By ALESHA CAPONE
THE Sunshine Business Association has welcomed a $300,000 funding commitment to install CCTV cameras in Clarke St, but has also called for the security system to be rolled out further afield.
Last Thursday the Minister for Home Affairs and Justice, Jason Clare, visited Clarke St to announce the Federal Government would give $300,000 to Brimbank City Council’s efforts to improve the area.
While in Sunshine, Mr Clare was accompanied Maribyrnong MP Bill Shorten and Tim Watts, who is running as Labor’s candidate for Gellibrand in the upcoming federal election.
Mr Clare said the cameras would be funded through the National Crime Prevention Fund (NCPF), which uses money confiscated from criminals to fund community infrastructure.
He said Brimbank City Council would decide how many cameras would be installed in Clarke St.
Mr Shorten said the CCTV would help combat “any gang-related issues” in Sunshine.
“If you talk to the local police, you talk to local traders, talk to residents they want to make sure if there’s any gang-related issues that they won’t be tolerated in the Sunshine business precinct,” he said.
The Sunshine Business Association president Bruce White said the CCTV announcement was “great news, but it’s half a fix”.
Mr White said he has been preparing a request to extend present CCTV cameras at the Sunshine Train Station to the CBD’s southern precinct including Sun Crescent and City Place.
“There’s the other side of Sunshine, the southern precinct which I happened to be working at last Saturday where I actually saw up to 15 people drinking on the streets and up to four drug exchanges in two hours, between 10 o’clock and 12 o’clock,” he said.
“Because what we’ve been able to do at the moment is re-locate a problem and while cameras and the fixing of Clarke St will go a long way to helping improve this side, it’s not going to fix the other side.
“It’s just going to move the problem to the other side of the tracks, so we’ve really only got half a job at this point in time.”
