State to end automatic renewal of camping, caravan leases

In a risky election-year move, state Environment Minister Gavin Jennings said it was wrong for families to claim ''ownership'' of public land at popular holiday destinations and they were ''freezing out'' others equally entitled to use it.

Speaking in Torquay, Mr Jennings said that for decades the regulations for Crown land caravan parks had allowed people who had been granted a 12-month site lease ''to simply roll over the lease each year without it being offered to anyone else''.

He said many Victorians felt they had ''a private plot on the coast'' and that although some would feel ''disenfranchised'', this must cease.

''Some people have had exclusive access to the same site for many years, freezing out others who are equally entitled to use that public site,'' he said.

Over the next two years, a regime will be introduced in which a minimum of 10 per cent of all types of permits within a caravan park must be made available to new site holders.

Committees of management of each park would determine how the 10 per cent turnover would be managed; for example, through a ballot.

He said 100,000 people camped each year at both Torquay and Lorne. ''And while we recognise what that has meant for the joy that has given hundreds of thousands of people … the flipside to that is that there are a lot of people who can't get in.''

At 28 parks along the coast, there was an average 2.5-year waiting list for 12-month permits. ''Every year, many, many families are turned away.''

Mr Jennings said the move ''may be unpopular with a few people who feel their circumstances are different to what they've got used to, but ultimately it's clear, it's equitable and the vast majority of people will support it''.

In the negative camp yesterday was a bewildered Dennis O'Connor, 56, of Birchip, who has been camping at Portarlington every January for 50 years.

''My first thought was that all that 50 years of planning and getting your family together and setting it up for my kids and my grandkids, it's all gone in one hit,'' he said.

He kept paying the annual permit on his own site even when it soared from $1852 a year in 2000 to $5200 this year.

''I want to keep it for my kids. Just sitting out the front of the van and having a beer and watching the grandkids play. You feel like you've done something special.''

In the 1960s, every January after harvest in Birchip, his father, machinery dealer John ''JJ'' O'Connor, would make the day-long journey to holiday at Portarlington - squashed with his wife Pauline and seven kids and luggage into their battered Holden wagon.

Once at the beach, it was paradise for four weeks. Kids played chasey, kicked the footy or went to the carnival; mum and dad opened beers and renewed friendships from previous years.

The seven O'Connor kids are now in their 40s and 50s and have jobs and mortgages. Yet they come from all over the state every January to Portarlington, open their seven vans and annexes side-by-side near the boat ramp, go fishing and chat while the kids and grandkids run wild. ''We've created an affinity with the place and we've carried it on,'' Mr O'Connor said. ''I feel disappointed in the decision that affects people's way of life that have committed to the area for so long.

''I'd say to [Mr Jennings], 'Mate, if you had a site down here and had a family set-up like I've got, you wouldn't be making this decision'.''

He feels bureaucracy would be content for the family to go.

''If he's [Mr Jennings is] that concerned about people not having access to caravan parks, tell him to build some more parks.''