General News
22 December, 2023
The art of staying course with focus and determination
OPINION PIECE By CHRIS EARL VISION and determination have emerged as the genuine hallmarks of community advocacy that will bring an end to the Loddon Shire being lumped with the tag of Victoria’s only child care desert. Last week’s announcement...
OPINION PIECE
By CHRIS EARL
VISION and determination have emerged as the genuine hallmarks of community advocacy that will bring an end to the Loddon Shire being lumped with the tag of Victoria’s only child care desert.
Last week’s announcement of a co-located early childhood centre to be built by the State Government in Wedderburn and open in 2026 is because a group of young mothers and school leaders saw a problem, identified a solution and remained resolute in pursuing the appropriate response.
Over three years they knocked on doors, picked up telephones and provided evidence to back up their belief, and knowledge, that the absence of child care in Loddon communities was detrimental to the social, educational and wellbeing of current and future families chosing to live in the shire.
The Loddon Herald put its full support behind the campaign and has charted progress, hurdles and opportunities since Keep Families Local was launched almost three years ago.
The model pursued by mothers in Wedderburn, young professional people who chose to live in the shire and hope that the future will give their children that same course, was for co-location of a centre at Wedderburn College. They demonstrated the art of staying a course with focus and determination.
Elsehwere in the shire over the past three years, other models have been on the table. In Boort, a private investor had plans to open a child care centre, took them to an advanced stage in being processed by government authorities, only to decide that the hurdles to deliver an economically viable enterprise were too much in a rural community. In 2021, there were attempts to form a working group in Inglewood that would have had one mother sitting around the table with other members selected for their skills and experience in a more bureaucratic style of planning and advocacy - one meeting was called, very poorly attended and the move faltered as quickly as the idea had popped out.
Access to child care and housing in Loddon communities are pivotal to growth in our towns without it not only planning and delivery headaches but migraines in coming years.
Our story last week called the Wedderburn child care announcement the “first child care centre”. Any crystal ball will show that population growth in the next five to 10 years all but locks in the need for another child care centre, probably in another Calder Highway corridor town and also in the north of the shire. Different demands in different areas may well create the opportunity for other models to have practical delivery.
Advocacy will be vital in expanding access to child care across the Loddon Shire. Just as advocacy was crucial in the announcement a week earlier that the Calder Highway through Inglewood and Wedderburn would have 40kmh speed limits following almost a year of campaigning in the community and, yes, knocking on doors and picking up telephones - another campaign strongly backed by the Loddon Herald.
The weird thing about the speed reduction is that the more dangerous section of the Calder Highway - Inglewood - waits until next year, Wedderburn was done within 48 hours of the announcement.
And then there’s a matter of consistency. Bridgewater remains with a higher speed limit through town, surely creating confusion for motorists travelling north. Is it 60, 50 or 40kmh - make all towns the same and drivers have mental clarity and therefore the capacity to comprehend the requirements when travelling through our towns along one of the state’s busiest highways.
Whether speed limits or child care, roads and transport, health or education or housing, our communities will have emerging growing pains over the next decade as the population projections continue to trend upwards.
Advocacy and campaigning now will make those pains a niggle. Sitting on hands and not acting with vision and focus - sprinkled, peppered and infused with volumes of hard work - will mean multiple and expensive trips to the operating table for major surgery. Government - local and state - now takes a greater regional approach to planning, development and service delivery, as former Loddon CEO Craig Niemann recalled last week. Every community, every resident and every local representative is charged with the task of making sure they campaign for our fair share over the next 10 years ... it will take hard work. The future will make everything worthwhile.