Network of allies plan to continue campaign to see RPCV board sacked

Community members affected by RPCV's brutal and inconsistent enactment of a gravesite adornment policy and the poor communication that surrounded it at Eaglehawk and Pine Lodge, Shepparton cemeteries in January, have consistently called for the board to be dismissed.

Bereaved mother Lisa Kidman, whose teenage daughter's grave at Eaglehawk was stripped of mementos, said on Thursday the continuance of the board that presided over the painful debacle was "like a wound that's not healing in the community".

"People just don't feel confident with the people at the helm who made all these mistakes and caused all this pain and suffering," she said.

Ms Kidman described new RPCV interim CEO Maureen O'Keefe, who has been holding small meetings with affected family members, as very compassionate, and RPCV's organisation of counselling for those who wanted it as positive.

However, the issue of the board "isn't going away," she said.

"What is it we have to do, what noise do we have to make, who do we have to speak to to get rid of this board?

"Our aim is now to flood the Health Minister with emails."

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Northern Victoria Region upper house Liberal MP Wendy Lovell, who first publicly took up the call for Victorian health minister Mary-Anne Thomas to sack the RPCV directors on January 30, is continuing to amplify it.

"What I'm hearing from the community - and I'm just doing my job in relaying their wishes - is that the board should be removed," she told the Bendigo Advertiser.

"I also think there's been a failure of governance. A good board should be compassionate but also capable of running 11 cemeteries."

At Pine Lodge, as at Eaglehawk, there had been a brutal clearing of graves in January which saw cherished items such as the toys of deceased children taken from graves and thrown away, Ms Lovell said.

But RPCV had told families the items had been lost in the October floods.

The board had been intending to roll out its adornment policy across all 11 of the cemeteries it managed, Ms Lovell said.

The MP disputed comments last week by Premier Daniel Andrews that the trust had owned up to its mistakes and sought to rectify them.

"Every time an issue was raised the board went out and defended the policy," she said.

She also labelled the Premier's suggestion she was seeking to politicise the issue as "a deflection" and "a very poor response".

Cemeteries are community facilities

Funeral director Simon Mulqueen, of Bendigo Funerals, said he believed the board of the cemeteries trust was incompetent.

"They've proved that over a period of time and a number of issues, not least the pricing issue last year, which would have seen the cost of funerals double and would have been devastating.

"And the chair had been very slow to come out and acknowledge the trust's mistakes. The chairperson has not shown the leadership she should've over the pricing debacle and the adornment debacle.

"They should go, all of them. My intention is to keep fighting with the community to get rid of the board."

But it was not just a changing of the guard that was required, in Mr Mulqueen's view.

RPCV has become "too corporatised", he argues, and should divest of the cemeteries it has acquired management of over recent years, including at faraway Sunbury and Donnybrook, as well as Shepparton and Kialla West.

"Making cemeteries universal is not the answer," he said.

"Shepparton cemeteries shouldn't be run by a trust based in Bendigo.

"Let the cemeteries in these towns be run by locals. They're community facilities and each should be run by the community. The focus would be much sharper on what the community needs and wants."

Mr Mulqueen said the Premier's suggestion that the issue had been politicised showed he was out of touch with regional communities.

"It's not a political issue at all," Mr Mulqueen said. It's about people's emotions and grief - all those people who've had their grief trampled on by the cemetery trust."

"Hopefully the government takes notice of the fact that what they're doing isn't working."

But the RPCV board said, in a nameless statement, that it was "fully committed to seeing this through".

The board was "sincerely sorry for what has occurred" and "extremely troubled that the policy that was meant to keep the community and staff safe has instead caused so much pain".

It planned to hold a community meeting in March to share the results of the independent inquiry it had launched, which was nearly complete, and to also undertake a thorough and consultative review of its adornments policy.

In relation to the suggestion the trust had become too corporate and should divest of cemeteries in other locations, the board said: "the scope of its remit" was "a matter for the Victorian government".

The statement confirmed RPCV board members were receiving approximately $7200 a year and the chair $14,400 a year for their services.

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