Greens to look closely at CORA

THE Victorian Greens have taken an interest in the CORA (Cape Otway Road Australia) project, with leader Samantha Ratnam calling for more detail and transparency on the $350 million proposal.

Ms Ratnam, who also holds the planning portfolio with the Greens, visited the Surf Coast earlier this month and discussed CORA with people opposed to the 240-hectare sports training, accommodation, arts and tourism facility to be built on Cape Otway Road near Lake Modewarre.

In early February, CORA announced it had lodged its business case with the state government and was to lodge its planning application with the Surf Coast Shire within the week (with the expectation the application would be called in by the state government), but Ms Ratnam said the application should be more open for local comment.

“It feels very opaque and it needs more clarity – I think the community needs to feel like there’s assurance that they’ll have a say in it.

“There might be people with different views about what they want who actually want to know what’s going on, to have a meaningful say in it and to influence the outcome for a better outcome.

“I think that’s a good principle for the planning process that often gets undermined when you get some of these big projects that people just sort of barrel through and they go ‘oh, we won’t worry about consultation’.”

She said she also heard concerns about the order in which the various elements of CORA would be built.

“The residents said ‘we could just get these houses, and get nothing else’; none of the other parts of the proposal that the developer says will be good for the community – the public parks, the accessways might not happen – so the staging’s really important. Should the sports facility come first, before the residential?”

Following CORA’s initial reveal in November, the facility’s proponents held two public meetings to promote its merits and answer questions.

“This project has to belong to the community, it has to represent this region and this is not lip service – if this community doesn’t want it, it doesn’t happen,” Daryl Pelchen said in December.