As awareness of the proposed South East Sports Hub (SESH) grows, so too does community support.
We have been overwhelmed by the amount of positive correspondence we have received from members of the community who wish to see a new grassroots sporting precinct built within the City of Greater Dandenong, which would take pressure off existing facilities and give young girls and boys more spaces to play and to stay active and healthy.
But this increasing support for SESH appears to be unsettling the project’s detractors, who continue to raise myths which have been debunked and make unfounded claims that there has been misleading information put forward about the SESH.At the City of Greater Dandenong (CGD) Council meeting on Monday, August 12 it was claimed that organisers of the SESH campaign had used Council’s logo without authorisation to demonstrate support for the proposed SESH project.
For context, in 2022 SESH supporters worked for many months through the appropriate channels to obtain a letter of support from CGD on Council letterhead. It was initially supplied by Council with the signature of then-Mayor Jim Memeti and then updated shortly thereafter with the details of new mayor Eden Foster.
The letter of support from the former Mayor, Ms Foster, was received by SESH organisers in good faith. It stated that “on behalf of the City of Greater Dandenong I write in support of a large-scale South-East Sports Hub (SESH) delivering a regional sports, recreation and environmental precinct located within Greater Dandenong, which can service Melbourne’s South Eastern region”.
The letter – along with the CGD logo – has been on the SESH website for 21 months and no concerns have ever been raised.
At no time have organisers of the SESH ever sought to indicate that Council has approved development of the SESH.
At all times SESH has been presented as a ‘proposed’ project, with all communications clearly outlining the required steps, including an amendment to the Urban Growth Boundary and a parliamentary vote before any formal submissions are made to the City of Greater Dandenong.
The repeated raising of floodplain concerns about the SESH are also intentionally false.
By simply visiting the Victorian Government’s mapping service (https://mapshare.vic.gov.au/vicplan/) and viewing the “Land Subject To Inundation Overlay” one can see that the proposed SESH site is not listed as flood-prone.
When outlining her concerns about the SESH at the Council meeting, Councillor Rhonda Garad also said: “it is on the farest-flung corner of our municipality, where City of Kingston would be more likely to benefit. So there is little benefit for the City of Greater Dandenong”.
We are concerned by Councillor Garad’s apparent disregard for her ward’s residents, suggesting they don’t deserve essential infrastructure due to their location being on CGD’s fringe.
The project, if successful, will deliver substantial benefits for the residents of Keysborough South, and they will be welcomed with open arms. But the SESH will also unashamedly be a regional-scale facility which will serve a catchment of 300,000 residents within a 10-minute drive, the bulk of whom would be in the City of Greater Dandenong.
