Man loses pride and joy

A TWEED Heads South resident awoke to find his pride and joy set ablaze on Tuesday, February 28, in a suspected vandalism attack.

The man said it was about 3am in the morning when he discovered his SsangYong four-wheel drive.

“Someone set my car on fire last night at 3am, the fire brigade and police showed up pretty quick but it was too late to save her, pretty frustrated about it,” the man, whose name has been withheld, posted online.

Tweed Police and Tweed Heads Fire and Rescue were called to the scene to extinguish the blaze and investigate the cause. Sadly the vehicle was not insured.

By Jonathon Howard

PARKING AT the new Tweed Valley Hospital will be completely free for patients and visitors when it opens around November this year.

It’s a promise that Member for Tweed Geoff Provest fought hard to win and at one point even threatened to go independent.

“We went to the election and promised free car parking and we have delivered free parking at the new hospital,” he told The Weekly.

There were some initial concerns that the parking model would fee-based, as was reported in 2021, but Mr Provest said he wanted to maintain the new hospital’s commitment to “wellness first”.

“My argument was that it was placing further pressure on patients and family members to pay for their visits,” he said.

“However, I believe the focus should be on getting better and on wellness. Paying for parking and having the meter running does not help with health outcomes.

“If you’ve ever been to Gold Coast University Hospital you know the paid parking model is exorbitant and causes extra stress to families.”

Mr Provest stressed that there is still ample parking for the 1,200-hospital staff in their own dedicated parking lot.

“We have many parking spaces at Tweed Valley Hospital, and we have future-proofed the site to expand with further parking capacity,” he said.

Mr Provest said he was so passionate about the free parking model at Tweed Valley Hospital, he threatened to go independent if it wasn’t made free.

“I felt that strongly about the wellness model within the new hospital and that removing the burden on families of paid parking was my top priority,” he said.

By Yvonne Gardiner

PUT SIMPLY, the state’s infrastructure supports its residents’ quality of life.

We need adequate infrastructure for access to clean drinking water, food, health care, communications systems, education, housing and essential services.

The decisions about what to build and how much to spend on infrastructure projects are never easy ones for state governments to make.

In recent years, floods in the Tweed Shire have made these decisions even harder, with repairs to existing infrastructure costing millions of dollars. Roads, bridges, dams, the water and sewer systems, railways, public transport, the power grid — infrastructure enables the economy to function and impacts the lives of all of us.

The Weekly asked Tweed and Lismore candidates in the upcoming NSW Election how they would improve our infrastructure.

Tweed

Susie Hearder (Animal Justice Party)

With the climate crisis upon us, it’s time to prioritise the consideration of nature, wildlife and ecological sustainability in all planning processes. We need to minimise urban sprawl, have biodiversity — sensitive urban design and preserve, plant and protect trees to provide essential shade, habitat and food.

Infrastructure also needs to give equal access to all the community and consider companion animals.

We need to ensure there are no new developments built on flood-prone land (raising land creates problems elsewhere), including a proposed greyhound racing facility at Chinderah.

Animal lives should not be put at risk on floodplains and also need shade and shelter.

We continue to build roads through habitat and lose too much wildlife on the roads. We need wildlife-friendly roads with underpasses, overpasses, animal-friendly exclusion fencing and/or virtual fencing, and built around habitat and wildlife corridors not through them.

It is time to put the environment above economics for the health of us all in line with the precautionary principle (emphasises caution, pausing and review before leaping into new innovations that may prove disastrous).

No more flooding of habitat for dams or exhaustive extraction of groundwater reserves and reduce harmful mining.

Buildings need to be resilient and built with climate-sensitive design, renewable energy and water capture. Protect water quality and habitat by protecting all our waterways as wildlife corridors.

Bring back rail and connect to the Gold Coast rather than rip it up. Public transport needs to be accessible to all the community including pets.

Unlike the Murwillumbah school merger, it is paramount to have community consultation, and to engage First Nations people. We will continue to advocate for all species under our current appalling planning regime. Puppy farms and other intensive animal agriculture facilities harm animals, the environment and public amenity and are a biosecurity risk and need to end.

Geoff Provest (Nationals)

There is a one billion-dollar difference between the NSW Liberal and Nationals Government and the Labor Party when it comes to Tweed infrastructure.

That is a lot of money. I secured $720 million to build the biggest hospital ever built outside Sydney, and it will open this year. At the last election, Mr and Mrs Labor pledged to block this development.

I have helped deliver about $200 million to upgrade Kingscliff TAFE and schools across the Tweed electorate while the Labor Party is busy trying to stop school upgrades.

I have worked with my colleague, NSW Labor MP for Lismore Janelle Saffin, and Tweed Shire Council to deliver millions of extra dollars to fix Tweed Shire roads after the floods, while the federal Labor Party MP and her government refused to participate despite the dire need.

If you want safer roads and better infrastructure in the Tweed, there is overwhelming evidence that your best bet is to just vote 1 Geoff Provest. I’m focused on putting Tweed and regional NSW first while Labor is focused on politics first.

Craig Elliot (Labor)

Geoff Provest and his boss Dominic Perrottet have sold off $90 billion in public infrastructure including roads, buildings and even our electricity assets. This has caused the current cost of living crisis that is hurting Tweed seniors, pensioners and families.

To help address this, a Minns Labor Government will stop the privatisation madness and instead invest and build state-owned infrastructure.

An important part of this will be Labor creating a NSW Energy Security Corporation. This will be a state-owned body that will accelerate investment in renewable energy infrastructure to deliver cleaner and more reliable energy that will help to keep the lights on in Tweed.

Unlike Geoff Provest, Labor will save our four schools at Murwillumbah. We will be keeping these schools open and will build a new high school at Pottsville. This is a long-needed piece of educational infrastructure required for the growing families of the Tweed Roads are critical infrastructure, and Tweed drivers know our roads are in serious disrepair. One of Geoff Provest’s key 2019 election promises was to transfer 15,000km of local regional roads back to the state. The Nationals won the election, but the promise was worthless.

Since then, zero kilometres of NSW regional roads have been transferred back to the state. It’s another broken promise by this old and tired government.

Further evidence of the failures of Geoff Provest and his tired government are in the NRMA’s ‘Fix Our Broken Roads’ 2020-21 report. The NRMA found that the funding backlog to fix NSW regional roads had ballooned to $1.5 billion.

This NRMA report confirms what locals know — that since 2011 Geoff Provest has used his vote in parlia- ment to send your taxes to be spent on Sydney toll roads, tunnels and motorways at the expense of Tweed locals. Geoff has had a go, it’s time for a fresh start. It’s time to vote for a new Labor government.

Ciara Denham (Greens)

We have a strong and resilient community in Tweed. We know that last year’s floods were a warning sign of the impact that climate change can have on our infrastructure.

Tweed needs to have long-term solutions for our infrastructure. Our roads, water systems and community infrastructure need to sustain against extreme weather events. Building back stronger is key, but I also will continue to advocate for Tweed not building new infrastructure in flood zones.

This infrastructure resilience adaptation will be funded through introducing a climate disaster levy on coal exports, with over $7 billion per year going towards a Climate Recovery and Transformation Fund. This fund will allow the Tweed to invest in community and individual infrastructure to become climate-resilient.

Tweed also has unmatched natural biodiversity, and I will continue to advocate for ecologically sustainable development in order to protect this. This means when making infrastructure planning decisions, the health, diversity and productivity of the environment must be maintained or enhanced for future generations. Conserving diversity and ecological integrity is fundamental and these values must not be traded away. Nature must no longer be seen as inexhaustible and free to be exploited.