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THE TWEED Volume 2 #34 Thursday, May 6, 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
Q LOCAL & INDEPENDENT
Creekside estate plans lodged Luis Feliu
Students love all that jazz Getting in the mood this week for next month’s combined schools music workshop were (left to right): trumpeter Cassie Challinor (Wollumbin High), tuba player Conor O’Loghlin (Mt St Patrick College), saxophonist Martha Baartz (conservatorium band member), guitarist Brent Vincent (Murwillumbah High), violinist Zan Koh (Mt St Patrick College), Brisbane Conservatorium/Griffith University lecturer John Hoffman (holding Martha’s son Jacamo) and music teacher/ jazz club member Peter McLaughlin. The Tweed Valley Jazz Club has been conducting annual workshops for primary and high school students for 14 years, with this year’s to be held on Tuesday, June 1, at Murwillumbah Civic Centre auditorium from 10am-noon. John Hoffman will bring along his 17-piece Conservatorium big band, the Conartists. Jazz club members and guests welcome free of charge. For info call 6677 1365 after 7pm. Photo Jeff ’Base Bass’ Dawson
No review tabled, but rally gears up Richard Johns
Rally organisers have confirmed the controversial race will make a return to the Northern Rivers in 2011, even though a state government-commissioned report on last year’s event has not yet been made public or even presented to state Parliament. After the sport’s governing body, the FIA, finally announced late last week that Australia would be on the calendar for 2011, Rally Australia chairman, Alan Evans, said he was ‘delighted’ and ‘we are now well into
our planning for the event.’ ‘We look forward to working with the NSW government, local councils and Events NSW to ensure the rally is as good as last year’s,’ he said, adding that the rally would take place in northern NSW. Plans would include expansion of some stages and include new areas, he said in a brief statement. A report into the rally was written into special legislation hurriedly passed by the state government last year, and ordered by Ian Macdonald, the minister still responsible for ‘ma-
jor events’ in the state. A cost-benefit analysis of the event has still not been revealed, despite claims by some before the rally took place that it could generate $30 million over the duration of five races until 2017, the date locked in for support by Events NSW. The man commissioned to do the independent report for the state government, Mike Cahill of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC), told The Echo: ‘I have delivered the Repco rally review report to the government. I understand they are continued on page 3
Hastings Point residents are ready to fight another controversial development planned to be built alongside the coastal village’s fragile estuary. This time it’s a 39-lot housing/tourist estate. The plans for the development of the contentious Lot 156 Creek Street site, which has a checkered history of clashes between developers, residents and council, were quietly lodged with the state planning department and Tweed Shire Council last month. The state planning minister has the final say on the development under planning legislation for major coastal developments, but council also has to assess it. Neighbours of the 17-hectare site have clashed with the site’s landowner over the years against plans to build a housing estate on the flood-prone land, as well as fencing they say is illegal. The fencing prevents locals’ access to Christies Creek, which runs into Cudgera Creek. The developer Walter Elliot Holdings has lodged the plans for the 39lot subdivision with further tourism allotments through Planit Consulting, who said in their report that just over 12 hectares would be dedicated as public environmental land. The project would ‘respect the low density character of the Hastings Point village’ and rehabilitate previously degraded natural areas. But residents long opposed to any sort of development along the tidal creek, which they say is already under severe stress from upstream and surrounding development, are sceptical of the claims and gearing up to fight the proposal. Creek Street resident Julie Boyd
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said the arguments put forward by the developer for the creekside Crown land was ‘the ultimate in cynical opportunism’. ‘More than seven hectares of the land now claimed by these owners was stolen from the Cudgera Creek estuary, Crown Land which is owned by the whole community,’ Ms Boyd said. ‘The current connections to Lot 156, Creek Street are frantically mowing native flora and building fences which are damaging native animals, and stopping them from reaching the estuary, all the while claiming that they are the most environmentally friendly people in Hastings Point. ‘Just how stupid do they think resident owners, neighbours, councillors and council staff are?’
Fencing for dogs The developer has also lodged a DA for the fencing erected recently which sparked residents’ complaints over flooding, access and wildlife impacts, saying it was needed to stop the pet dogs of the site’s caretaker from wandering into neighbours’ yards. The caretaker lives on a newly-built house approved contentiously some years ago by council’s building section. The developer’s consultant said a further reason for the 1.2-metre wire meshing and star picket fence separating the neighbours from the site was to ‘prevent the public entering the site from the wetlands in the north east corner of the site or from adjoining properties’ as ‘many people have been witnessed paddling craft on higher tides through this break in the mangroves to the edge of the riparian zone and then entering the proponent’s site’. continued on page 3