Tweed Echo – Issue 2.31 – 15/04/2010

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THE TWEED Volume 2 #31 Thursday, April 15, 2010 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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LOCAL & INDEPENDENT

Rally’s future in hands of FIA Richard Johns

US official reminded of green green grass of home US Consul General Judith Fergin, centre, was welcomed to the Tweed by shire civic leaders on Tuesday at an afternoon tea at the Tweed River Art Gallery, which included gallery ‘neighbours’, former deputy prime minister Doug Anthony, left, and his wife Margot, right, who donated the land the gallery sits on. Photo Jeff ‘Deputy Dog’ Dawson Luis Feliu

US Consul General Judith Fergin emphasised the binding ties and friendship between Australia and the US when she was welcomed to the Tweed for the first time at a function at the Tweed River Art Gallery on Tuesday this week. Around 60 invited guests including civic leaders, councillors, businesspeople and school representatives, attended the afternoon tea with mayor Warren Polglase officiating after a traditional welcome to country by Aunty Kath Lena. Mrs Fergin, who was appointed to her Sydney-based position in 2007 and is the senior US representative to NSW and Queensland, said she was ‘stunned’ by the Tweed’s magnificent scenery, which reminded her of her home town, Falmouth in Maine, one

of the oldest settlements in the US. She said she felt ‘spiritually and geographically at home’ when she first arrived and had ‘no idea how absolutely gorgeous this part of world is’. The consul general is on a meetand-greet tour to promote the links and alliance between the US and Australia ‘to find out what Australians are thinking and feeling’ about the relationship.

‘A great deal of history’ ‘It’s much better to get out and meet the people this way, than from the 58th floor of MLC Centre in Sydney,’ she quipped. Mrs Fergin said the two countries shared ‘a great deal of history’ and continued to have a strong friendship and bonds. She said the two nations were ‘proud of our democracies’ and ‘shared our

traders, gold miners, settlers, scientists, citizens, baseball players, astronauts and film stars’. Both were ‘committed to freedom’ but continued to have ‘separate and conjoined strategic interests’. She said that this link was evident from the day Captain Cook sailed on to Australian shores with the ship Endeavour containing three Americans. As for president Barak Obama’s impending visit to Australia and a lighthearted proposal for him to visit the Tweed, Mrs Fergin said she could not speak on behalf of the White House but the ‘folks in the embassy’ in Canberra were well aware of the Tweed’s interest in the visit, but he was more likely to ‘fly overhead at low altitude’. The consul general was later given a driving tour of the shire and attended a dinner hosted by the South Tweed Rotary Club.

The future of the World Rally Championship returning to Tweed in 2011 is in doubt. Despite the NSW Government claiming to have locked the event in, and the result of a community-wide consultation and economic impact statement being awaited, the real decision on whether Rally Australia returns here takes place behind closed doors on the other side of the world at the end of this week. Motor sport’s governing body, the Paris-based FIA, is due to decide on which countries will host WRC competition rounds tomorrow (Friday), but it has been in dispute with holders to the television and commercial rights, a group called North One Sport.

Promoter against Aus-NZ rotation of the event According to website Sportbusiness, event promoter North One Sport was against the idea of events being ‘rotated’. Currently Australia hosts the rally in odd years and New Zealand in even years. Sportbusiness reported that Morrie Chandler, president of the FIA’s World Rally Championship Commission, said he knew North One didn’t want rotation. ‘I don’t hold that rotation is the solution, but I do see a small portion of rotation as, perhaps, meeting the needs of some countries and adding variety. I’ve had this debate with North One and they’ve got good business reasons about why they don’t want to do that and I can understand that,’ he is reported as saying.

This follows the announcement late last year by Rally Australia that because of uncertainty over the continuation of the event it was not renewing the contracts of three key members of the team that had planned the Tweed/ Kyogle event. A letter signed by Graham Fountain, then chief executive officer of the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport (CAMS), last November also made it quite clear there was no guarantee the event would come back here.

‘If and when’ ‘If and when Australia’s position on the 2011 WRC calendar is secured, we will then be in a position to re-instigate an appropriate organisational structure to manage our ongoing arrangements in this regard. A number of changes to the Rally Australia board will also occur during this period,’ he wrote. Mr Fountain resigned from CAMS this February, taking effect from April 1, effectively leaving the organisation rudderless. He is now head of the Metropolitan Fire and Emergency Services Board in Melbourne. Tweed Shire Council general manager Mike Rayner is a director on the Rally Australia board and refused to resign when issues of a potential conflict of interest were raised by councillors Katie Milne and Joan van Lieshout. As if the organisers of future world rally events in Australia didn’t have enough problems, it has emerged that the New Zealand Government is lobbying hard to have that country secure nest year’s event. The worldmotorsportnews webcontinued on page 2

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