Meet Peter Ewer: FoMC committee member, new MCMC president

Peter Ewer is the latest of a stellar group of Friends of Merri Creek (FoMC) reps, who have taken on the challenge of being President of Merri Creek Management Committee (MCMC). Luisa Macmillan spoke to Peter about why he has taken on this role and why it’s important that FoMC support MCMC’s continuing role to protect and enhance the waterways of the Merri catchment and their surrounds. 

We’re sitting in the congenial surrounds of CERES, in East Brunswick, with the re-established trees and shrubs of Merri Creek in close sight; I ask Peter what originally drew him to the Friends of Merri Creek.

Peter begins by describing one of his first childhood memories of:

…standing in front of a bulldozer with my mother in the northern beaches of Sydney to stop developers converting that stretch of coastline into a clone of Surfers Paradise with thirty-storey apartment blocks.

Peter’s family was politically progressive, and he attributes his parents’ interest and activism as a key factor in his life-long commitment to the environment.

After moving to Melbourne in 1992, Peter became embedded in the inner northern suburbs of Melbourne, where Merri Creek was part of the local backdrop. He was a financial supporter of groups like the Australian Conservation Foundation and Greenpeace but not actively involved. All this changed when Peter left the Victorian public service in 2019 and took a holiday to Gili Air, a small Indonesian island between Bali and Lombok. Although in many ways Gili Air was an idyllic tropical paradise, shockingly there was no garbage collection on the island.

...where the tourists come ashore was a pile of black plastic garbage bags, waiting for the next high tide to wash the garbage into Lombok Strait.

When Peter returned home and took a walk along Merri Creek, he was struck by the plastic that festoons the trees. It was exactly the same problem as in Gili Air. He thought:

...it's no good tut-tutting about poor Indonesians, who haven't got the resources to do anything about this, without doing something about it myself. That’s what prompted me to join the committee of Friends of Merri Creek.

Peter has been a FOMC committee member for five years, mainly involved in advocacy campaigns around various state and federal elections. He also helped form the Merri Paddle, a working group of the FoMC, focussed on improving the aquatic ecology of the creek to bring back platypus.  

Through his FoMC committee involvement, Peter became aware of the special relationship between the Friends and the Merri Creek Management Committee (MCMC).

I’ve been involved in government for a long time and I find MCMC to be one of the most remarkable little organisations I’ve encountered. There aren't many incorporated associations which combine community representation with levels of government: in this case, the six councils along the catchment and Melbourne Water. ….. we need to preserve MCMC because it helps to resource what we all aspire to: a healthy and vibrant catchment.

Peter’s direct involvement with MCMC began two years ago, when he became one of six Friends’ delegates to the MCMC. Each of the 9 member organisations of MCMC supplies representatives, who make up the board of management. The office-bearers are elected from that board, which meets quarterly.

Peter says he was happy to volunteer for the MCMC position, recognising that FoMC is a volunteer-run group and that volunteers are needed to do many different and important things. He was also interested in what he describes as:

…this curious little organisation called MCMC, which combines the levels of government with community activists. I find it an interesting governance forum.

When Ann McGregor, also a FoMC rep, indicated she wanted to retire after 13 years as MCMC President, Peter was happy to stand for the position. He stresses that:

I … stand on the shoulders of giants, because what Ann and her husband, Bruce McGregor, David Redfearn and others have been able to do for Merri Creek is truly extraordinary.

In some ways, Peter comes with a different background to a number of his predecessors in not having a science, or planning-based background. His qualifications are in sociology and what he describes as the ‘university of politics.’
He believes he brings a

…different kind of perspective on what needs to be addressed with Merri Creek and these are fundamentally political questions …. what we see at the moment is basically contesting political visions about what the creek means and the catchment as a whole. So, the further urbanisation and industrialisation of the upper catchment is a fundamental challenge to good management of the creek, and in that sense, it's a real turning point for anybody who's interested in the health of the creek …  in my view it’s the most fundamental campaign that the Friends have faced since the Craigieburn Bypass Freeway campaign, which started over 30 years ago.

In terms of MCMC itself, Peter describes the first and most important task is to provide MCMC with good stewardship and good governance, a requirement for anybody who’s on a board of management. 

It's a remarkable treasure, and it needs to be defended and advocated for. And that involves having good relationships with the local councils, which are members and funders [of MCMC] and with state and federal government, which provide significant grant money [to MCMC].  

Peter understands the multiple roles played by MCMC. He recognises one of these roles is as an advocacy and planning organisation. MCMC has expertise in environmental planning and related matters. These need to be inserted into the conversations that are now going on about development of the upper catchment.  

He acknowledges that MCMC’s Ecological Restoration Program has unparalleled knowledge of the flora and fauna of the catchment and its restoration and that that knowledge needs to be supported and propagated.

Peter also reflects on the Friends’ and MCMC’s centre of gravity in the lower catchment. This is where both organisations were born. There is also the need to nourish and support activities and work in the upper catchment. He sees this as most notably happening through the recently formed wallan wallan Regional Parkland Alliance, an important venture to advocate for the preservation of what remains of the wetlands and other significant features in the upper Merri catchment.

He agrees that having the MCMC Upper Merri Landcare facilitator position, even though it's only a day a week, has already made a big difference in:

…activating a number of new community organisations and inspiring interest in the issues that we're all committed to. And we need to do more of that.

He also recognises that continuing collaboration with the Wallan Environment Group (WEG), a community member of MCMC, along with FoMC, is vital to link communities in the upper catchment to those further south.

Before speaking with Peter, I asked Ann McGregor, immediate past-President of MCMC, to sum up what she thought the value of MCMC was to FoMC. She commented that MCMC’s professional staff relieve Friends’ volunteers of a huge amount of work. This applies not just in going for grants, but across a wide range of activities, such as site preparation and maintenance, which ensures the work of volunteers in planting and weeding does not go to waste. MCMC also supports citizen science activities, such as Waterwatch, delivers waterway and biodiversity activities to schools and other groups and takes the lead on many statutory and strategic planning issues.

In Ann’s view, this delivery by MCMC staff helps ensure that Friends’ volunteers don’t suffer from huge burnout. The effectiveness of local groups, such as FoMC and WEG, is massively enhanced by having a resourcing body such as MCMC.   

Peter concurred.

The Friends is a volunteer group, and there's only so much the volunteers can do. So, having a professional staff, who can support the issues that the Friends are committed to, is a vital resource, and that's why we need to continue to build political support for MCMC among councils and the state government.

He further explained that most organisations need to prove their value if they're being funded by external sources. That's an ongoing challenge that the MCMC board and the staff need to meet.

      We need to show our funders that they're getting value for money: that's entirely proper 

He hastens to add that he thinks they do get value for money across a whole range of areas that MCMC delivers on.

All in all, it’s clear that Peter has a very sound grasp of the purpose of MCMC and the vital relationship between MCMC and FOMC. He also has the ongoing success of the organisation closely in mind. Thank you, Peter. We look forward to your stewardship of MCMC.

In case you’re wondering about the outcome of Peter’s early experience in defying a bulldozer, his mother and her collaborators largely succeeded in stopping high rise development at Collaroy Beach. As Peter says: … the fate of the Collaroy Beach shows that my mother and her friends were quite right [in opposing further development] because Collaroy Beach is now, basically a concrete seawall with the storms washing away the beach every time there's a high tide.”

Perhaps there’s a message here for Merri Creek.

Image credit: Peter standing on the remnants of the former quarry, Kirkdale Park
overlooking Merri Creek, East Brunswick, photo by Jane Miller.