By Corey Everitt
Emerald’s Jeffery Latter did not expect to win this year’s Stan Henwood award for his volunteer work, but his achievements and experience reveal a more than worthy recipient, as journalist COREY EVERITT reports.
BREAKOUT QUOTE
“You can only lose, if you allow them to play just politics, if you are there and saying the community wants this and you’re our representative, we don’t care what your spots are, we just want to move along with this project.”
There were nine nominees for the 2023 Stan Henwood award, an achievement which acknowledges the highest efforts of volunteers in the Cardinia Shire area.
Jeff Latter was nominated by the John Hills Landcare Group, on which he serves as secretary.
When he learned of his nomination, Jeff thought it was neat but genuinely didn’t expect to win.
“I was very pleased when the land group said they were nominating me for it,” he said.
“I had a quick look and found out who else has got them and it’s quite an amazing collection of people and I thought about myself, ‘yeah sort of, nearly’.
“Most of them came from very strong community infrastructure and I haven’t really had that role, the scout hall yes, but more environmental and particularly long-term-vision projects.”
Jeff has been the group leader for the Emerald Scouts Chapter for almost a decade and has been pivotal in conservation and environmental efforts across the hills since the 90s.
He is a foundational member of many groups such as the John Hills Landcare Group and the Liwik Barring Landscape Conservation Area.
While his leadership of the Scouts saw the achievement of a much needed new scout hall.
When speaking to Jeff, one would expect this commitment comes from a unique passion for the community and volunteering.
However, Jeff rather gives the impression of a small town man whose knowledge and skills made him fall into it, so to speak.
He was an avid scout when he was younger at the very same Emerald chapter he is leader of now.
He was involved all the way to the level of Rover, through his school years at Emerald Primary and Monbulk High School to his tertiary years at Melbourne University.
He studied Forestry Science, but spent a lot of his electives branching out to other areas of environmental science.
“One of my mates did a major in botany and one day, a few years after we had graduated, we are going through and comparing what units I had done and he had done,” Jeff explained.
“And he said, ‘you know, you did more botany units than me!’”
Having grown out of Scouts, he would be employed in local and State governments in Forestry and Environmental Management offices.
It was in 1984, months after the Ash Wednesday Fires, where he was employed by the then Sherbrooke Council to fill the new, all-important, role of Fire Management Officer.
Through these roles he gained a lot of experience working with the assortment of Government bodies and interest groups, their conflicts and how to achieve what was needed in the sometimes messy affair.
In 1990, while still working for Sherbrooke Council, he helped initiate the predecessor of John Hill Landcare Group, called ‘Meander’.
Doing this while not even being a member at all.“Meander was one of the groups that I identified the need for and the community interest from articles appearing in local papers and so on.” he said.
“So I say we can step in here, help them to form and then they take over, so I was the liaison for Meander and then when I left Local Government I actually joined them.”
Jeff only gave advice when needed while he was a council officer to avoid the conflict of interest, but when he finally joined he quickly became an influential member.
Jeff would be apart of the creation of a new public park called the Liwik Barring Landscape Conservation Area.
In 2005 Jeff and the President of Meander, Kate, would run a forum to address the concerns about proper management of the land the group overseas.
The group mainly covers the area of Menzies Creek Stream Reserve, which at the time was a part of a collection of separate pieces of public land squeezed between the larger parks of Dandenong Ranges and Bunyip State Park.
“We were in the sort of negative space between the Dandenong Ranges National Park, Kurth Kiln and Bunyip State and Yarra Ranges, in this bit in between there is all these little bits of crown land that are being managed and not being managed,” Jeff said.
“One part of it was notionally under Parks Vic, one part of it was notionally under DWELP, never would the two would talk together, Melbourne Water had some other responsibilities.
“You started to look at each group along the streams and realise everyone had the same sorts of problems, so we said there has to be something better.”
Through the forum, they achieved the Woori Yallock Creek Park Alliance, which united all 18 landcare groups which covered these public park areas.
Jeff was the convenor of this alliance, where he presented the plan for ‘Yellingbo State Emblems Park’ which proposed a united protection and management of these lands as a single park.
Through advocating for the proposal they got political commitments.
“Running into elections, everything becomes politics,” Jeff said.
“Labor said they will refer it to the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council (VEAC) for study, then we went to the opposition, and said here we are, soon after the elections they said yes we will refer it.”
Through getting all sides on board commitment was assured, some years later the proposal would be accepted as the first new park under the National Parks Act.
The Liwik Barring Landscape Conservation Area was created in 2020, encompassing 1700 hectares of 3000, the rest is to be incorporated in the future.
Jeff’s long-term patience and political savviness is an unique attribute to projects like these, which are prone to delays and political infighting.
“You can only lose, if you allow them to play just politics, if you are there and saying the community wants this and you’re our representative, we don’t care what your spots are, we just want to move along with this project.”
Getting bipartisan commitments is something Jeff has done many times, and is part of him and others in the community’s success.
Possibly the best example of his work is the rebuild of the local Scout Hall.
Jeff joined the Scout Group Support Committee in 2005 after decades away from Scouting.
“This was my scout group when I was a youth member, then when my kids joined I rejoined as an adult member on the committee,” Jeff explained.
“First thing I knew was the place was broke, surprise, surprise, most scout groups are.”
“And secondly, the hall needed lots of money, those are two things that are just telling you, you are wasting your time.”
“That’s what people said, you can’t do it, you’re just wasting your time, it’s not that we can’t do it, we have to do it, it will take 10 years.”
Through his long-term vision and patience, Jeff and the committee preserved to achieve a rework of the aging scout hall.
“Part of it was pure dumb luck if you like, but I started a process,” he said.
“I looked at whatever grant was available, there were some larger grant available, but we quickly found out that scouts were not eligible and no one, including Ministers, could explain why we were not eligible, we just weren’t.
So when we found that out we just started playing a bit of a backwards and forwards game until someone makes you an offer.
“Leading into one of the state elections, the Government announced they were going to give $4m to scouts state-wide for hall upgrades.
“And the Scout association did a very wise thing and went to the opposition and got them to match it.”
The Emerald chapter was fortunate to get funding in the first round for the hall upgrade, where Jeff took a leading role in updating the hall to work for the bustling activities happening at the hall almost every night.
In 2013 the new hall was unveiled and Jeff would become the group leader.
Jeff sees the myriad connections in volunteer work that make projects happen, which leads him to downplay his own influence and rightly acknowledge the work of entire communities.
However, he is unique in having a keen eye for how every situation is unique and must be driven by the capabilities and wants of those involved.
“Often now I get asked to talk to other scout groups and I say ‘work how your group wants to work’,” he said.
“You talk to people you find where you can get some money and assistance from, and use it.”
Jeff is also a part of the Committee of Management for Hogan Park, becoming so through an experience that became regular for Jeff.
“Yeah I got pressured by some other people in the community who said ‘yeah you, you know about these things you can do that,” Jeff said with a smirk.
Hogan Park is another example of the community work that Jeff makes seem so simple.
“We had the Rotary Club here for Clean Up Australia Day, 30 members came along to pick up rubbish in Hogan Park,” he explained.
“That was organised by Jenny the president of the landcare group, scouts provide the facility, Hogan Park funds the barbecue lunch, everyone had a great time, Council came in the following day and picked up all the rubbish we stockpiled.
“Win, win, win, win, that’s how things get done.”
Another important achievement of Jeff’s is his work with Emerald Quarry Reserve.
The reserve is owned by Cardinia Shire Council and is a significant site for it is the home of Emerald Star Bush, an exceptionally rare floral local to only the surrounding area.
A private property to the south of the land gave a significant part of its property connected to the Reserve to the Trust for Nature.
Jeff advocated for proceeds from the land sale to be put aside for conservation and when the rest of the property itself was put on the market, he advocated from the Trust for Nature to purchase it.
Jeff convinced the Trust to subdivide the property, giving over the existing bushland to the Council to become a part of the Reserve, adding 2.1 hectares.
The land was renamed as Bob James Emerald Quarry Reserve after the historical owner of the once private bushland.
Jeff revegetated the Quarry itself, which had long been overgrown with weeds as it was used to dispose of table drain cleaning.
He worked his magic to acquire soil to cap the quarry and allow for revegetation.
The only problem was finding the soil, the new construction for the Emerald Police Station a decade ago was ripe for fresh soil from excavation.
But he was too late and missed the opportunity, Jeff waited all the way to 2019 for a new development in Emerald to occur where he swooped in to get that soil and the quarry was filled and the weed problem managed.
All these projects took years, patience and many people volunteering their free time to achieve.
“For the Woori Yallock Creek Park Alliance, all we knew was it was going to take decades and we doubted that the groups could supported,” Jeff said.
“But the stars aligned and we achieved it, same with the scout hall.”
For Jeff he is just one of many who fell into working for the community.
“Some of it’s chance, scouts was clearly my intention because I was a youth member,” he said.
“Other ones, you start off just being asked, ‘what do you think about this?’”
“And as my wife says ‘I tend to think outside the square, different timelines, how do we get to what objectives we have.’”
Jeff’s biggest concern now is the worrisome drop in people committing to volunteer work.
“Community groups generally, even in scouts, it’s really hard to get the parents of the current scouts to volunteer, it’s just we lost that and I don’t know how we are going to recoup that,” he said.
“Obviously the cost of living now, people are saying, ‘I can’t do it, I’ve got to support my family and finances first’.
“Covid was the change but it probably reinforced a thing that was happening beforehand.”
For Jeff, it’s not that people don’t care but that they just can’t commit.
“We can’t get people to come in and help us organise the events, if we wanted to do a tree planting day or a clean up day, we would get people along to participate.
“In the past we knew, if you run those events, you’ll get one or two who will cross over to organising.”
Despite the worrying trends in volunteering in recent years, Jeff is an example of the great achievements one can make when applying their skills and patience to unconditional volunteering for the community.
