Why we have consultation
I AM astounded how politicians and planners get it into their heads that they can ignore public opinion to push through developments that could just need to be adapted after proper community consultation so that society and the environment are protected.
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A case in point is the attempt by Newcastle City Council to wreck the wonderfully successful Regal Cinema. Five hundred people turned up to the council meeting on Tuesday to fight for its survival.
Then there was the Liberal state government pushing their Greater Newcastle Regional Plan with nearly all the focus areas in Newcastle city. Cardiff and Glendale were added as an after-thought. Where is the rest of the Hunter region?
Finally, Lake Macquarie City Councillors and planners continue to ignore the 500 people at the Toronto public meeting that basically asked that council strongly reconsider the bulk of their planned six-storey building on the lake’s edge in Bath Street.
These people are not naysayers or anti-development. (Six other apartment buildings are going up in Toronto anyway.) They are just citizens who elected these people who employ their planners to develop their community, but to protect the lake environment as well.
- Stephen Dewar, Toronto
Let down by light rail
CONGRATULATIONS must be in order for the arrival of the Newcastle light rail. Only four years without any viable transport so far.
This is a tad contrary to the former transport minister’s promises that the heavy rail replacement would be costed and operational before demolishing the four-minute journey from Wickham to Newcastle.
The four-minute journey from Wickham to Newcastle by heavy rail is to be extended to nearly 20 minutes so I can play a few games on my iPad while on the proposed light rail. I get all that exercise walking from the eastern terminus in the middle of Scott Street to my ultimate destination.
The government legal team must have appreciated the $1 million spent to prove that cutting 2 kilometres of rail line is not cutting a rail line.
It’s pleasing to hear that plans are in hand for the western extensions of the light rail, as promised to the Shooters and Fishers, to be done by 2014.
I imagine that the business people along the proposed route are excited beyond comprehension.
- George Paris, Rathmines
Train guards essential
THE state government’s latest proposal to do away with guards on the Newcastle to Sydney train service is absolute madness, and all in the name of saving money at the expense of the safety of paying passengers.
It’s just another example of the government’s poor decisions including privatising Newcastle’s buses, ordering trains from overseas that don’t fit our tracks, and making passengers on the new trains face backwards on long trips. The list goes on.
- Ian King, Warners Bay
Engineering challenge
GIVEN the civilised world’s focus on waste, it’s high time that engineers and realists began providing and producing factories and industries to receive recyclable materials and turning them into modern, reusable products – instead of us sending these materials overseas.
Sending these materials off to China is not the answer. The new catchphrase is ‘Reduce. Reuse. Recycle’. If you like, it’s the three Rs.
Initially, governments should be encouraging engineers to come up with alternative products to timber, made from recyclable materials. Additionally, these timber alternatives should be fire retardant to deter vandalism.
Can and will governments offer grants to assist promising exponents of the three Rs?
- Alec Howard, Rathmines