This piece was submitted by a local woman who signed the petition to remove the Rolf Harris mural from the Lighthouse Theatre in Warrnambool. I have kept her name anonymous, but want to thank her for her courage.

Last month I had a dream about Donald Trump. In this dream we were deep in conversation at a crowded function and I was trying to impress him with my intelligence. Mid-conversation, however, he leant across and grabbed me on the breast.

In shock, I pulled away and started shouting ‘he grabbed my breast, he grabbed my breast’. Expecting the room to react with outrage, my calls were instead met with deathly silence, before everyone returned to what they were doing.

Business as usual.

I burst into tears and was led outside by my best friend and confidante where, with such weary sadness, I cried ‘I’m just so tired of fighting.’

This dream encapsulated a lot for me. It summed up my lifelong battle with sexual assault and abuse. From fighting off men at the pub, to keeping secrets hidden for 15 years. From being told ‘you shouldn’t have let him do that to you’, to my fight with PTSD, depression and anxiety. From the heartbreaking story of a friend who held her secret for another 20 years after being told she was ‘making it up’, to the deafening silence that followed after I screamed at a man at a crowded market for following me and relentlessly pinching my bum.

Two things had just happened around the time of my Trump dream. The #metoo campaign had gathered steam, and while I was interested and a little excited, I was largely cynical and reluctant to take part.

I wasn’t convinced that putting myself out there and making myself vulnerable was going to change anything. After all, we have known for a long time now that one third of all girls will be sexually assaulted by the time they are eighteen, but what steps have we made to address this? What difference would this campaign make? And why should abused women have to lead the charge?

Around the same time, my eight year-old daughter was sexually assaulted. An older man on the street reached out and grabbed her on the vagina, right in front of me. He seemed to see her as some kind of sexual delight, and not as our gorgeous, creative and intelligent kid who embraced life with all her kind heart.

My heart broke for my daughter that day, and I still don’t know if it will ever fully heal. While I knew the statistics, I still believed I held a powerful weapon with my past experience and knowledge of sexual assault. I wanted so much to believe that my passion for protecting her from what I had to endure would be enough to get her through. If I educated her well, if I gave it to her straight and didn’t hush it up or try to gloss over it, she would get through life unscathed.

It turns out I couldn’t even get her to double figures.

The harsh reality of the pervasiveness of sexual assault this time brought me to my knees. In quiet moments to myself I sobbed so hard I didn’t think I would ever stop. The injustice of growing up a female suddenly became very real, and very personal.

It was my response to the incident that plagued me afterwards. Because how did I respond? With silence.

I walked her calmly away and did not confront this man for fear of making it worse for my daughter. And in the days to come it dawned on me that this is what we have done as women. We have stayed silent, to keep the peace, for the families sake, for the community’s sake, to make it in a man’s world.

And in turn, silence has been internalised as some totem of virtue or stoicism in women. The more silent a woman in her pain, the stronger she is. Instead of voicing our outrage, we have used all our collective energy to heal the victims, to sit with them through their confusion, sadness and pain.

But while we have stayed silent, we have left a gaping hole in the ability to challenge men for their behaviour, or to challenge them to be leaders in the change we so desperately need.

Eventually it was a counsellor who helped me to see the tiny speck of positive in our experience. Carrying all the guilt in the world on my shoulders, she allowed me to see that the response we gave our daughter after her sexual assault could be vital in her recovery.

Immediately after it happened I took her to a safe place, gave her a big cuddle and told her that it was nothing about her, or her behaviour, that made him do that. I told her that it was his sick behaviour that was the problem, and that unfortunately stuff like that just happens sometimes, but that she will be ok.

I also told her that we were here for her any time she needed us. The psychologist assured me that our past history of openly communicating with our daughter since she was born, like talking about the hard stuff when it came up, and never letting silence linger, would ensure she knew she could approach us at any time.

Her words also reinforced what I had learnt from the fabulous Professor Caroline Taylor, who has spent years researching and working with children who had been through the court system for sexual abuse and assault.

While only a tiny three percent of cases ever make it to conviction, she found that the process, regardless of the outcome, could be a cathartic one for young people as long as they felt supported and that their story was heard by someone, be it a police officer, lawyer, or family member.

Indeed, the power of hearing a person’s story and sharing their pain can never be underestimated. As a telephone counsellor, I cannot count the times people have said they just need someone to hear their pain, not solve their problems.

So while we chip away at a society that has allowed men too much privilege for too long, and while many of us will be faced with the cold hard fact that we cannot always protect our children no matter how hard we try, perhaps we can take a little comfort in knowing that responding to an abused child with listening, support and unconditional love can be hugely powerful, even if it is at the wrong and sad end of the sexual assault spectrum.

Despite our incredibly painful experience, I am still increasingly hopeful for the future. I do feel a change in the air.

Since the #me too campaign, another sexual predator in Don Burke has been outed, and now allegations against Donald Trump are finally being taken seriously.

I have hope that our daughters will live and flourish in a time where a sexual predator who thinks that ‘grabbing women on the pussy’ is part and parcel of money and fame is not elected by men and women as the leader of the most powerful country on earth.

We need to keep reinforcing to women and girls that speaking up and speaking out is brave, and that silent stoicism, while once a coping technique, is no longer necessary.

And we need to meet this bravery with corresponding support and outrage. I have hope that if ever my daughter was to dream about being outraged by her sexual assault, the whole function room would stand up and shout ‘ME TOO’.

A petition has been launched asking the W’bool City Council to advertise the position of its CEO for the first time in 11 years*.

As far as I know, it is the first time such a petition has been launched in Warrnambool and it comes from a position of pure frustration.

While some might see it as a direct attack on the sitting CEO Bruce Anson, I see it as a predictable response to the secrecy that surrounds one of the most important and well-paid civic jobs in our city.

As I wrote recently, the WCC last month voted in secret to award Mr Anson a pay rise that increased his salary package to around the equivalent of $6000 a week.

This includes super and a car and doesn’t include tax, but even if we halved that package to $3000 a week, it is still an eye-watering amount to most of us.

Maybe, as I have said before, Mr Anson deserves every dollar that he earns.

And maybe, after 11 years in the job, he is still the best person to lead our city into the future. (The current contract expires next January).

But the bottom line is that Mr Anson works for us – the people of Warrnambool – and we deserve to know far more about the CEO position and his performance than we do now.

All we have been asking for is greater transparency: nothing more, nothing less.

And yet the WCC continues to act as if we have no right – us pesky journalists and annoying ratepayers – to even ask.

The petition now asks the question in a way that can’t be ignored.

It will be revealing to see how the new councillors respond.

* The petition can be signed at 150 Liebig St (next to Kathmandu) from 11am – 2pm Mon-Sat, and is also located in several local business. It is being organised by David Thompson, partner of former WCC election candidate Christine Thompson.

You don’t know it, but the Warrnambool City Council voted to give its CEO, Bruce Anson, a pay rise last week and he now earns a salary package of somewhere between $309,999 and $319,000.

I can’t tell you exactly how much the pay rise is, because the WCC refuses to acknowledge that it even happened.

This is because, as happens in most local councils, it is all negotiated behind closed doors, voted on behind closed doors and the results kept confidential. And because it is confidential, our elected councillors can’t talk about it.

But I can tell you that since Bruce Anson became CEO in 2007, his salary package has increased by 50%, or around $100,000.

This is big money when you live in a place like Warrnambool.

It is the equivalent of around $6000 a week.

$6000 a week…in Warrnambool.

When you think about it, about 300 households in Warrnambool are paying their annual rates just to cover the CEO’s salary package.

The Premier, Daniel Andrews, is paid around $377,000.

In the scheme of things, our CEO is actually not that far behind the Premier.

Maybe our CEO deserves every penny of that package, but who would know? We aren’t allowed to ask how his job skills are measured because that, too, is confidential.

Again, this is how most local councils operate – apart from a few who opt for transparency, like Melbourne City Council.

And, just for the record, Fun4Kids, which was supposed to end two years ago when WCC staff warned it was bleeding money and would continue to do so, has cost us more than $7 million to keep afloat.

In just the past two years – when it should have been cut – it soaked up around another $1 million.

The WCC knew this festival was dead in the water, and finally dropped the axe this month.

But where was the succession plan? What did it think could happen in its place?

Apparently not only are we partly at fault for the festival’s failure because not enough locals attended, we now have to come up with ideas for its replacement.

$7 million….and $6000 a week.

Just some figures for you to ponder as we pay more for parking and more in parking fines and more to get a dog out of the pound and…

[Mr Anson’s contract is due to expire in January 2019. In the 10 years of his tenure, the position has never been advertised.]

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

One of the many things that struck me while working through the plan to allow commercial racehorse training on our wild beaches is that all three of our local MPs – Dan Tehan, James Purcell and Roma Britnell – have strong ties to horse racing.

Federal MP Dan Tehan, although his office was oddly reluctant to make this clear, shares a very successful racehorse with the CEO of the Warrnambool Racing Club, Nick Rule, among others.

Independent MP James Purcell has an interest in numerous racehorses and his son is a professional trainer.

State Liberal MP Roma Britnell, who as far as I know doesn’t own a racehorse, has a horse race named in her honour and holds a Warrnambool Racing Club membership.

Which of our local MPs, then, will argue that our beaches should not be used for racehorse training on an industrial scale?

Which of them will lobby to instead increase protection of the Belfast Coastal Reserve?

None of them.

Instead, all three of our local MPs have started from the point that we need to reach a “compromise”, a “balance”, a “give-and-take” on having thoroughbred racehorses pounding along sections of beach between Killarney and Warrnambool and up and down the dunes at Levy’s Point.

Not one of them has said that large numbers of racehorses should not be in a coastal reserve in the first place.

At least Roma Britnell, in an email to me via her media advisor Jarrod Woolley, said she had “a number of concerns” about the draft management plan for the reserve.

When I asked what those concerns actually were, however, there was no more information forthcoming.

This is why documents released to the Belfast Coastal Reserve Action Group under Freedom of Information make for such a revealing – and depressing – read.

They spell out that commercial, large-scale racehorse training in the Belfast Coastal Reserve is virtually a fait accompli.

The correspondence between the various bodies involved in the draft plan never questions why racehorse training should be allowed, but how it will be managed.

At first I felt like giving up and not even bothering to write a submission. What was the point, the cards were already stacked, right?

But then it occurred to me that this is the very reason why other voices need to be heard, or those with the most power, the most access, and the most influence will simply roll right over the top with impunity.

We elect people to represent our views because we don’t have the time to wade through reports, but this time, I am sorry to say, those of us who want to see this reserve preserved are on our own.

So please make the effort, either by filling out the online survey or emailing a submission, via this link: www.engage.vic.gov.au/belfast 

By Carol Altmann

Why horses and dogs don’t belong in the conservation and conservation/recreation zones that will stretch from Killarney Beach to Warrnambool:

1. At least 54 species of “conservation significance’ live there, including five listed as critically endangered, particularly the Orange Bellied Parrot, 10 listed as endangered, 20 as vulnerable, and 16 listed as threatened. (draft report p86-87)

2. There WILL be a negative impact on these species. Not “perhaps” or “maybe”: there WILL be a negative impact that reduces their chances of thriving or even surviving. (p29, p33, p34-35)

3. The traditional owners of this country have made it very clear that they do not support racehorse training in the reserve. (p22, p64)

4. Racehorse training at Levy’s Beach WILL cause damage to Aboriginal Cultural Heritage in this area and any artefacts will have to be removed and stored before it begins*. (p64)

5. Horse training WILL cause erosion**. Not perhaps or maybe: it WILL.

6. Every coastal plan for this area in the past 40 years has emphasised the need for MORE protection, not less. This includes the W’Bool City Council’s own Warrnambool Coastal Management Plan, signed off just four years ago.

7. It ignores the Land Conservation Council framework set down for this area in 1978, knowing it would come under increased pressures. As a result of the LCC, the majority of public land in the area was officially set aside in 1979 as a conservation reserve. The LCC emphasises low-impact recreation, conservation and protection. (p83)

8. There are no numbers on exactly how many racehorses would use the most sensitive areas of Levy’s Point, Golfies and Rutledge’s Cutting. (p63-64)

9. Monitoring this area is already difficult because of its isolation.
The area already suffers erosion and damage caused by illegal activities. (p61)
How will the WCC, Vic Police and Parks Vic have the time and resources to monitor it in the future?

10. The bottom line? Commercial racehorse training is not recreation and it is not conservation. This is not anti-horseracing, it is just fact.

Please have your say on the draft management plan for Belfast Coastal Reserve, by March 16, here: www.engage.vic.gov.au/belfast

* The full extent of Indigenous artefacts and cultural sites in this area is not known due to either out-dated or insufficient data. The plan says more studies need to be done.

** There also needs to be more studies into the full impact of horses on beaches, but two referred to in the draft report (p80-81) confirm that horses cause erosion. Here is part of the summary from a 2001 study of horse riding in D’Entrecasteaux National Park, WA:

“Horse riding altered plant species composition, increased the area of bare ground and decreased height and cover of vegetation. Significant impacts occurred after only low levels of horse use. The findings indicate the need for a database on horse riding impact in Australia so that, where horse riding is allowed, impacts can be properly assessed and effectively managed.”

http://www.publish.csiro.au/pc/PC020256