Barry’s Bureaucracy Bounce

Barry Watson’s issue is simple: VicRoads’ noise policy does not extend from midnight to six in the morning, leaving residents unprotected between the hours when most are sleeping.

Words: Emma D’Agostino

Image: Anirudh Asher

Nonetheless, Mr Watson has ricocheted between the statutory authorities responsible for environmental protection in Victoria for over 15 years waging a campaign to deliver Victorians a world-class night time road traffic noise policy.

And he expects to be waiting for some time yet, while the EPA Victoria and the DSE draft a statutory policy review.

Though the latter is primarily responsible for statutory policy in Victoria at present, the EPA assists by providing technical advice, where required.

The purpose of the intended review, which is yet to be fully drafted, is believed to be to consider ways to improve the framework for managing State Environment Protection Policies (SEPPs).

Under ‘wider consideration’ is whether or not the DSE ought to be primarily responsible for Victoria’s environmental statutory policies instead of the EPA.

According to Mr Watson, the DSE has been considering its role in policy procedures since July 2010, only a year after the Victorian Competition and Efficiency Commission (VCEC) recommended the responsibility for developing new regulatory proposals be shifted from the EPA to the DSE.

This was done to prevent the environmental regulator developing policies it would later be responsible for enforcing.

The policy review’s approval for public release is reportedly weeks away.

SOUNDS LIKE TROUBLE

Mr Watson’s house backs onto the Eastern Freeway extension.

He said he first became concerned with how noise and air pollution was likely to affect residents living near the extension to Springvale Road as a community representative on the Eastern Freeway Community Liaison Group in 1995.

“There was a period when I was reluctantly accepting of the extension,» Mr Watson said.

“As it was being planned, I started to ask questions about noise, and straight away things didn’t sound right,” he said.

His suspicions were confirmed when VicRoads ignored recommendations in a report they commissioned from the then Carr Marshall Day Acoustics, now Marshall Day Acoustics, to erect curved sound absorptive barriers rather than vertical sound reflective walls.

These would muffle noise in the valley in which the extension was built rather than amplifying it.

VicRoads opted to install the cheaper, vertical barriers instead, bouncing the traffic noise back at approximately 400 elevated residences.

“It’s dumb design,” Mr Watson said.

Ultimately he hopes a policy will be introduced in Victoria which will adhere to the World Health Organisation’s suggestions for night time noise levels- a maximum of 45 dBA at a bedroom window on any level at night time, so that it may be left open.

The existing road traffic noise policy in Victoria states that noise generally should not exceed 68 dBA on the ground floor of residencies nearby existing roads.

From Mr Watson’s first floor bedroom window, road traffic noise has been measured at 3 dBA above the ground floor measurement.

Note that dBA is not the same as dB dBA is a logarithmic scale.

An increase of three dBA is equal to doubling traffic volume.

Mr Watson said the current road traffic noise policy is a third world ‘nothing’ policy in comparison to best practice.

“Then on top of that there’s nothing for the night time,” he said.

NO RELIEF FROM NOISE

Vic Roads told Mr Watson it had no intention of introducing such a responsibility into its existing policy.

‘Vic Roads is not revisiting its Traffic Noise Reduction Policy at present,’ Vic Roads Network and Asset Planning Executive Director Robert Freemantle wrote to Mr Watson in May 2009.

VicRoads Environmental Director, Dr Helen Murphy, told Monash University Journalism’s ‘Dangerous Ground’: “The Traffic Noise Reduction Policy represents a reasonable compromise between amenity, property value impacts, cost, and practicability.”

Dr Murphy said there is less noise between midnight and six in the morning because the volume of traffic on Victorian roads between those hours is ‘significantly less’ than during the day.

“Measurements show that from midnight to 6am noise levels are approximately five decibels lower than the average day time measurement,” she said.

Nonetheless, the EPA seemed set to act when it introduced a draft state environmental protection policy (SEPP) for road traffic noise strategies in May 2002.

Much to Mr Watson’s frustration, this is as far as the EPA took the initiative in the eight years since.

Upon raising the issue with EPA Victoria’s new leadership team last year, Mr Watson was told the EPA had no intention to recommence work on the draft.

EPA Chairperson Cheryl Batagol referred Mr Watson to the DSE, outlining the DSE’s primary responsibility for preparing new regulatory proposals and providing policy advice in official correspondence.

The DSE intends to liaise with Mr Watson to better understand his experiences over the past 15 years.

However, staff caution they may not be able to assist Mr Watson unless the change he is lobbying for is on the state government’s agenda.

According to EPA’s chief executive John Merritt, the responsibility for negotiating with government departments does not lie with residents affected by jurisdictional overlaps.

“That’s my problem, navigating government,” Mr Merritt told Dangerous Ground earlier this year.

Mr Merritt said the single greatest feedback the EPA received from its recent compliance and enforcement review was frustration at the overlap between government departments hindering the resolution of an issue.

“The first step is to assert our jurisdiction,” he said.

Head of the recently released compliance and enforcement review, Stan Krpan, also found many members of the community who participated in consultations throughout the year to harbor similar frustrations.

He told Dangerous Ground he was very well educated by members of the public who had been disappointed with their EPA for, in some cases, thirty years.

Mr Krpan suggested the EPA inform the public about which issues it was responsible for, when it would be able to act, and how they could expect it would respond in his report.

DOES THE WATCHDOG HAVE SELECTIVE VISION?

Mr Watson also filed several letters with Ombudsman Victoria regarding the EPA’s responsibility to protect Victorians from environmental pollution, including noise pollution.

However, he found its response to be “appalling”.

“I’ve come to the conclusion with the Ombudsman that they’re not interested in the person out there, they’re only interested in complaints from industries or politicians or bureaucrats, because the response I got was so bad,” Mr Watson said.

“It was just so riddled with errors that I wrote back and said, your response is so full of errors it’s not funny and I’m pretty disappointed that you’ve made them,” he said.

Consequent correspondence from General Counsel Ian Killey of the Victorian Ombudsman stated that ‘the issues of which you complain are, in so far as can be ascertained, policy issues and the appropriate place to pursue those concerns is with the relevant Minister or with your local member of State Parliament.’

“It’s even worse. If that’s not someone who’s said I don’t want to deal with this, go away, leave me alone…” Mr Watson said.

“He’s completely ignored everything, he comments on nothing. He says, it’s not for us to solve your problem,” he said.

MAKING MORE NOISE

The increased potential for physiological and psychological health deterioration as a result of prolonged excessive noise exposure is well documented by the World Health Organisation.

These range from cardiovascular disease to increased neurosis and irritability.

“A lot of people sell up and move on. And others, they just give up,” Mr Watson said of residents living near major roads.

He has no intention of doing so.

Mr Watson is liaising with similarly affected members of the community to raise awareness for their plight.

Ms Batagol indicated to Mr Watson in their correspondence last year that, ‘EPA is very aware of the impact that road traffic noise has on the Victorian community.’

‘A Community Noise Survey published by EPA in 2007 indicated that 20% of Victorians were moderately or extremely annoyed by road traffic noise,’ Ms Batagol wrote.

“It’s incredible that they’ve been able to defend not having a policy for so many years,” Mr Watson said.

Note: This piece was published on Monash Universitys Spectrum website on 18 May 2011. It also featured prominently on the websites home page:

Em O’Loughlin Confesses, “I dropped nine dress sizes!”

Verdict: 7.5/10  

EM O’Loughlin might not get the laughs she’s hoping for from Melbourne’s conservative, considerate audiences.

Not because she isn’t funny: she is.

Nor is she offensive, if you can handle a mild dose of swearing in your stand-up.

Our comedy festival audiences can handle jokes about bogans, fatties and relationships gone wrong.

But they’re a little cautious about laughing too loudly when the presenter is the ‘elephant’ in the room.

Or, in this case, was.

Em O’Loughlin Confesses, “I dropped nine dress sizes!” is an apt title for the show.

She encourages the audience to laugh with her at herself and her history as she shares her story on how she ballooned from the equivalent to 48 Krispy Kreme donuts at birth, (roughly two kilograms, or six pounds), to a heavy duty fridge.

“With an ice-machine installed,” she adds.

“And a frozen turkey inside it.”

This can be a little confronting. Our polite upbringing doesn’t prepare us to laugh at a stranger who shares something so personal, and assumedly painful, with us as brazenly as Em does.

She doesn’t seem fragile. After all, it was she who decided to make her struggle the subject of a show on the comedy circuit; she wants us to laugh while we learn what not to do.

If the motto of Em’s childhood is to be seen, not heard- something she achieved only too well through binge eating, comfort eating and attention seeking by eating, she says- the moral of her performance is to watch out for ourselves.

People with eating issues often suffer from low self-esteem, Em reminds her audience.

However, she does not accept this as an excuse.

Wallowing in her issues almost cost Em her life.

Lonely and at her lowest, she accepted a date with a man she suspected of being a serial killer.

Naturally, she discovered this while on the date.

Scared shitless, she decided she could do better. Not only with men, but with her life.

She visited a doctor.

They told her she had two months to live.

I suspect Em can tell this story today because of how far she has come since then.

You’d never expect the outspoken, energetic blonde had been through such an ordeal.

I’ll be damned if she can’t fit into a size 12- 14 at the moment, (depending on which store she’s shopping in, of course).

She seems happy and healthy. It may have taken her just under 40 years to trump her insecurities, but she seems to have done it splendidly.

And so, I’m not sure how much you will enjoy this show as a comedy. To be sure, it’s funny. You might feel a little uncomfortable chuckling too hard at it, though. Sit down the back, if that’s the case.

Because Em’s story is well worth hearing.

(Source: newshit.com.au)

I Googled ‘Dangerous Ground’ today…

When a friend emailed me to let me know I’d been mentioned in a Monash Arts Faculty News post for my work on Dangerous Ground, I decided to Google the site. I don’t know why I’ve never done it before. Possibly because I was so overwhelmed and excited about The Age publishing a few of our pieces from the site at the time. 

So, in addition to our articles on Dangerous Ground and the ones in The Age, here’s what I found:

• The Border Mail ran the same story as The Age, on the same day;
• The Brisbane Times also ran a variation of it;
• It appeared on the MyZoo website, sourced from The Age, under State News
• Bill Birnbauer wrote about new media with reference to Dangerous Ground for the Melbourne Press Club, and Monash’s News and Events page.
• It was mentioned in the Media Diary blog on 21 February 2011, and by Coakey, Crikey’s health blog, on 4 March 2011. 

Where would we be without Google?

Three Short Comedies

Verdict: Silent films have never sounded so good: 9/10

Blue Grassy Knoll Interview by erdag1

The most affordable concession ticket to Three Short Comedies is $33. There, I said it.

You’d be mad not to go, though. You’ll kick yourself if you miss it. It closes tonight, and I don’t know when it will be back. It has conquored festivals of all descriptions- including Edinburgh- worldwide, traipsed through five continents, and was loved in each of them.

Seriously. Do not miss this.

It’s not every day you get the opportunity to experience a world premiere, from a world-class act, in one of the greatest performing spaces in the world.

The premiere I speak of is the filmscore to Buster Keaton’s The Playhouse. Don’t worry, Buster’s not a rapper, as his name would suggest. If- like me- you’ve never heard of him, fear not; I’ll talk you through this in a tick.

The world-class act is one you’ve probably never heard of either- the Blue Grassy Knoll. This is because they specialise in what they’re doing in this performance; providing a live filmscore to silent movies.

And, believe it or not, the Melbourne Recital Centre- the building on Sturt Street which looks like a chunk of alien honeycomb- has better acoustics than the Sydney Opera House: the best in the southern hemisphere, I’m told. 

So, a rackety wooden house is stuck on the train tracks. The couple squabbles as they desperately try to save it from a train as it hurdles towards it.

The music reaches a crescendo as the husband realizes there’s no hope for his home, and drags his wife away from it at the very last moment as she tries to push it to safety.

The train passes them by. The house is on the left track; the train on the right. 

The audience roars with laughter. There we’d been, worrying about this couple- who we’ve seen marry against all odds, move onto a big block of land and construct a ‘portable’, boxish home- and the train wasn’t even on the same track. How clever!

We take a sigh of relief. But, alas, too soon!

A train comes from the opposite side, disintegrating the house in a spectacular ball of splinters.

Laughter erupts again. We were fooled!

Such is the magic of directing and acting extraordinaire from the silent movie era, Buster Keaton’s, work. His characters find themselves in outlandish situations, like living in a homemade boat at sea. They then make ingenious errors. For instance, we’d naturally turn to nailing a hole in a wall to hang a portrait at home. We wouldn’t be so eager if we were in the hull of said boat because we’d assume it would spring a leak- which it does.

Buster’s resolutions are what really get you, though. To plug the leak, his character takes a rubbery, overcooked steak- which he and his young sons had hidden in their hats at dinner time, to save offending his wife- and nails that to the wall, too.

Miraculously, the leak is plugged- if only for a short period of time.

However, the true genius of this show isn’t Buster, and it takes a top act to outclass him. It’s the five man band, Blue Grassy Knoll.

I’d happily pay $45 just to hear them perform. Each is classically trained and plays a minimum of three instruments- all in the one performance, sometimes simultaneously- better than most could ever hope to play one in my lifetime.

The gents have been playing together for about fifteen years.

And they are faultless. They specialise in this unique brand of entertainment, composing each of these completely original musical accompaniments themselves.

The Melbourne-based band was delighted to premiere their latest, the accompaniment to The Playhouse, on home turf.

And as tempting as it is to fixate on Buster’s witticisms all night, I encourage you to watch them at least once throughout the performance.

My mouth was unashamedly agape as I watched them multitask, smiling serenely and bopping away to their own beats.

They talk us through the significance of each of the three of Buster’s works before they play them- One Week, The Playhouse and The Boat respectively.

Then they glide humbly into the background- ironically, front and centre on stage- as Buster’s films have the audience jeering at the ‘bad guys’, cheering for the ‘good guys’, and practicing our polite clap for the band.

I could rant on about the brilliance of this show for some time. It won’t do it justice. You have to be there to appreciate this. 

If your brand of humor is clever and quirky, you’ll be enthralled by this delectable dose of genius.

(Source: newshit.com.au)

Eric’s Tales of the Sea

Photo: Eric the Submariner, sourced from ericdotcom.co.uk

Rating: Well worth surfacing from the chilly Melbourne weather to see: 7.5/10

I’m not sure a ‘comedy’ is the right word to describe Eric’s Tales of the Sea.

Ex- submariner Eric isn’t sure his show is aptly named either.

Read More

(Source: newshit.com.au)

Fear and Laughing/ Get all the Bitches

The guy on the phone is telling his friend about the shows he just saw.

‘Really good value- it was free,’ he says.

‘And I got handed a knife!’

Let me explain.

Sidled alongside the enviously expensive, elegant shopfronts lining Collins Street is a bar called Collins Quarter. 

And inside this upper-class watering hole- up the obscure, black staircase at the very, very end of Collins Quarter, beyond even the outside smoking area- is a much more intimate bar by the name of Ra. 

When I say imtimate, I mean you’ll be lucky to comfortably seat 40 people in it, even if some sit on cushions or collapsible chairs once all the plush, grey couches are occupied. 

The performers can certainly see whether or not their audience is appreciative of their efforts. And we, in turn, can see their every move. 

Which is why I suspect the guy I overheard leaving the bar after the night’s frivolities finished was surprised by the knife.

It emerged during the first performance- Micah D Higbed’s Fear and Laughing. And for good reason, rest assured. 

Higbed’s stand-up show explores how fear is being harnessed by those in power- from organised religions to the Herald Sun- to oppress society. 

A recent amendment to Victoria Police’s power spurned the 55-minute spat, Higbed told audiences at his second show for the season.

The police can search members of the public for weapons at any time and place, at the officer’s discression, according to Higbed. 

Obviously, he said, this is a violation of human rights- one which the amendment acknowledges in print directly after the new power is stipulated.

However, Higbed said, the right continues to exist nonethless. 

What peeves him most about this is that society’s fear of the incidence of armed incidents is disproporionate to the amount of stabbings and armed assaults occuring in our state; according to Victoria Police’s own statistics, it has actually fallen over the past ten years, rather than increased.

‘How can this be, if our police officers are now able to infringe our human rights as a consequence?’ he ponders.

And, subsequently, he jokes that he carries a knife with him at all times in protest. Though a legitimate knife- suspiciously similar to those provided by the venue to patrons to assist with the consumption of food products in the dining area downstairs- was brandished at the time and handed to the guy I overheard to verify its authenticity, it can be safely said Higbed is kidding when he says he carries one routinely.

While Higbed’s nervous energy seemed slew his rhythm at the onset, the more he channeled it into his frustration with those in power, the more acute the performance became. 

It was not until a drink or two later (for clarity’s sake) that it dawned one me that, had it been anyone but the cheeky, outgoing and likeable Micah D Higbed delivering that performance, it would have been quite dark. 

It might have been the mischevous twinkle in his baby blues, or the way he bounced about stage (told you the venue is intimate!), but Fear and Laughing comes across so cleverly and cheerfully at face value that it’s not until you stop chortling that you realize just how frightning Higbed’s insight is; fear is holding us back, and we may well be too fearful to change it. 

The resolution, he says- happily, Higbed suggests as many solutions as he does issues- is for people to come see his show and at least talk the current state of the nation through. 

And, if we would be so kind, to donate a dollar or two before leaving.

Not that there’s any need to flee, considering Luke and Cambo’s Get all the Bitches is up next. 

Listening to these two gangly, red headed Tasmanians bicker is reminiscent of Hamish and Andy’s radio style. Who has had more girlfriends- actually, has Luke had one at all, Cambo goads? Is the ultimate solution to his hopelessness to splice his genetics with Cambo’s, ultimately making him more confident (and thus, more attractive and a better comedian)?

To be completely honest, I lost the plot very shortly after the show began- quite literally. The storyline is difficult to follow. Sketches flit by so fast, I can’t keep track. First FaceLukeBook- don’t like it, Luke it!- then an all-knowing robot without an off switch, designed to steer Luke back to comedic success whenever he strays. At some point evolution personified- naturally, donning a blonde mullet, a longneck bottle of VB and sporting a green flannel shirt atop distressed denim jeans- justifies why men experience everything from excessive perspiration in the presence of a female they’re interested in to balding. 

This is all set to the tune of Cambo’s ‘medical condition’, which finds him sprouting oft-cringeworthy tracks triggered by his emotional state. The Ghost Busters theme features prominently throughout the 50-minute show. Hell yes.

This show is also free, and the perfect, lighthearted counterpart to a show like Fear and Laughing. Luke and Cambo will have you leave the venue chuckling. Especially if you’re a young male, as both performances seem to resound exceptionally well with this demographic.

A night out at the comedy festival, supporting some great young Australian talent for the price of your transportation and thirst/hunger satiation costs, and your generosity?

How could you refuse?

(Source: newshit.com.au)