Pop star Nussy has just released her first EP. Picture: Tim Carrafa Source: News Corp Australia

IT HAS taken years of hard work, laughter and some tears for pop star Nussy to become an overnight sensation.

Nussy, (real name Dani Smarrelli), and her band of university mates have made a pretty good living off “weddings, parties and cover versions”, but with a recently released self-penned EP and debut single Dizzy , soaring up the charts, a video with more than 5000 Youtube view and now radio play, the sky is the limit for the former Strathcona student.

Nussy said Dizzy could be termed a way of getting through her “quarter-life crisis”.

She worked with songwriters Michael Paynter and Michael DeLorenzis of MSquared Productions on the EP.

“They kept saying, ‘you know, this is really good’,” the Canterbury singer said.

“I knew it was catchy and I’m such a perfectionist, I would never put something out I wasn’t quite sure of.

“I’m so overwhelmed, I would never have guessed it could have been so well received.

She said Dizzy was about living in the moment.

Dani Smarrelli, aka Nussy. Picture: Tim Carrafa Source: News Corp Australia

You get to 25 and you’ve finished university and you’re now supposed to be super serious. Life doesn’t have to be like that, it should stay fun,” she said.

“My parents say I’ll be 14 forever, I don’t have a problem with that, 14 was a good year.”

But it hasn’t all been fun for the 26-year-old.

Nussy was the partner of Port Adelaide AFL player John McCarthy who died on a trip to Las Vegas in 2012.

“Nussy was actually the name John gave me,” she said. “He was incredible for giving nicknames. He would take part of a name and then change that up to a point where it had absolutely nothing to do with your own name.

“Suddenly friends just started calling me that and it stuck. He’d be all like now, ‘you have to credit me for that’,”

But it’s those life experiences that have shaped her personality.

“When you’re young, you do think you’re invincible. I would never have dreamt that something like that could happen, I never dreamt I’d be 25 moving back in with my parents.

“But it happens. For me the most important thing is to be genuine and to be true to myself. “It’s a ride and I want to embrace whatever comes.”

Unlike many aspiring singers of her generation, Nussy wasn’t tempted to try her luck on reality television.

“When I was 15, the first series of Australian Idol came on and that was the biggest thing we had seen,” she said.

“That series had the likes of Guy Sebastian and Shannon Noll. I remember my 16th birthday was the night of the final and we had 30 girls sitting around the TV glued to what was happening.

“When I was 17, 18, 19, I thought that might be the way to go, but when I got to uni, I started to meet new people, gain new ideas and from that point it’s not something I’ve considered.”

Nussy says another Australian star, Sia is among her greatest influences.

“Sia is massive talent and she’s been around for so long and had so many albums,” she said.

“She’s written some of the biggest hits around the world and it’s only been in the last few years that she’s broken into the mainstream.

“Australia is such a small industry, so to see what she has been able to achieve is so exciting.”

Yarra Mayor Jackie Fristacky, pictured with Moreland Mayor Lambros Tapinos, says the public is backing the legal action being taken by the councils against construction of the East West Link Source: News Corp Australia

YARRA Council has received strong support from residents for launching a legal attack on the $8 billion East West Link, says Mayor Jackie Fristacky.

Planning Minister Matthew Guy labelled Yarra and Moreland Councils’ Supreme Court challenge to planning approval for the tunnel a huge waste of ratepayers’ money.

A date has yet to be set for the case, where the State Government’s refusal to provide a business case will come under attack.

The councils will argue that the expert planning panel advising Mr Guy acted illegally because it did not consider the economic effects on Yarra and surrounds, or whether the project was value for money, because the panel was never given a business case for the project.

Cr Fristacky said the council had been “overwhelmed” by hundreds of supportive phone calls and social media messages since announcing the move.

She said the council had received three calls and emails opposing the action.

Cr Fristacky said the appeal was expected to cost $170,000 in total, with each council to pay half, and should take three to five days.

“It’s a pretty contained review on a position of law with no new evidence or witnesses,” Cr Fristacky said.

“It’s such a significant impact on our community that we thought we had no option but to challenge it.”

Cr Fristacky said if the council won the case the planning approval and any contracts based on it would be invalid.

Mr Guy said he was confident the government had followed its obligations and still intended to sign contracts to build the tunnel before November’s election.

He said legal costs were likely to blow out beyond what the council estimated.

Labor has pledged to honour any contracts signed before the election, but protest organiser Anthony Main said Labor should commit to ripping up contracts if it won power.

Two Comancheros broke the arms of a man who wished to leave the motorbike club during a daylight attack at a smash repair business, police allege.

The Smash Masters repair centre is owned by boxing identity David Deicke, who was previously stabbed and targeted in two drive-by shootings by another bikie club, but the bashing of another man in his Collingwood business on July 21 does not appear to be related. The victim was a 29-year-old from the Docklands who required surgery to his arms and suffered serious facial injuries.

Vincent Meyer, 24, of Broadmeadows, and Hawre Sherwani, 23, of Oak Park, appeared briefly in Melbourne Magistrates Court on Thursday afternoon.

Charge sheets allege that Mr Meyer and Mr Sherwani went to a Johnston Street business and assaulted the man, and kicked and punched him as he lay motionless on the floor.

Shellfish reefs will be re-created on the bottom of Port Phillip Bay in a historic project that aims to improve marine habitats in Victoria’s largest bay. 

Researchers say that if the reefs can be successfully established as expected, they would provide healthy habitats for shellfish like mussels and oysters. They would also provide habitat, shelter and food options for fish such as snapper, flathead, rockling and many other fish that live in the bay. They would also help improve water quality.

Shells from mussels, scallops and oysters that have been discarded by the seafood industry and restaurants could be sought as part of the project. They would eventually be placed in the bay at one of three locations, in order to form a base for the early stage of the shellfish reefs. Some artificial material could also be used.

But the project requires more than old shells. Millions of baby oysters and mussels, which will be bred at the Victorian Shellfish Hatchery at Queenscliff, will be used to colonise the reefs in the $270,000 pilot project. The baby oysters and mussels will attach themselves to shells at the hatchery, before they are placed in the water on top of the old shells.

Melburnians are in for a chilly end to the week with the mercury set to plummet on Friday to one of our coldest winter days.

This comes after a day of wild and destructive winds around the state on Thursday, which left buildings damaged, thousands of homes without power, trees down, roads closed and train lines blocked.

Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Phil King said if the temperature failed to go above 11 degrees on Friday, as predicted, it would be chalked up as the coldest day of the year. 

“Eleven point three degrees is the lowest we’ve had so far this year, and that was on June 29,” he said. 

While winds had dropped since Thursday night, Mr King said another cold front heading towards Melbourne from the Grampians would bring more sordid weather.

“It’s going to be a miserable afternoon with scattered showers, hail and really cold conditions,” he said. 

“We could still see wind gusts of up to 90km/h.” 

The front was due to hit the city about midday, he said. 

Mr King said snow could fall as low as 400 metres, possibly dusting parts of the Grampians, the Otways, Ballarat, Mount Macedon and Mount Dandenong, while Victoria’s alpine region would see blizzards.

At 6.30am on Friday, the temperature in the city was 6 degrees, but felt closer to 2 degrees with wind chill, Mr King said. 

Around the state, it was 1.5 degrees in Ballarat and 2 degrees in Ferny Creek. 

The Lilydale Line was partly suspended on Friday morning, with buses replacing trains between Mooroolbark and Lilydale in both directions due to problems with overhead power equipment.

The State Emergency Service received 1750 calls for assistance on Thursday, mostly in Melbourne’s bayside and eastern suburbs and around the Latrobe Valley. 

Former Tasmanian premier Paul Lennon. Photo: AAP

Former Tasmanian premier Paul Lennon has been kicked out of Crown Casino after reportedly becoming rowdy during a poker game. 

Mr Lennon was manhandled out of the casino after he created a disturbance while playing Texas hold’em poker last Thursday, News Corp Australia is reporting. 

Reports quote an anonymous witness saying Mr Lennon, who was Tasmania’s premier from 2004 until his resignation in 2008, had started berating a woman he accused of touching his casino chips. 

Security guards asked him a number of times to quieten down before eventually asking him to leave, the witness said. 

Map: Geelong 3220

The power has been switched off at Alcoa’s aluminium smelter near Geelong, marking the end of 51 years of continuous operation.

The final pot line was switched off with the sound of beeping on Thursday.

The closure sees 500 workers out of a job.

Smelter manager Warren Sharp said staff have supported each other since Alcoa announced the closure in February.

“People have had all those mixed emotions over the past five months. The team here has been absolutely tremendous,” he said.

He said there was a lot of pride in what the company has achieved since it started at Point Henry in 1963.

“We’ve built three pot lines, we’ve had tremendous support from the community who we’ve had a great relationship with, we’ve made 7 million tonnes of aluminium over the journey,” he said.

“That makes us very proud, and of course, very sad today as well.”

Another 300 workers will lose their jobs when Alcoa’s rolling mill closes at the end of the year.

Take a look back through some old and new pictures of the plant to see its transformation over five decades.

Photo: An engineer drawing in an office at Aloca, Point Henry, 1967. (State Library of Victoria: Wolfgang Sievers) Photo: Rolls of sheet aluminium at the Alcoa fabrication plant 1971. (State Library of Victoria: Wolfgang Sievers) Photo: Operator’s console, Aluminium rolling cold mills, Alcoa aluminium fabrication plant, Point Henry, Victoria (date unknown). (State Library of Victoria: Wolfgang Sievers) Photo: Worker operating the cutting apparatus on the aluminium sheet slitting line, Alcoa aluminium fabrication plant, Point Henry, Victoria, in 1971. (State Library of Victoria: Wolfgang Sievers) Photo: Display of aluminium extrusion profiles manufactured at Alcoa aluminium fabrication plant, Point Henry, Victoria (State Library of Victoria: Wolfgang Sievers) Photo: The ground-level windows help reduce ventilation in the Alcoa smelter July 31, 2014. (ABC News: Margaret Paul) Photo: Alcoa’s newest pot line dates back to the 1970s. This is final line that was operating and was switched off on July 31, 2014. (ABC News: Margaret Paul) Photo: Alcoa potline at the Point Henry smelter before it closed on July 31, 2014. (ABC News: Margaret Paul)

Topics: history, geelong-3220

Photo: Mr Lennon said he asked for police to attend the incident. (Alan Porritt: AAP. File photo.) Map: TAS

Former Tasmanian premier Paul Lennon has claimed he was ejected from a Melbourne casino and subsequently fined after licking his finger during a poker game.

Mr Lennon has confirmed he was kicked out of Crown Casino by security guards about 10:15pm last Thursday.

Victorian police issued a $738 infringement notice for failing to leave a licensed premises, which Mr Lennon has paid.

The 58-year-old said he was ejected from the venue for licking his finger during a game of $2 poker.

He was unaware he had broken a rule and said he was not given a reason when he was asked to leave.

“At one instance I licked my index finger before touching my dealt cards, as you sometimes do,” he said in a statement.

“But apparently this is against the rules – something I was not aware of.

“For this I was removed. I questioned the reason why, but was not given an answer.”

A newspaper report quoted witness claims of Mr Lennon behaving aggressively towards a woman and refusing to leave when asked.

However, Mr Lennon said the claim was ridiculous.

The witness also claimed five or six security guards wrestled Mr Lennon out of the building, binding his hands with cable ties.

Mr Lennon declined to give details, except to say he believed two to three people took him out.

He asked for police to be called “so that everything was done properly.”

Mr Lennon said he consumed no alcohol during the game. He declined an interview request.

Topics: gambling, states-and-territories, tas, melbourne-3000

A Liberal candidate for this year’s November state election has landed in hot water after a series of offensive tweets.

Aaron Lane was earlier this year preselected for the Liberal Party for the upper house Western region. 

News Corp Australia has reported that Mr Lane, a former Young Liberal president and fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, has been summoned to party headquarters on Friday to explain a series of tweets he made before he was preselected.

In some tweets Mr Lane uses the derogatory term “faggots’’ and says: “The problem is (IMO) many homos make their sexuality a defining aspect of their being.’’

He also refers to former Labor leader Simon Crean as “a giant C’’.

Another tweet says that “shirts are for faggots’’.

Liberal State Director Damien Mantach on Friday confirmed that he would be speaking to Mr Lane.

“The Liberal Party finds the comments made by Mr Lane on social media to be inappropriate and offensive,’’ he said in a statement.

“The party takes these matters very seriously.’’

Revelations about Mr Lane follow earlier controversy this week when it was reported that Premier Denis Napthine instructed pro-life Liberal MP Bernie Finn to remove pictures of dead babies from his Facebook page.

And last month Fairfax Media reported that the Attorney-General Robert Clark would speak at the World Congress of Families whose managing director, Larry Jacobs, is a strong supporter of Russian laws banning gay pride demonstrations and “homosexual propaganda”.

The same conference also features a speaker who links abortion to breast cancer.

More to come.

The Inner Melbourne Planning Alliance (IMPA) is tonight presenting a public forum titled “City in Crisis?”.

It’s a free event being held at the Deakin Edge theatre at Federation Square from 6pm until 7:30pm consisting of a panel of speakers and a Q&A session.

1. What mechanisms will be in place to ensure the design quality and diversity of new residential developments and the associated public spaces that are critical to their success?
2. To what extent will the proposed plans provide the amenities needed to service high density communities of the future, including schools and hospitals, public transport or jobs for a future smart economy?

The panelists

Geoffrey London

Victorian State Government architect

Leanne Hodyl

Melbourne City Council

Robert Larocca

RP Data

Monique Sasson

Independent Property Analyst

Ashley Williams

Evolve Development

Speaker presentations and audience and panel Q&A will be moderated by Peter Mares.

Feared bikies from the Mongols are forming a stronghold in Victoria, with a feeder club established and international links growing as two senior members make Melbourne home.

As two Mongols faced court over firearms and assault allegations, Assistant Commissioner Stephen Fontana said police were monitoring the two former Fink office-bearers, who have been driven south by Queensland’s strict anti-bikie legislation.

The Mongols, who patched over about 80 per cent of the Finks in Australia in the past 18 months, have been strengthened in Victoria by the Raiders MC, a support club once reportedly aligned to the Hells Angels.

Shane Bowden, who was linked to Finks extortion mob the Terror Team and infamously shot Melbourne CBD killer Christopher Wayne Hudson during the wild “Ballroom Blitz” on the Gold Coast in 2006, has relocated to Melbourne in the past 12 months. He and Greg Keating, another senior member who had reportedly moved to Adelaide about the same time as Mr Bowden left the Gold Coast for Melbourne, have been photographed together regularly in Melbourne. 

Both men have been wearing a Nomads patch on their Mongols jackets, suggesting they are not members of any particular chapter but roaming members of the club.

Similar Mongols Nomads chapters have been established in Europe. Links between Australian members and clubmates in Europe and Asia have strengthened in recent months, and was a key factor in the defection from the Australia-based Finks.

Mr Fontana said the Mongols were not yet living up to their fearsome international reputation in Victoria, but police were concerned about the presence of two senior members in Melbourne. “They’re not the worst we’ve got in Victoria at this stage, but they’re certainly building their capability,” he told Radio 3AW.

A man believed to be an associate of the Mongols, Jamie Peter Riseley, 20, faced court on Monday accused of assaulting two police in Port Melbourne.

Mr Riseley was pulled over by police on Plummer Street, about 1.5 kilometres from the Mongols’ Bertie Street clubhouse and charged with driving without a licence on March 22. He was also charged with two counts of resisting police in the execution of their duty, two counts of threats to kill and two counts of assaulting a police officer.

Mr Riseley appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates Court, where his bail was extended and he was given more time for his solicitor to take instructions.

His arrest in March came two weeks after the Mongols’ Port Melbourne clubhouse and a tattoo studio linked to the club were raided by police.

Mr Riseley has also been charged with driving without a licence and providing police with a false name in relation to a police road stop at Newborough in April, 3013.

On Sunday, another member of the Mongols allegedly produced a firearm and threatened security staff after being denied entry to a St Kilda bar. Although the man’s group was allowed entry, police were called soon after.

When police arrived the gang members fled east down Fitzroy Street before officers found them in a nearby car park. Two knives and a gun were also found. The 27-year-old Brighton East man was charged with being a prohibited person possessing a firearm and will face court later this month.

Police are urging people to beware of taking phone calls from people posing as telecommunications staff.

Investigators have been told that victims have answered a phone call and told there is an issue with their computer.

The caller then asks for details to gain remote access to the victim’s computer.

Once the caller has gained access they then ask the victim to test the new system by using the internet and use ‘checking their bank account’ as an example.

The caller is then able to access passwords and account details and ultimately transfer money out of victim’s accounts.

A number of victims have been identified throughout Victoria.

The federal government also provides a website which offers proactive advice for people who have been the victim of a scam: http://www.scamwatch.gov.au/

Reports of online scams can also be made to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission via that website.

Anyone with information about similar incidents can also contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or visit www.crimestoppers.com.au

Belinda Batty

Media Officer

VP36181/2014

Legal advice from a constitutional law expert has placed a fresh focus on the pace with which the Napthine government is pushing through plans for its signature transport project, the East West Link.

The government does not plan to create special legislation for the $14-18 billion freeway under Carlton and Royal Park, which it says it will begin constructing within three months.

Instead it will rely on an act created in 2009 and modified last year to streamline the planning process.

But Michael Crommelin, the Zelman Cowen Professor of Law at Melbourne University’s law school, said it would be highly unusual for a project of its scope to be launched without specific laws supporting it.

‘‘A project of this scale does require project specific legislation,’’ said Professor Crommelin, who was initially contacted by the Opposition seeking his views on the project.

Previous recent major freeways – CityLink, EastLink and Peninsula Link – all required specific acts of Parliament to be put in place, in part because they involved compulsorily acquiring homes and properties.

Professor Crommelin said signing contracts for the road and beginning construction without an act in place to back it would place the project in a similar situation to the federal funding of chaplains in schools, which was struck down in June.

In that instance, he said, ‘‘the issue was that in the school chaplaincy program, the Commonwealth without legislation entered into agreements with various bodies to provide chaplaincy services in school’’.

He said contracting a major consortium to build the road without legislation would be highly unusual.

‘‘The government will at some stage enter into major contracts with the project builders, and those contracts will involve major [financial] commitments on the part of the government, stretching over a long period of time,’’ Professor Crommelin said. ‘‘Those sorts of contracts require legislative authorisation.’’

Opposition planning spokesman Brian Tee said the government was ‘‘hell-bent on avoiding scrutiny’’ of the project and for that reason had not gone through a process followed by previous governments.

‘‘It’s outrageous – this road will consign Victorians to a generation of debt. But have they even thought it through properly?’’

A spokeswoman for Roads Minister Terry Mulder said the government had amended Labor’s 2009 Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act to ensure projects of state significance like the East West Link avoided duplication and unnecessary red tape.

Jackie Fristacky, the mayor of Yarra Council, which is involved in legal action with another inner city council in a bid to delay the project, said that the government should be creating an act of parliament to support the road.

‘‘The project is so politically unpopular that I would expect parliament not to support it,’’ said Cr Fristacky.

Debate over the need for legislation to support the road came as residents in Carlton, Clifton Hill, Fitzroy and Collingwood meet on Tuesday night in relation to their homes being taken by the government for the East West Link.

Some residents have been notified the process of compulsorily acquiring their homes will begin in early August. Those outside the project area – which was gazetted by the government last Wednesday – are still unclear on whether their homes will be bought.

Among them is Ande Bunbury, who lives just outside the project’s boundary and whose home will face onto a major site of construction. Ms Bunbury said, if the project went ahead without her property being bought, she was ‘‘screwed’’.

‘‘I’m down $200,000, I’m facing years of disruption, noise, cracking, vibration immediately outside my windows,’’ said Ms Bunbury.

Two former students of a Jewish school in Melbourne have been wounded while fighting for the Israeli army in Gaza.

Sam Gosling and Daniel Wein, both 22, are recovering from recent injuries sustained during the conflict between Israel and Hamas that has lasted almost four weeks.

The combat soldiers are former students of Leibler Yavneh College in Elsternwick, and are believed to have been a year level apart. Both are reportedly expected to recover.

Mr Gosling, who left Caulfield for Israel last year, was hit by shrapnel from a missile in late July.

A close friend, Toby Azoulay, said it was extremely distressing to see a photo surface on social media showing Mr Gosling in a hospital bed. “It was very upsetting … very confronting,” he said.

Mr Gosling was born in New Zealand, but his family moved to Melbourne in 2008.

He was involved in the Zionist youth movement, Bnei Akiva, where he became a leader for younger students at weekly meetings.

“He moved mid-last year to join the army,” Bnei Akiva Melbourne president Romy Spicer said.

“But it really hits home when you see a photo of your friend who has been injured. It throws you about.”

Earlier in July, Mr Wein, who grew up in Melbourne but moved to Israel before graduating from Yavneh College, was reportedly shot in the thigh.

Ms Spicer said that out of the 365 students and leaders in Melbourne’s Bnei Akiva program, as many as 10 had joined the Israeli army in the past two years.

“What drives them is a love and passion for Zionism,” she said.

There are about 2500 foreign citizens from more than 60 countries enlisted in the Israeli Defence Forces. The US provides the greatest contingent, but there are also large numbers of Russian, Ukrainian and French soldiers.

Sixty-four Israeli army soldiers and three Israeli citizens have died in the conflict. The Palestinian death toll has reached 1822.

Mr Azoulay, whose 20-year-old brother also left Melbourne to fight in Gaza, said soldiers in the army were often under heavy fire and went days without being able to contact family.

“I didn’t speak to my brother once for five or six days … it is nerve-wracking,” he said.

“We don’t want there to be a war, but unfortunately the circumstances force it.”

The Israeli embassy in Canberra refused to comment on the number of Australians fighting for the IDF, but it is believed there are in excess of 100 enlisted.

The Department of Foreign Affairs does not keep figures on how many Australian citizens have gone to Israel to fight for its army.

A property developer has recalled in court how he told four Comancheros to “take me away and kill me now” after feeling intimidated when they showed up at his house to discuss a debt.

Keith Tribe felt “extremely traumatised” on August 27 last year when four men wearing yellow and black Comancheros windcheaters arrived at his home and informed him he owed money to some of his former business associates, Melbourne Magistrates Court heard on Monday.

Charge sheets tendered to court allege that four weeks after the group visited Mr Tribe, they menaced him and his partner by demanding money and taping a .223 calibre bullet to the couple’s front door.

Charge sheets allege Bemir Saracevic, 27, Mark Balsillie, 29, Tangianau Marathi, 38, Emir Jaha, 28, Gemino Aloia, 26, and Thomas Peter Laslo, 29, made unwarranted demands of Mr Tribe and his partner, including taping the bullet to their door on September 24 last year.

Mr Tribe said on the day the group came to his house, one of the men introduced himself as Benji, while one of three big men of Pacific Islander appearance said: “We’re the Comancheros.” The court heard Benji then passed Mr Tribe a piece of paper with names written on it, and told him he owed those people money. Mr Tribe said he told Benji he had been declared bankrupt and could not pay.

“I said, ‘Look, I don’t have any money. If you are going to kill me take me away and kill me now’,” he told the court. “Benji said, ‘We are not like that’ … He said something along the lines of, ‘We are not animals, we can do some business. Let’s come to some arrangement’.”

The court heard one of the group spoke about taking Mr Tribe’s car but Benji said no.

Mr Tribe said he and his partner were “extremely traumatised” afterwards and immediately contacted the police, and that he “wasn’t very thrilled” to later find the bullet taped to his front door.

He said none of the group threatened or touched him. He also conceded he had owed “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to his former business associates, who had previously taken legal action against him and his partner.

Mr Saracevic, Mr Jaha, Ilat Rasimi, 45, and Robert Mackey, 48, also face charges of assaulting two men in Braeside on July 20 last year. Mr Laslo is also charged with threatening an Australian Federal Police agent.

The hearing continues before magistrate Donna Bakos.

An increasing number of aged care facilities are trying to overcome a shortage of high quality medical services by building permanent GP clinics on their premises. 

For years, experts have complained that residents of aged care facilities are getting inadequate medical care, partly because there are not enough incentives for GPs to travel from their clinics to attend elderly patients and continue an ongoing relationship with them. 

In many cases, this means locum GPs are frequently called to care for residents after hours, or they are sent to hospital for potentially unnecessary investigations and futile care, particularly at the end of life.  

But in a trend that could improve care, several large aged care providers are now building medical centres into their nursing homes, including some with pharmacy, radiology and pathology services on site.  

Chief executive of TLC Aged Care Lou Pascuzzi said his group was investing $120 million to build ‘‘community health care hubs’’ in some of its 10 aged care homes and planned to include allied health professionals such as physiotherapists too. The company has already signed agreements with medical diagnostics company Sonic Healthcare and Quality Pharmacies to provide services, and will begin creating the hubs over the next 18 months, firstly in its Frankston, Altona North and Noble Park homes. 

The company has also been approved to build an eight-storey high-rise aged care facility on Queens Parade in Clifton Hill which will have a medical centre inside. The building, which is set to be the tallest aged care facility in the southern hemisphere, will have 140 beds. 

Mr Pascuzzi said the health care hubs would also be open to other patients in a bid to make the homes more attractive to people’s children and relatives.

 “We need to make these centres part of the community, not hide them away as if we are ashamed of them,’’ he said. 

Medical Services Director for Bupa Care Services, Dr Daniel Valle Gracia, said his company had employed GPs to work full time in 10 of its 63 Australian homes and would continue to employ more when opening new facilities. The idea is to provide residents with a regular GP for medical reviews, meetings with family members, and responsive care when needed.   

Dr Valle Gracia said although Bupa was working with University of Queensland to assess the model, anecdotally, it was already reducing potentially unnecessary transfers of residents to hospitals for treatments such as intravenous antibiotics.

‘‘If you have a GP that can make decisions on site most of the time, staff feel more confident about the care they’re delivering,’’ he said.

President of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Geriatric Medicine, Associate Professor Craig Whitehead, said building medical clinics into aged care facilities could improve care for many residents, but he warned that some corporate models which are designed for quick, six-minute style GP consultations may not be suitable.

‘‘If you have someone with advanced dementia and multiple medical problems where you have to have a 35 minute conversation about how you’re going to treat their end of life, are they going to support that sort of practice?’’ he said.

Vulnerable children removed from abusive homes will be placed in permanent care unless their parents clean up their act within 12 months, under new Napthine government rules.

The state government will introduce legislation into Parliament on Tuesday to give more stability to vulnerable children in care, who often spend many years being shifted between relatives, foster care and residential carers.

The reforms were recommended by the Cummins inquiry into the state’s child protection system, which revealed children waited an average of five years for a permanent care order after their first report.

Community Services Minister Mary Wooldridge said too many children were spending long, uncertain periods of time in care, which caused further trauma.

“Our first priority is to keep a child with a parent, but when parents cannot address the areas of concern, such as deal with their drug addiction or provide a safe environment, removing the children is the only option,” she said.

Ms Wooldridge said the legislation gave parents 12 months to fix issues that led to their children being removed so that they could resume care. When parents need more time to address these issues – but have shown “good progress” – another 12 months may be granted. If issues are then still not resolved, a decision will be made to seek permanent care for the child, which is similar to adoption.  

A permanent care order is made in the Children’s Court and gives long-term carers guardianship and custody over children in their care.

Moves to fast-track vulnerable children into permanent care follow reports that children in Department of Human Services residential care were being sexually exploited by paedophile gangs. 

Commissioner for Children and Young People Bernie Geary welcomed the reforms, saying they gave children certainty about their future and put their rights “at the centre”. 

“Children have to have an adult in their life who sees them as special, and if they are living at a range of places with different carers, it is very difficult for them to work out who they are special to, and whether they are special at all,” he said.

Mr Geary did not think the changes would punish birth parents, and said he was hopeful they encouraged more people to become foster carers.

MacKillop Family Services chief executive Micaela Cronin said the reforms would give children in care a better chance of a good, stable childhood.

“Multiple placements can lead to further trauma for children. Having some stability and a good start in life, both within a family and educationally, sets you up for the rest of your life,” she said.

Nigel, 23, knows first hand what it is like to be shifted between carers. The university student, who was placed into care when he was three, estimates he had at least 25 placements. He said the instability impacted his education, identity and relationships. A permanent care order was eventually made when he was six.

“Once I had stability and felt safe, I was able to learn my alphabet, then I started to excel at school and I got scholarships for high school,” Nigel said.

Unfortunately, the long-term placement broke down when Nigel was 13, but he said he still has a good relationship with his carers and calls them mum and dad.

The state government changes will also require case plans to be developed sooner and align with the child’s court orders.

Aboriginal children in out-of-home care will be given a cultural plan to maintain and develop their identity.