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22.01.2022 If it's good enough for Victoria, its good enough for NSW and Queensland to publish poker machine data.

18.01.2022 HEALTH BENEFITS OF EXPOSURE TO NATURE I have previously written and spoken about research which shows the physical and mental health benefits of public open space and being exposed to nature. For example Prince Charles wrote about it in his book, Harmony, citing a Texas hospital study which found that patients with a view of trees out the window spent fewer days in hospital, used fewer drugs, had fewer complications and registered fewer complaints with the nurses responsible ...for their care, than those without a view of trees. Now a study led by The University of Queensland and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions suggests people might need a minimum dose of nature. The Victorian National Parks Association reports that the research concludes that people who visit parks for 30 minutes or more each week are much less likely to have high blood pressure or poor mental health than those who don't. Researcher Dr. Danielle Shanahan says "If everyone visited their local parks for half an hour each week there would be 7% fewer cases of depression and 9% fewer cases of high blood pressure"...."Our children especially benefit from spending more time outdoors. Kids who grow up experiencing natural environments may benefit developmentally and have a heightened awareness as adults than those who don't". So we shouldn't just hang on to our public open space and vegetation for the birds and plants and animals - we should do ourselves a favour and hang on to it for ourselves. Victorian National Parks Association See more

16.01.2022 Moonee Ponds Creek on display at the Moonee Valley Festival...

12.01.2022 ALLIANCE FOR GAMBLING REFORM As reported in today's Age, I will be working next year part-time for the Alliance for Gambling Reform. Australians have been losing over $16 billion each year to gambling, making us the highest per capita gamblers in the world. Half a million Australians are either problem gamblers or at risk of becoming so. Poker machines are the biggest driver of this unsatisfactory situation. They account for 60% of all gambling losses and over 75% of gambling... addiction. There is a number of things we can do to change this for the better - 1. Require re-design of the machines to get rid of their built in addictive features. 2. Introduce a maximum $1 bet limit - The Productivity Commission said this would limit losses to $120 per hour; we have maximum safe speeds for cars, we should also have maximum speeds for poker machines losses. 3. Give local communities, through their Councils, a real say in the number and location of machines in their communities. 4. Make research into gambling more independent and genuinely useful. We do, of course, have other gambling issues such as on-line gambling and sports betting that warrant attention. All offers of assistance or advice concerning these issues will be very welcome. The Alliance for Gambling Reform can be contacted by email at [email protected] or phone 03 99997372. #peoplenotpokies, pokiesplayyou.org.au, The Pokies Play You @pokiecon See more

11.01.2022 FAMILY VIOLENCE AND GAMBLING LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC HEALTH FORUM Congratulations to the City of Moreland for hosting, and Women's Health in the North, the Victorian Local Governance Assocation, ReSPIN, the Australian Institute for Family Studies and the City of Darebin for their role in Tuesday's Family Violence and Gambling Forum. Some very important evidence was presented to this Forum, including - 1. Family Violence is three times more likely to occur in families in w...hich there is significant harm from gambling than in families in which there is no gambling related harm. 2. A Victorian study of police-recorded family violence and Electronic Gaming Machine accessibility found that postcodes with no Electronic Gaming Machines had 20% fewer family violence incidents and 30% fewer family violence assaults, when compared with Postcodes with 75 EGMs per 10,000 people. 3. There was a strong positive correlation between financial losses per adult and police call out rates for Melbourne's northern metropolitan region in the 2015-2016 financial year. 4. Over half of people with gambling problems report perpetrating physical violence against their children. 5. Gambling increases the frequency and severity of family violence. So while the way in which problems such as disadvantage, gambling, alcohol etc interact with family violence is complex, it is reasonable to conclude from this work that reducing the financial harm done by gambling would reduce family violence in a tangible and genuinely useful way. It underscores the need to treat gambling as a public health issue and take serious actions to reduce the harm it is causing. See more

10.01.2022 URBANISATION, BUSHWALKING AND MENTAL HEALTH A study in the Proceedings of the United States Natural Academy of Sciences has noted that increased urbanisation closely correlates with increased instances of depression and other mental illness. Given this correlation I am astonished that we continue to build high rise towers and continue to encourage people to live in large cities, where traffic congestion, cheek by jowl living and fierce competition for jobs and advancement mak...e us less satisfied and more stressed. But until our civic leaders and planners come to their senses about this, the Study has suggested there is something people can do to help their mental health and wellbeing. They say that getting outdoors and bushwalking, disconnecting from technology and reconnecting with nature, can help. A study conducted by psychologists Ruth Atchley and David Strayer found that bushwalking can reduce mental fatigue and improve creative problem solving. Another study, by Frances Kup and Andrea Taylor, found that exposing children with ADHD to green outdoor activities reduced their ADHD symptoms significantly. Their results suggest nature exposure can benefit anyone who has a difficult time paying attention or exhibits compulsive behaviour. Researchers from the University of British Colombia have found memory benefits for women over 70 coming from aerobic exercise. And the National Academy of Sciences researchers found that people walking in nature had decreased obsessive or negative thoughts, by a significant margin, whereas people who walked through an urban environment did not. They conclude that bushwalking can lead people away from the negative thoughts that can lead to depression and anxiety. Getting out and about in nature is good for us, both physically and mentally. See more

10.01.2022 VALE JULIANNE BELL Julianne Bell passed away on Friday January 27. She was an indefatigable and tireless campaigner for the protection of Melbourne's public open spaces. She is most well known as the defender of Royal Park against any and all who would seek to diminish it for their own purposes, and she told me she was most proud of her role in stopping the East-West Link, a Freeway which would have carved up Royal Park in an outrageous act of environmental vandalism. She wa...s the driving force behind the Protectors of Public Lands (Victoria) Inc, through which she defended public open spaces far and wide from all manner of threats - the Carlton Gardens, the Catani Gardens, the Exhibition Gardens, the Rogers Memorial Reserve and many others too numerous to mention - no public open space was too far away or too small to merit her attention. She worked closely with me on the problems caused by Rapid Population Growth for the world in general and Melbourne in particular. She understood that it is people who are responsible for environmental damage, and was prepared to cut through the vanity that prevents many of us from acknowledging this. She had worked in the Immigration Department, and told me a number of times about the propensity for migration agents to tell fibs on applications, and the trouble an understaffed department had in verifying claims and uncovering rorts. Julianne was not always easy to work with, and she was very hard line. I did think when she was telling me about the evils of the Flower Show in the Exhibition Gardens that perhaps she could lighten up! But she grasped, better I think than anyone else I have ever met, that our public open spaces are constantly in danger from people or organisations or businesses who want to use from for a private benefit, at the cost of the value of the open space asset itself. She understood and loved the heritage of Marvellous Melbourne, the legacy of beautiful parks and open spaces which Melbourne's founders bequeathed us, and she was relentless in her defence of them. If Julianne had not been standing guard over them these past decades, they might well look rather different, and Melbourne might well have been on its way to becoming a soulless concrete jungle, like so many other cities around the world. Over the years various Premiers and Lord Mayors have basked in reflected glory as Melbourne was declared the World's Most Liveable City. But this title owes, in my view, a fair bit more to Julianne's work than theirs. If we are to keep that honour, we will need people to draw inspiration from Julianne and take over her life's work and themselves become Protectors of Public Lands. Rose Iser has suggested there be a memorial to her in Royal Park. I agree. But not too big. Julianne would not approve. See more

04.01.2022 MAX MARSHALL AM Yesterday I attended the Memorial Service at St John's Uniting Church Essendon for Max Marshall AM. I met Max when I bought my first house in Cleve Road Pascoe Vale. Max lived on the opposite side of the Craigieburn railway line, in Kernan Avenue. He was running a hose across the railway line (under the tracks!) from his garden to water plants in the parkland opposite which Council kindly later named Kelvin Thomson Park. It was astonishingly civic-minded of hi...m. though no doubt illegal. After a while he asked if I could arrange for Council to install a tap in the park so he didn't have to take his hose across the railway line. It seemed the least we could do to help him help us, so we did. His interest in the local parkland near his house also extended to planting and caring for many many trees and shrubs. Later on when Neighbourhood Watch came to Pascoe Vale he and his wife Mavis were strong supporters of it, once again reflecting their commitment to the neighbourhood in which they lived. I also met and spoke with him often about his work for the Federation of Automotive Products Manufacturers. Max was passionate about Australia's car industry, about manufacturing in Australia in general, and about skilling and training young Australians to take up manufacturing jobs. It is a suite of concerns which has become unfashionable in the age of globalisation, which I think is a pity, and very much this nation's loss. He was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia in 1999 for Services to the Automotive Parts Industry and to the Community. Max was an honourable man, characterised by integrity and modesty. In today's world much of his work might not be widely appreciated, but the world in which he lived was a good world, and made better for his efforts. The Hon. Kelvin Thomson See more

03.01.2022 COOLING EFFECT OF TREES As we seek to avoid the bad health consequences of heatwaves in a warming climate, research again and again points out the importance of retaining our vegetation cover, particularly to stop our cities from overheating. The urban heat island effect is now well documented - it means that Melbourne, for example, is nowadays hotter than the surrounding countryside. But within the Melbourne metropolitan area significant temperature differences occur, and th...ey correspond with the presence or absence of tree cover. Surface temperature maps show a large patch of Melbourne's western suburbs, including Melton and Hoppers Crossing, as much as 4 degrees hotter than Toorak. Monash University researcher Dr. Andrew Coutts has confirmed that these differences are caused by trees or the lack of them. He says trees lower temperature by casting shade and by real easing moisture drawn from their roots through their leaves. He says the pattern is that where you have more trees you have a cooler environment. He says we need to protect older trees, which cast a wide canopy. Given the importance to our health of keeping and growing our tree cover, it is regrettable that property developers and builders are destroying the vegetation canopy with dual occupancy, multi unit and high rise developments. Planning authorities need to do much more to protect trees and other vegetation or else Melbourne and other large cities are destined to become so hot that they will be unsafe for many of their inhabitants.