Letters Do you need legal advice?
SERVICE DIRECTORY SPOTLIGHT
SHE TILES
Female Wall & Floor Tiler _ over 10 years experience
Kitchens, bathrooms, laundries, tile repairs & waterproofing Leaking showers repaired & sealed NO JOB TOO SMALL )UHH TXRWHV FRQVXOWDWLRQV
Call Louise 0478 698 186
Lic. No. 216827C Because a woman understands excellence
See our ad every week in the Service Directory and on Echonetdaily echonetdaily.net.au
SBA
SMALL BUSINESS
ACCOUNTING
Your One Stop Accounting Shop Specialising in Bookkeeping and Accounting solutions for small business. BAS, Payroll, Rental Property Accounting, TAX Phone 0401 884 231 gail.rundle@sbaaccounting.com.au www.sbaaccounting.com.au
continued from page 11
Come R OLL and U P! R join OLL the c U P! ircus ! Have you ever imagined yourself scaling a pole, flying deftly through the air, hula-hooping more than one hoop or being part of a human pyramid? Check out the following classes!
-OST #LASSES 3/,$ /54 s %XTRA CLASSES ADDED 0ERFORMANCE TROUPE -IGHTLY -INIS ALL 3/,$ /54
Weekly Community Class Schedule &/2 4(% ,)44,% 0%/0,% Toddlinis: Babies & their parents Fri 9.30 A M Mini Noodles: 2-4yrs & their parents Mon 10 A M, Thu 9.30 A M Mini Macaronis: 4-5yrs & their parents Mon 11 A M, Thu 10.30 A M !$5,43 '%4 &)4 !.$ !#15)2% 3/-% '2%!4 #)2#53 3+),,3
ess
Tues: 10.30 A M–12.30 PM Exptrerest in ase ple Thurs: 11.30 A M–1.30 PM Suzy Leigh’s Adults Beginners: Mon 6PM & Fri 11.30AM NEW CLASS
#/--5.)49 #,!33%3 5-7 Girls/ Boys: Mon 3.30 PM SOLD OUT 5-7 Mixed: Thu 3.30 PM NEW CLASS 5-7 Girls Intermediate: Wed 3.30 PM 5-7 Boys Intermediate: Thu 3.30 PM 8-11 Girls: Mon 4.30 PM 8 -11 Girls Intermediate:Thu 4.30PM NEW TIME 8-11 Boys: Mon 3.30 PM 8 -11 Boys Intermediate: Mon 4.15 PM 12+ Boys: Mon 5 PM 12+ Boys: Thu 4.45 PM 12+ Girls: Mon 4 PM NEW TIME 12+ Girls Adv: Mon 4 PM, Thu 4 PM
Spaghetti Circus @ Mullum Showgrounds, Main Arm Road For more info check the website: spaghetticircus.org.au or phone 6684 3038
Watch the space ‘The Last Stand’ performance troupe show COMING SOON 0RVW RXWVWDQGLQJ VKRZ DW WKH 1DWLRQDO &LUFXV )HVWLYDO q 7KX r6DW 0DUFK SP 6DW 0DUFK SP 12 February 19, 2013 The Byron Shire Echo
Code of conduct up for review
+ $800 = $892… a big price for just a few km over the limit. Driver beware, the system is It was Council’s executive out to get you! manager of organisational Radha Kate Koch support Shannon McKelvey Ocean Shores who initiated a code of conduct complaint against Jan Screwing the forests Barham. It took about a year Took a look at Forests NSW to resolve and wasted a large new ‘corporatised’ website, the but undisclosed amount of graphics of which mirror new ratepayers’ funds. Not only signage now being seen in re- was the complaint unsuccessgional areas. These signs and ful, but looking at the objecwebsite promoting forests for tive facts it never had any active recreation with lots of chance of success. bikes and stuff like shooting The gist of McKelvey’s comand ‘fun’ totally omit any men- plaint was that Jan had been tion of forests being areas for ‘abusive’ towards a junior staff of wildlife and the passive ap- member, who got very upset after a telephone conversation preciation of scenic beauty. It’s interesting to see how about Australia Day presentablatantly the gearing up for the tions a couple of years ago. The commercial industrial uses of clinchers in this case were that our forests now is under the the staff member herself said O’Farrell government. The that ‘abusive’ was too strong a website glowingly talks about word and that Jan had a witcarbon solutions from forests ness to the conversation while and opportunities for investors the staff member didn’t. In othin renewable tradable energy er words the complaint could products while the usual rant never succeed. I mention this because the about wood left to decompose on forest floors being not good new code of conduct is curas CO2 storage indicates the rently up for public comment. total disregard of forest ecology by state Forests NSW and to get their dirty hands off our highlights the ignorance which forests. There is also no mention addresses forestry manageof forests as homes of wildlife ment in NSW at this point in and their role in preserving time. biodiversity as well as being Coupled with the attack on our forests by coal-seam gas buffers to national parks and and coal miners, it is time the nature reserves. The blatant omission of people of NSW stood up and these latter values is a sign that told the O’Farrell government our state forests will become degraded and badly managed areas where guns and bikes are allowed to run amok through the environment with no regard for the wildlife that live there and no regard for those who want to use our forests for passive recreation.
The state government has mandated that the new model code must be adopted in its basic form by March 1(!), but Council is free to add further provisions if it wants to. McKelvey’s report to Council pushes hard for adoption of the basic model but provides no examples of other clauses that might be added. It is not the role of staff members of course to push a particular agenda but staff can shape the information provided to councillors so that they arrive at the outcome that staff think is best (all council staff do this, of course, because they reckon they’re the real rulers of the Shire, while elected councillors are inconvenient morons they just have to put up with. I have some sympathy with this view). The code of conduct is important because after two breaches you can be disqualified as a councillor or sacked as a staff member. It is also of course important as a weapon to be used to stress your
opponents and distract them from their job and undermine their morale. As I see it the new code must contain a clause that punishes anyone who abuses the process for such ulterior purposes, or wastes Council resources in the process. I’ll conclude with a silly question, a very silly question indeed: how many of your elected councillors not only read the new model code but also compared it with the old code to see what the state government had in their wisdom changed? How silly is that; the mayor was too busy waffling on about ‘the economics of happiness’ while the deputy mayor was too busy arranging for street campers to be marched out of town at gunpoint, the environment to be trashed on rural properties and rock walls to be subsidised for the millionaires in Belongil.
the anti-CG campaign that did the community consultation and determined that CSG was utterly unwanted here. A few politicians have heeded the research, among them Justine Elliot (Member for Richmond), the mayors of Byron, Lismore and Tweed, and Janelle Saffin (Member for Page). How odd that Thomas George has said nothing. Geoff Provest has also been uncharacteristically silent. Where are our elected state representatives and how do they explain the huge police presence that we are paying for? Mr George and Mr M Mizzi Provest, you are selling out Byron Bay your constituents. When might we see you at the Doubtful Creek protest? And on which Barry’s happy snaps I didn’t know whether to laugh side of the police line? or cry at Backlash’s extraorPat Miller dinary photograph of Barry Byrrill Creek O’Liar & co in their red Tshirts emblazoned with ‘Wa- Subsidising the beach ter Not Coal’. My shock at Council’s meeting on February the breathtaking effrontery of 14 saw a shift in our approach these shysters is only exceeded to the ‘Byron Bay Embayment’ by the realisation that people – and whether to armour the actually keep voting for them! dunes with rocks before the It’d be tautological to say that Coastal Management Plan O’Liar gives politicians a bad is completed. That plan will name! But at least you can be- determine our long-term aplieve the Greens – as the only proach. Meantime, temporary political party to oppose coal- short-term protection works seam gas fracking – that they can be undertaken. None of will follow through with what the current armouring in the they say pre-election. Embayment is deemed up to Sue Vader the standard of long-term proWilsons Creek tection. Chinks in the existing armour are clearly visible – Most MPs are absent walk the beaches (at low tide). You can tell where the prioriTo date, Council has built ties of the O’Farrell govern- temporary short-term protecment lie – in making money tion using ‘geo-bags’, the giant by protecting Metgasco. sandbags you see these days on The sledgehammer approach Belongil Beach. Private landby police detailed to protect the holders have built rock walls in CSG drilling rigs is prohibi- the past. Under current rules, tively expensive and flies in the they are also allowed to build face of the ‘Lock the Gate’ cam- temporary short-term works paign carefully implemented after applying to the state govin the northern rivers. It was ernment for permission.
A report on February 14 asked Council to note 1) continuance of the approach set in 2011 by the previous Council; 2) that hardware options are being considered; and 3) that landowners at Belongil have recently lobbied Council to buy cheap rocks from Baulderstone, who are excavating for the current Pacific Highway upgrade including its tunnel. Those three elements were passed by Council along with two further parts: that Council buy the rocks and that it prepare applications for placing the rocks at Belongil. The motion was successful, five votes to four. The new Council appears to be planning a retreat from ‘Planned Retreat’, which has been Council’s position on coastal management since the 1980s. Under planned retreat, landholders had clarity that there would be little or no government help. They simply had to move on if the sea came too close to their buildings. Protecting such land would be positive from an owner’s perspective but government agreeing to protect a coast permanently includes the cost of repairs to such hardware for the rest of eternity. On a retreating coast that cost grows with time so that future generations foot the bill for what may eventually become an island, like Venice. It’s clearly unsustainable. Worse than that, rocks on a retreating coast mean you lose the beach (and isn’t that why we live here). Anyway, if you have an opinion, 2013 is the year to speak up.
<echowebsection=Letters>
Fast Buck$
Coorabell Q Edited for length and
lawyers
Cr Duncan Dey
Mullumbimby Q The resolution described
in this letter is subject to a rescission motion, to be heard on February 28 – Ed.
www.echo.net.au