Victorian Railway Institute Hall not an expendable part of station precinct
I read with disbelief the completely wrong statements about the matter of the VRI buildings in the railway precinct at Ballarat. The statement that these buildings are of no heritage value, rarely used and unsafe is a total myth and the opposite is the truth. The Victorian Railways Institute is quite active as a member services organisation with 3500 members throughout the state. It has twelve such centres around the state, as found in Ballarat along with a number of lawn bowling clubs and a croquet club. They are all located on Victrack land, leased to the Institute. The Ballarat buildings are historically important as they were the first regional buildings built for the Institute by the Victorian Railways for the education and social development of railway employees. They were built in 1924 and are used virtually seven days a week. They house a social hall, billiard room (with full size tables), a sports hall and a kitchen.
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They are used by VRI members and the rooms are also hired out to outside groups wishing to use the particular areas. They are in very good order of repair and maintenance is carried out by a hard working committee of local VRI members, funded by their own activities and at times, with grants from the main VRI office in Melbourne. It was only around five years ago that our Federal Member of Parliament, Catherine King, made a grant of federal funding available for improvements at the hall. The halls do have a heritage value, as proved recently at a meeting held at the Bendigo VRI hall, which is a mirror image of the Ballarat hall,where the Bendigo City Council had made it know the Bendigo Hall has a heritage listing. Victrack have also made it known to the VRI that the Ballarat hall is equally regarded.
Richard Gilbert, Clunes, State President, VRI
a simple solution to rorts
Meddling with the perks of pollies merely creates more complex rules for them to exploit. The only solution is to give politicians a single allowance to cover all expenses, theirs to do with as they please, but not a penny more, and no questions asked. This would include travel, accommodation, staff, electoral offices, cars, electorate perks and handouts, superannuation, absolutely everything. No applications for special or unexpected matters. Nothing whatsoever - they budget to meet their needs within the allowance. While this may need a couple of million each, and more for ministers, it is dwarfed by the present open door corrupting system and its administration. This way they can only rort themselves, not us, and the endless misuse, abuse and shonky activities ends absolutely. Any politician who diverts the money to his/her own pocket and ignores working for their electors has to face them at election time.
Neville Lindsay, Sinnamon Park
Some may have little time for the the Golden Globe Awards but we need to remember that motion pictures have served to provide hope, happiness and escapism since their inception. In the time of the Great Depression, the queues of the tired and weary who chose to spend their hard earned 15c on 90 minutes of time inside the theatre, matched the length of the queues for the soup kitchens.
Alba Spina, Red Hill
Let them eat fruit
Because of poor eucalyptus flowering, many nectar-eating creatures are getting pushed onto backyard fruit trees and coming to grief in unsafe netting you can push fingers through. New Year's day saw rescuers take eleven animals from nets, some dead or dying. It would help if those with nets like this could remove them and replace with nets with small holes, or pick reachable fruit and leave the high stuff for wildlife.
Lawrence Pope, Victorian Advocates for Animals, Fobb - Friends of Bats and Bushcare
