Every Australian community has a local football and cricket oval, with a humble pavilion in order to provide opportunities for children and adults to engage in necessary, healthy outdoor activities and sporting events.  These facilities have become more important over time as a place where community ties are created and reinforced.

Our local Park Orchards football and cricket clubs are primarily structured around junior sport.  Like all such clubs, we are manned and administered by volunteers – Parents, in the main, of the children.

Enormous sacrifices are made each year mostly by a small proportion of the whole, so that as many children as possible can enjoy the rewarding experience of robust physical team play through competitive sport.

Our community believe this experience is a necessary part of all children's  education, despite the fact that only a minority of them will become  professional sportspeople.  Participation in sport is one of our finest national traditions.  Sport defines who we are as Australians, and it is of even more fundamental importance in an age of increasing physical passivity and obesity.

Our clubs are self managed, initiated by volunteers, who organize events and competitions and raise all monies.  This is done for little or no cost to the community on grounds set aside by our forebears for this very purpose.  It is surely only reasonable that our community should be able to expect that our Council not get in the way, and in fact it should be doing everything in its power to aid and abet our purposes.

At Domeney, the original pavilion was a tin shed, built by locals at their own cost, for the purpose of orchestrating the development of football and cricket.  The Council assumed ownership over the facility, promised a more felicitous pavilion and over a million dollars later, provided us with an architectural “masterpiece”.  However the Council had created an asset that was to be paid for.  Apparently significant funding is required each year to maintain the facility, however PORA is yet to be able to procure the MRA's financial statement for Domeney Reserve, despite our many requests.  Nonetheless it is the big commercial organizations that are in prime position for occupancy of the pavilion's rooms.  Thus the dance studio has pride of place at Domeney. As it is a commercial body, it can afford $25,000 in annual rent.  The whole arrangement is focussed on finding more funds and pushing the traditional occupiers further into a corner.  The Scouts couldn’t even afford the rent, so out they went.  It is worth noting that the Pavilion Manager, an employee of the MRA, currently occupies an office as big as the whole football/cricket rooms at the northern end.

At a time when government at all levels are increasingly embracing the business model in their pursuit of the all important bottom line, social services are increasingly outsourced to private interests and citizens are being reduced to customers and clients.

Consequently, our cricket club has to hold its annual AGM at a distant hotel, as our Domeney facility is unequal to the task of providing for our needs.  The same goes for our football club which holds its AGM in the City of Whitehorse, in the hall of a private school.

The access problems at Domeney Reserve are not just limited to the football and cricket fraternity.  The problem is far more widespread.  The following is a list of  complaints which have come to PORA's attention.

• Recently a local community minded citizen attempted to access Domeney’s community facilities in order to secure aid for victims of Black Saturday.  She was turned away because of the lack of due process such as adequate notice etcetera.  So, undeterred, she found favour at the adjacent private Primary School, St Anne’s, whereby they inconvenienced themselves, during school hours, and opened their facilities to the public.  Subsequently the whole local community descended on the school and raised a considerable tonnage of clothes, toiletries and food stuffs, packed, sorted and shipped out to the burnt out communities in the hills beyond.
• A community that is forced to hold its ratepayers meetings in the local private schools, for free, because it is too difficult and too costly to utilize Domeney.
• St Anne’s, that same private primary school, is denied adequate access time and again by Council functionaries who seem compelled by either laziness, incompetence or Council policy, to obstruct rather than facilitate the use of our community facilities.  St Anne’s held a cross country run, and they were refused access to 100 Acres due to two other schools’ prior bookings.  This was scheduled for 14 May 2009.  No other schools occupied or used 100 Acres on that day.  We know because we arranged parents to monitor the situation.  (Refer to Appendix 1 below).
• This same school recently asked for greater access to Domeney for school hours exercise.  At present the school is allowed 4 hours per week for free, then $75 per hour afterwards (50% discount for junior schools). 

• The charge is ridiculous, it should be free
• Our rates pay for it easily.

2.     The children need greater access than 4 hours per week.  The school is adjacent to Domeney, with no real play space,  and the requested time is during the school hours.  If wear and tear on the oval is an issue, which it is, then Council must provide adequate funds to ensure that end is met.

PORA, as the representative of the ratepayers, are required to pursue justice in the fight against the privatization of our community property.  At our most recent public meeting, a motion was passed demanding we pursue greater access to Domeney for the whole community.  We pay our taxes and rates, and we demand that our local government, in particular, govern for the people and not for the glorification of themselves and the bottom line.