Disability access and inclusion

Back on Tuesday the 4th of August, I attended a meeting of the Knox Disability Advisory Committee. I commend Councillor Baker for her role as chair of that committee. It was a fantastic meeting. It's a fantastic committee that is a great blend of lived experience in terms of disability, as well as people that have a deep understanding of the sector. So it was a great meeting.

I just wanted to note, and this is not normally a positive note that I like to begin on, but over the King's Birthday long weekend, Saturday 6th of June, the much-loved and still quite new accessible playground at Stud Park in Rowville was very badly damaged by fire. I've had plenty of contact from local families and parents who are disappointed, who have kids that treasure that play space. Certainly one of the best in Tirhatuan Ward and one of our newer, more modern playgrounds across the municipality. So it was deeply disappointing, and really frustrating quite frankly, to see something that brings so much joy to our community treated and disrespected in that way.

So I want to thank the council officers who were able to get down there quite quickly. I know Victoria Police and fire crews were there to make the area safe. The playground has now reopened with some small areas fenced off, and we are in the process of ordering and waiting on some replacement equipment, and we'll continue to keep the community up to date in terms of the time frames. But in the meantime, for those looking for more accessible options, there's great playgrounds at Wally Tew Reserve and Marie Wallace.

And I would just say that all of these facilities are shared community assets. They're things that we all pay for and need to look after. They're built for our kids and they deserve to be respected. So, I would ask everyone to help us look after them and look out for them. And I look forward to seeing the Stud Park playground back at its full capacity soon enough.

Thank you, Mayor. I attended my first meeting of the Knox Disability Advisory Committee, KDAC as we know it, on Tuesday, the 3rd of February. I noted Councillor Pearce is one of the outgoing councillors from that committee, and I thank Councillor Pearce again for making way for me on KDAC this year, because it's a real passion area of mine.

And it was great to meet the committee, introduce myself to the committee members, and to hear their lived experiences and professional and personal connection with all things disability and access and inclusion. And I note Councillor Baker, and thank her as my fellow committee member of KDAC from Council, who's chairing the committee again this year. We talked about the local law review and event permits, and really building access and inclusion principles into everything Council does. So a really great group of people around the table, and I look forward to having an impact at KDAC this year.

On Friday the 23rd of May, I attended Scoresby Tennis Centre for a meeting of the Scoresby Recreation Reserve stakeholder group. That's Craig Douglas from Scoresby Tennis Centre, Dave Renkin from Scoresby Football Club, the president there, and Council officers, for a chat about the operations of the Rec Reserve and the partnerships between the tennis centre and the football and cricket tenants. It was great to see some recent improvements at the tennis centre, some freshly resurfaced hard courts that have the tennis club really firing on all cylinders. And they've got some big plans to make it even more disability compliant. They want to widen some doors at an accessible bathroom and really look to move into the space of all abilities coaching and competition in tennis. So as their ward councillor I've expressed my support for those endeavours, and we'll track those through.