Straight from the What Were They Thinking file comes the title of a new initiative to protect the endangered hooded plover.
Dogs’ Breakfast certainly seems an odd title for a series of morning workshops to protect a bird that locally loses more chicks to off-leash pets than just about anything else.
Bad taste? Blasé on birdlife?
Well, it is a breakfast event and attendees are invited to bring their dogs, so perhaps host Great Ocean Road Coast Committee gets the benefit of the doubt.
And at least it will ruffle some features!
While on local authorities, what’s up with Barwon Water?
Last time Double Take checked it was still in the public service but recently it’s morphed into some kind of free-range commercial outfit.
Last week Barwon Water announced that it had established a company to conduct maintenance services while also competing for business on other local projects. The private-sector will just love that!
Then this week it pulled on the white shoes with property development plans at trendy Torquay. The Salt estate, on a disused water basin, should be worth a cool $50 million, the authority salivated.
Given the history of governmental forays into business, Barwon Water’s owners – you know, the public – should closely monitor their return on investment.
Mind you, even skirting the edges of business can take significant bark off the bureaucracy.
Take City Hall, set to borrow possibly $17 million to turn a couple of farms into swamps.
As readers verbalise the acronym WTF amid an expulsion of Weeties, Double Take can explain that the purchase of the properties will generously assist the drainage issues of thriving Armstrong Creek developers.
Apparently the council’s “wetlands” will provide a legal alternative to stormwater ending up in nearby sites covered by an international agreement protecting habitat of migratory wading birds.
Double Take checked but couldn’t find anything about protecting ratepayers from City Hall.
