By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
INVESTOR greed was the biggest factor in the decline of Doveton’s manufacturing sector, according to a past councillor.
Former Casey councillor Brian Oates said he agreed with Labor speechwriter Dennis Glover’s opinions expressed in the News last week that Doveton has not fully recovered from the downfall of its hard-working and highly unionised industrial belt, close to the Prince Mark Hotel, from the mid-’80s onwards.
But Mr Oates said Doveton’s manufacturing decline was a result of investors becoming too greedy and looking elsewhere, more than an “obsession with efficiency” as contended by Mr Glover.
“I don’t know about the efficiency, it was more the greed of investors,” Mr Oates said.
“There’s a lot of parallels between Morwell and Doveton.
“Doveton’s three big factories started to wind down and nothing was done, the only reason was because it was cheaper to get things done in other places.
“Everybody wanted to make profits out of new ventures and no one cared about what happened to people at the end of the day.”
This is a sentiment shared by both men who said the people of Doveton were ultimately the ones who suffered the brunt of the manufacturing decline.
Mr Oates, a councillor from 1997 to 2005, said while Doveton was is in a slightly better position now economically and aesthetically than it was in the late-’90s, the suburb lacked a strong heartbeat.
“It’s not as bad as it was in 1997, the creek bed there running through the park was bulrushes and abandoned trolleys and lot of people were in dire straits” he said.
“But there were still a lot of the older, original residents and they were prepared to stand up and fight for the area.
“Most of the people now haven’t been there that long, and they don’t intend to stay there, they’ll move on.
“For a lot of migrants, Doveton is the first place they can afford to get to and they want to move on, they want to do better.
“It’s great they want to better but they need to take some interest in where they’re living and make the most of where they are.”
Mr Oates echoed Mr Glover’s call for gutsy political leaders who were passionate about Doveton to champion its cause.
“People need to decide if they’re going to champion some causes or your wasting time, and Doveton is a good cause to champion,” he said.
“I always thought people in Doveton had a great sense of community and we might need a program to get that back.
“There needs to be some sort of champion and a scheme to involve local people.”
