Latest news with #Kevin Bell
Yahoo
12-08-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Former national water sports centre to be auctioned off
A former national water sports centre on Cumbrae is to be auctioned off. The facility has been closed since September 2020 and will now go under the hammer later this month with an asking price of £275,000. Plans to transform the building into a luxury lodge with glamping pods was approved earlier this year. However governing body Sportscotland, which owns the site, said it had not received any formal offers. The auction is being organised by Shepherd Chartered Surveyors in Ayr. More stories from Glasgow & West Scotland More stories from Scotland Kevin Bell, partner at the company, said: "This is a unique opportunity to acquire a purpose-built facility with potential for conversion or redevelopment and we anticipate much interest in this lot." While in use the centre provided coaching in a range of water sports, across all levels, including dinghy sailing, cruising, windsurfing and sea kayaking. It hosted summer camps for children and teenagers each year, having been opened in 1976. Attendees over the years included double Olympic gold medal winner Shirley Robertson OBE, who often praised it for helping her sailing career. The facility comprises a principal building together with four residential chalets, workshops/stores and yardage. There is undeveloped land to the west, while the main building includes offices, a kitchen, gym, a sauna and classrooms. In March 2020 Sportscotland announced plans to close the centre following that summer's programme of activities, following a review of the facility. The emergence of Covid-19 then forced the summer plans to be scrapped, and the decision to close it was then confirmed in September 2020. Some of the courses for children offered there were then moved to Largs on the mainland. In March, North Ayrshire Council gave planning consent for 34 glamping pods, the creation of a kiosk and campervan parking. Mr Bell said interested parties should make their own planning inquiries with North Ayrshire Council. The auction will be held online on 21 August at 14:30.
ABC News
31-07-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Former Yoorrook commissioner joins in calls for Victorian government to deliver on promise
A former Yoorrook justice commissioner and Victorian Aboriginal community leaders are urging the state government to make good on the "genuine promise" it made by setting up Australia's first Aboriginal-led truth-telling inquiry. Last month, Yoorrook handed down a final 100 recommendations after its four-year, $56 million investigation examining Victoria's colonial history. Former Yoorrook commissioner Kevin Bell was one of two non-Indigenous commissioners who served on the inquiry, under the leadership of Victorian traditional owners, including commission chair and Wergaia/Wamba Wamba elder, 82-year-old Aunty Eleanor Bourke. Mr Bell pushed the government to take bold action on the inquiry's ambitious recommendations, which include a call for redress for historic crimes. "It's urgent, it's urgent, beyond words," he said. Mr Bell served on the inquiry for more than two years of its historic four-year term, the longest of any Victorian-run royal commission. He left the inquiry in October 2023, citing a decision in April that year to extend the commission for another year. Mr Bell is the first former Yoorrook commissioner to speak to the media after the release of the inquiry's final reports, which include an official public record of Victoria's history as told to Yoorrook, and a five-volume report examining ongoing injustices, including in health, housing, and education. His call to action is echoed by Victorian Aboriginal community members, including Gunditjmara elder Aunty Jill Gallagher, who served as Victoria's treaty advancement commissioner. "What's happening in Victoria is hope … hope that our stories will be told and will be heard," Ms Gallagher said. "My mum grew up without hope, and I don't know many people realise how devastating that is, to grow up without hope. "It hurts." Yoorrook was established by the Victorian Labor government in 2021, in response to a call from the First Peoples' Assembly for a truth-telling inquiry to run alongside the state's Treaty process, which has been in motion for nearly a decade. Established in 2019, the assembly is a democratically elected, Aboriginal representative body, which was set up to design the state's treaty process and is currently negotiating Victoria's first statewide treaty. Yoorrook's scope was nation-leading, with former commissioner Mr Bell describing its terms of reference as "the broadest of any royal commission". "It said … we as the government in good faith … invite you to literally go into the fact of colonisation then and tell us what it means now. "And not only that, give recommendations for how injustice [from] that situation can be corrected for the past and for the future," he said. "Now, that's a big promise… it was a genuine promise, it was a promise made in good faith. The commission heard evidence from more than 2,000 people, including 1,500 First Peoples, and held 67 days of public hearings. The government and the state opposition are yet to respond to Yoorrook's final reports in detail. There is no statutory timeframe for the government to respond. Yoorrook's final reports land in a political climate around Aboriginal affairs that has changed since it was set up in 2021. That leaves advocates nervous about its future. "I'm very scared that [Yoorrook's reports] will sit on the shelf," Aunty Jill said. "We have an [Victorian] election coming up next year … Aboriginal people and the issues that surround us should not be used as a political football, but unfortunately it does, and the referendum was a classic example of that." After the failure of the Voice referendum in 2023, federal Labor's national commitment to truth-telling has been dropped, while conservative government victories in the Northern Territory and Queensland saw longstanding treaty processes and Queensland's fledgling truth commission disbanded. In 2023, Yoorrook delivered an interim report on child protection in criminal justice matters. It received a lukewarm response from the government, which fully supports just six of the 46 recommendations from that report. For years, Victoria's Treaty process enjoyed bipartisan support, but in early 2024, the state Liberal opposition withdrew its support for the process, citing concerns over cultural heritage. While Yoorrook's plan and significant recommendations have been welcomed by Aboriginal leaders in Victoria and First Nations advocates around the country, elements like the call for redress "for genocide, crimes against humanity and denial of freedoms" have also attracted critics in the wake of the report's release. An editorial in The Australian argued the report was an 'overstep', concluding: "history cannot be undone". "Jacinta Allan handed Indigenous activists a blank check and a pen, and now they've come to collect," Sky News host James Macpherson said last month. Other media reports raised concerns about an acknowledged, but unexplained, disagreement between truth-telling commissioners. The Yoorrook Truth be Told report, which documents a history of colonisation as told to Yoorrook, notes that three out of five commissioners did not approve of "the inclusion of key findings" in that report. None of the final five Yoorrook commissioners have responded to the ABC's requests for clarification on that matter. While Mr Bell was not involved in writing the final reports, he said public information showed all five commissioners agreed with all recommendations and findings. "The recommendations are unanimous, the fact findings are unanimous, but there was what I might call a technical disagreement about where the fact finding should be in terms of the several reports that were published." While there's no dollar figure on the inquiry's redress plan, it is a politically difficult ask as Victoria faces record levels of debt and a $21 million a day interest bill. Former commissioner Bell agreed the money involved would be substantial, and therefore it was "perfectly reasonable" to ask questions about it. But he stressed that it was the government that tasked Yoorrook to look at redress, which was an explicit part of the inquiry's terms of reference. "Redress is a quite simple proposition … that we go by in society," he said. "If a wrong's been done, then it needs to be corrected in an appropriate way, in a way that is proportionate to the wrong that's been done," he said. "The redress could be compensation, but it need not only be that. "It could be a reorganisation of the way things are done in order to ensure that, for example, racism ends, or in order to ensure that, for example, homelessness, which is very high within Aboriginal communities, ends," he said, adding the cost of inaction was also significant. "I'd … ask you to consider what would happen if we didn't address these things," he said. During her evidence to Yoorrook last April, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan was asked by counsel assisting Tony McAvoy if her government had "a moral and legal" duty to ensure "there is some restitution made for the terrible offences against First Peoples in this place". "Yes, yes. I am deeply aware of that," she said. "The murder, the massacres … the land taken away …It's not nearly enough to know this history, we do need to learn from it and we need to act on it too," Ms Allan told the inquiry. Aunty Jill Gallagher said the ask for redress needed to be understood in the context of the history of colonisation in Victoria and Yoorrook's efforts to document the state's history."When you understand… some of the government policies back then that prevented Aboriginal people from wealth creation," she said. Her mother, who is now in her late 90s, grew up in a country where she could not vote or own land, she said. Aunty Jill said she saw Yoorrook's plan as an opportunity to fix systemic injustices that have persisted throughout generations, despite genuine attempts to alter the situation. She said the intent of the plan was not an attempt to take anything away from non-Indigenous Victorians. "We've achieved so much and no one's lost anything, have they? No one's lost their backyards or their cars or their businesses or anything like that. No funding has been cut from mainstream services in any way, shape, or form," she said. Co-chair of Victoria's First Peoples' Assembly, Rueben Berg, said the current focus in Victoria was achieving "political redress" through securing an ongoing role for the First Peoples' Assembly. As part of Treaty negotiations, the Victorian government has already agreed to legislate an ongoing role for the First Peoples' Assembly, which was also recommended by Yoorrook's report. The ongoing assembly will be able to advise the government but also make decisions on some issues that affect Aboriginal people, like confirmation of Aboriginality, and appoint First Peoples to boards. The move to make the assembly permanent — through Victoria's first statewide treaty, expected to be signed later this year — is also opposed by the state opposition. Mr Berg said part of the assembly's new role would be to hold the government to account on things like Yoorrook's recommendations. He was confident it would work. "We've seen what business as usual has gotten us in the past, and so this is about doing things differently and Treaty is the key way to make sure we can do things differently," he said. Former commissioner Kevin Bell said it was time for the government to make good on the promises it had made to Victoria's Aboriginal community throughout the truth-telling process.
