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THE TWEED SHIRE Volume 1 #42 Thursday, June 25, 2009 Advertising and news enquiries: Phone: (02) 6672 2280 Fax: (02) 6672 4933 editor@tweedecho.com.au adcopy@tweedecho.com.au www.tweedecho.com.au
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PAGES 12 & 13
LOCAL & INDEPENDENT
Rally goes ahead subject to review Luis Feliu
Tweed and Kyogle Shire councils may be given some power to review the controversial world rally after the first event with the inclusion of an amendment in the special legislation pushed through state parliament yesterday to enable the event to go ahead in September. Details of the the Motor Sports (World Rally Championship) Bill 2009 were unveiled when the bill was passed by the Upper House late on Tuesday night and was set to be approved by the Lower House yesterday (Wednesday). Both Tweed MP Geoff Provest and Lismore MP Thomas George, whose seat covers many of the rally stages including Murwillumbah, were yesterday set to vote for the legislation in the Lower House now the review or sunset clause has been included.
Democracy ‘dumped on’ But Greens North Coast MLC Ian Cohen, who voted against it, said the special legislation had been a fait accompli which ‘well and truly dumped on the democratic process’. Mr Provest claimed credit for the amendment on ABC Radio yesterday morning which infuriated his National Party colleague Mr George. ‘I’m absolutely disgusted, he [Mr Provest] was going to cross the floor on this and it was me who pushed for it, yet he gets all the glory,’ he told The Echo. ‘He was definitely against it, yet I did the work with our Upper House bloke, Duncan Gay, to get it in and pushed for council and community to be covered, then he tries to get the credit. I’ve made it clear all the way where I stood and never made a song
and dance about it like he did’. Mr Cohen said the legislation ‘turns off key environment and land use planning legislation and takes away common law rights’. ‘The Bill overrides the National Parks and Wildlife Act, the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, the Threatened Species Conservation Act, the Forestry Act, the Water Management Act, the Fisheries Management Act and the Local Government Act.’
‘Much better outcome’ Mr Provest, on the other hand, who took all credit for the amendment in a press release, said it was ‘a much better outcome because it gives local people a say’ in that the law compelled state development minister Ian Macdonald to conduct a formal review of the rally after the first event in September. ‘Specifically, the Minister will be required “to ensure that the review includes consultation with the local community of the Northern Rivers region, Kyogle Council and Tweed Shire Council” and report back to Parliament,’ he said. Mr George said earlier in the week that he would support the legislation as long as it provided the opportunity for councils to review it after the first rally. Lawyers from the Environmental Defender’s Office (EDO) Northern Rivers say the rally bill ‘runs a red light on democracy’ and it has ‘no liability on the part of rally organisers for nuisance claims, so if your property is damaged, you cannot sue for compensation’. The legislation approves five events every second year till 2017 with an option for another five till 2027
Photo Jeff Dawson
Brotherly love inspires brushwork Roxanne Millar
Banora Point’s Ashleigh Blake (pictured) isn’t like most teenage girls with three boisterous younger brothers competing for attention at home. When she faced her toughest artistic challenge, instead of avoiding her brothers, she turned to them for inspiration, immortalising them in a painting chosen for a major exhibition. The 19-year-old former Kingscliff High School student painted portraits of her brothers Harrison,14, Joshua, 9, and Riley, 6, for her major HSC artwork last year. It has since been selected for the HSC art exhibition Artexpress, which travels around NSW displaying work by the best of 2008’s grade 12 artists. Only 310 out of almost 10,000 art students had work selected for the exhibition and only 65 of those students’ continued on page 2 works will be on display at the Tweed
River Regional Art Gallery from today (Thursday). Ashleigh predicts her eldest brother Harrison will be a little embarrassed by the painting, considering his efforts to avoid sitting for a portrait. ‘He didn’t like it at all so I really had to chase him around with the camera to get something to work with,’ she said.
‘He’s a little model’ ‘My youngest brother was much better, he has heaps of character and lots of facial expressions – he’s a little model.’ It was her brothers’ unique characters that Ashleigh hoped to capture for the public to ‘show people who don’t know them what they are like’. To achieve this, she captured each boy’s face separate from their body, with each body depicted performing one of the boy’s hobbies. ‘By having no head I allowed the
audience to (see) a person who had an outer character, shown in the body, completed with an inner character depicted in the variety of facial expressions,’ she said. ‘I really wanted to work with my family because I know them so well, which lets me put more emotion in my work.’ Ashleigh has since graduated from high school and is studying occupational therapy at Southern Cross University in Tweed Heads. She hasn’t picked up a paintbrush since the monumental HSC piece. ‘I really want to get back into it and I will because I have realised there is something missing in me and that I can’t be happy if I’m not painting.’ Former Murwillumbah High School HSC student Joe Miller’s selfportrait ‘Who Am I’ was the second Tweed entry in Artexpress, showing at the Tweed River Regional Art Gallery from June 25 to August 9.
NOW OPEN IN KINGSCLIFF