicians had to make things happen.
“All this rubbish about having to go through due process – who’s running the state, the education department or the Premier?” he said.
“If they can’t arrange for this to happen they shouldn’t be in power.”
Dinsdale Ward councillor Adam Gill tried to take advantage of the political manoeuvring at a Tuesday, 24 October meeting during which the council agreed a proposed lease agreement with KBI at its Park Crescent stadium.
Cr Gill moved an amended motion proposing the council ask the State Government for $2 million from the Commonwealth Games surplus for basketball courts in Knox.
The motion was described by Baird Ward councillor Jim Penna as disrespectful to the council, to the community and to KBI.
All councillors apart from Cr Gill voted against it.