By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
WHAT are the chances: a former Dandenong-based MP living next door to a Dandenong-based journalist?
Dr Ron Wells represented Eumemmerring Province in the State Upper House in 1992-’99 – the first Liberal elected to the seat.
My tenure on the Dandenong Journal started more than a decade later.
Nearing his 80th birthday, Dr Wells remains vital and politically alert as we visit his old stomping ground at Dandenong Market.
The former veterinary medical researcher and university teacher tells me he doesn’t think of old age.
“I’m looking forward to a vigorous career ahead.”
At Dandenong Market, he marvels at its reconstruction, its comfort and array of foods and cultures.
“Dandenong is a wonderful place,” he says. “It’s looking bigger and better now.”
He listens eagerly to a merchandise trader’s gripes about the lack of shoppers.
“Get onto your MP,” Dr Wells advised.
Listening was a big part of the job, he tells me.
He started up an Unemployment Hour radio program on Casey community station 3SER – talkback that generated headlines in the nation’s media.
He also got to know the waves of new arrivals who had settled in Dandenong since the end of World War II.
When he arrived in the seat, Dr Wells was quoted by the Journal referring to the rapidly-expanding south-east corridor as “a major extension of human civilisation”.
As we sit in the market food court, Dr Wells tells me he knew Dandenong was much more important than its size indicated.
“It is like a miniature Australia. When I was elected to Eumemmerring, I said: as Eumemmerring goes, so Australia will go.
“We had the greatest challenges facing us. I was very conscious of that.”
One of the over-riding concerns of the area was “money to do more things”.
“In a growing society there are huge welfare needs that are difficult to meet.
“It’s always about economic management. You’ve got to have people who understand the economy in charge.”
Dr Wells had a fiery introduction as an Eumemmerring MP, especially for one who appreciated “the priceless experience of being well-educated”.
A month after his election, Dr Wells and Berwick MP Robert Dean – with 10 police on hand – fronted a hostile public meeting in Doveton.
In its front-page story “School Fury”, the Journal reported about 1000 parents, students and teachers taunted and hurled papers at the pair over the government’s impending closure of Joseph Banks Secondary College.
Photographer Andrew Henshaw captured the moment when an angry parent was restrained as he fronted a “startled” Dr Wells.
The closure doesn’t seem to sit well with him when I remind him.
“Education was and is central to a modern, democratic way of life and I could not be in favour of closing schools.
“But I believe democracy is the way to go. It’s a team effort and you can’t get your way every time.”
Within two months of that public meeting, Dr Wells announced no doubt more welcome news – an extra 1000 places at Dandenong College of TAFE.
Dr Wells says he’d always wanted to see schools more like community hubs – an idea that is increasingly catching on.
“At day, a school; at night, a community centre” was how he put it.
As we leave the market, we’re confronted by a waist-high metal barrier.I’m shocked to see a sprightly Dr Wells, without a creaking joint, duck under the bar and move on.
In March 1993 – the first of several columns for the Journal – Dr Wells reflected on the need for an “efficient media to report and discuss the events of daily democracy”.
“Journalists have such immense political power that if they fail to present fair, efficient and accurate reporting of events, they fail in their unique responsibility and democratic government suffers.”
He tells me that he had a mutually helpful relationship with local newspapers.
“It’s hard work for the local officials because they have got so many demands.
“That’s why newspapers are important. They get our attention to what needs to be done. And they express the will of the people to get it done.”
