THE BYRON SHIRE ECHO Advertising & news enquiries: Mullumbimby 02 6684 1777 Byron Bay 02 6685 5222 Fax 02 6684 1719 editor@echo.net.au adcopy@echo.net.au http://www.echo.net.au VOLUME 20 #16 TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2005 22,300 copies every week $1 at newsagents only
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Stakeholders to gather for holiday letting forum An invited group of key stakeholders from the community and the tourism industry will debate the issue of holiday letting at a closed forum in early October. Council has asked seven representatives from community groups such as Beacon, BRACE and the Byron Environment Centre and an equal number from the tourism industry to a facilitated session to discuss Council’s policy of prohibiting holiday letting in residential areas. Tourism Byron requested the forum and along with the Byron Bay Chamber of Commerce, serviced apartment managers and B & B operators are expected to join councillors, general manager Pamela Westing and senior Council planning staff at the meeting. ‘It is a debate we have to have and an issue which has to be sorted out,’ said Byron Shire Council’s director of planning Ray Darney. ‘We
are hopeful that there will be further alternatives to go to Council from a planning perspective that Council can consider. ‘What has not really been discussed is that we already have zones where holiday letting is allowed; these are the tourist and commercial zones. Take the Becton land for example – there we have potentially 120 to 130 holiday units that are in the correct zone [tourism] and will eventually be approved when a proposal comes up that is acceptable. There are an additional 20 or so units in the new Hotel Great Northern development and there will be more growth downtown when the sewage moratorium lifts next year. ‘The question we have to ask is how many tourists can we accommodate in Byron Bay. We can’t continue to increase the number of holiday units in Byron Bay. It might be that we are at or
Dads take a festive break
beyond a sustainable level right now.’ Mr Darney said that Council has received submissions from residents and property owners both in support of and in opposition to the ban on holiday letting in residential areas. Following Miranda Devine’s recent article in the Sun Herald criticising Byron Shire’s ap proach to holiday letting, Council has also received several letters from residents of other holiday areas asking David Gulpilil paints a word picture of his beloved Arnhemland for Cherokee elder, Rendal (Blue for details of solutions which Feather) White during a break at the Fatherhood festival at Bangalow last Saturday. Photo by Jeff Council has developed. ‘Happy Pappy’ Dawson
Tucker awarded damages over Echo article
Saturday Star proprietor and Byron Shire Councillor Ross Tucker has been awarded $125,000 damages over an article published in The Echo nearly six years ago. Acting Justice Patten described the article as ‘… merely a vehicle for Mr Fast Buck$ and The Echo, gratuitously, to make extremely derogatory and unsubstantiated allegations against The Echo’s competitor and its proprietor’. The article in question, titled ‘The Ethics of Journalism’, claimed Tucker had acted dishonourably in negotiations to settle a claim by a former employee, Leanne Potts. It also said Tucker was a domineering employer who belittled his employees, shouted at them and used obscene language. The article appeared in response to an editorial in the Saturday Star which Twenty parents, four teachers and sixty children took part in a huge blamed Potts for the paper’s temporary closure in 1999. and successful craft day at Wilsons Creek School on Thursday. This was shortly after Potts Pictured above is Jai Berrington with the peacock-like letter stand he made. Photo by Jeff ‘CRAFT is not an acronym’ Dawson succeeded in an industrial
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court claim that she had been underpaid $7042 by the newspaper’s proprietors, Tucker and Harold Ross. In a three week Supreme Court trial in May this year, The Echo and Fast Buck$ defended the allegations on the basis that they were true and that the paper acted reasonably in publishing them. Last week Acting Justice Patten entirely rejected the defences pleaded. The judge preferred Tucker’s version of events. He accepted unequivocally the evidence of Tucker’s wife Jennifer, his business partner Harold Ross, and Sue Gardiner, a former editor of The Star. He found all the allegations to be false and disagreed with a finding of the Chief Industrial Magistrate in 1999 that Potts had been employed full time at The Star. Patten determined that she had worked part time for three out of the four months she worked as a sales rep in 1997.
Acting Justice Patten said the defence faced two hurdles in establishing that Tucker acted dishonourably in negotiations to settle a claim for compensation by Potts. First, he was not personally involved in the negotiations – Ross was – and secondly nothing was owed personally by Tucker; it was the publishing company Comptran’s obligation, the judge said. Also, Patten said, The Star was in straitened financial circumstances and there were ‘legitimate reasons’ for delaying Potts’ payment. The judge empathised with Tucker’s ‘sense of injustice’ over the industrial magistrate’s decision and said this explained Tucker’s reluctance to pay Potts out of his own pocket. ‘I see no reason why he should have done so,’ Patten concluded. He accepted that Tucker had not been informed by Ross of the terms of the final agreement, $4000 plus
costs, adding, ‘I would be satisfied affirmatively that Mr Tucker, throughout the negotiations, acted with complete propriety to the limited extent that he was involved in them.’ Patten found no ‘sinister purpose’ in Tucker and Ross’s decision to cease weekly publication of The Star. With respect to the allegation that Tucker was a domineering employer who abuses his employees by belittling them and shouting at them and using obscene language, Patten found the evidence ‘scanty to the point of non-existence’. While the judge found that the offices of The Star were sometimes the scene of ‘robust arguments about work related issues’ this was a far cry from categorising Tucker as a domineering or abusive employer. He was satisfied that Tucker’s behaviour towards Potts was ‘impeccable’. continued on page 2