Letters
Saddling up Local group Friends of The Saddle Road was surprised to read about Kelvin Daly’s ‘ambitious plan’ (‘New eco-village model unveiled’) in last week’s Echo and looks forward to learning more when the website goes up. ‘Community’ being one of the principles upon which the proposed development is based, the dearth of consultation with the existing Saddle Road community sits uneasily. Rosy Whelan Friends of The Saddle Road
Bypass agendas It is absolutely extraordinary and just plain brutal that Council general manager Ken Gainger should now propose, on the eve of securing approval for his Butler Street bypass, a rail corridor concept plan to ‘unlock the potential of the railway corridor for the
community’. The Butler Street Community Network has been campaigning for years to secure the rail corridor for the town’s much-needed traffic and transport needs but Council continually resisted, putting up unfounded objections, lazy excuses and misleading information to deny the possibility. Now we have this absurd proposal to ram a main road through critical wetland, heritage neighbourhood and busy pedestrian market precinct while we reforest, landscape and commercialise our adjacent purpose-built infrastructure corridor. Something quite irrational appears to be happening here if you were not privy to the real agenda, which is the rail trail takeover of the corridor. The rail trail has the backing of Council’s general manager and Don Page, the for-
mer local member and now chairman of Regional Development Australia Northern Rivers. The rail trail business plan seeks exclusive control over the rail corridor; they will not share the Byron Bay stretch with a bypass road because they seek to maximise commercial return from the likes of Ken Gainger’s pop-up cafes, boutiques, shops and so much more. What we are left with is a very expensive bypass that is not a bypass, a rail corridor developed solely as a further tourist attraction and destruction of our side of town with the very real possibility of wholesale commercialisation of Butler Street as locals sell out and move on. If our mayor has no regrets, then one has to wonder. Simon Richardson again rolls out the old chestnut that Council would have lost its
Letters to the Editor Send to Letters Editor Michael McDonald, fax: 6684 1719 email: editor@echo.net.au Deadline: Noon, Friday. Letters longer than 200 words may be cut. Letters already published in other papers will not be considered. Please include your full name, address and phone number for verification purposes.
agent spying on his friends and comrades. His benign appearance hides a dark and duplicitous past. Bruce C Hartnett Alphington VIC
bypass funding if they rightly realised the superiority of the rail corridor route. This is a completely misleading statement. We have examined the Strategic Business Case made to Transport for NSW for funding of the bypass project. In no case was the funding made conditional to the Butler Street bypass route; in fact it was clearly stated that ‘further options for development continue so that a preferred option can be further refined and implemented’ and that there was no ‘recommended option’. It is all smoke and mirrors, they say, but we see right through them. Paul Jones President, Butler Street Community Network
Q Mr Dunstan’s account of his
ASIO involvement is at http:// bit.ly/DunstanASIO – Ed
TPP dangers While the political pundits debated which arm of the LibLab Party would win government it is easy, in the circus excitement, to forget who, increasingly, holds real sovereignty over Australia: corporate America. Obama pushes for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) while Hillary Clinton nominally opposes it. It is likely the TPP will slide through Congress in the interregnum between the presidential election in November and the inauguration of the new presidency in January. Once ratified in America it will quickly come before our parliament for ratification. We will be expected to fall into line – as, alas, we always do: pushovers. The Liberal and Labor parties both give unqualified support for this ‘agreement’. The TPP is specifically designed to drain sovereignty from national governments and their citizens and syphon it to trans-national corporations. Central to the TPP are Investor-State Dispute Settlement provisions (ISDS). These allow corporations to sue governments for, among other things, loss of anticipated profits in circumstances where, but for legislation intended to serve national interests, social conditions or
Congratulations, Ken Gainger. Support for the future use of the corridor for rail is very important for the region. This may not prevent other uses, if compatible. The short-term push for other uses, if they will preclude rail, is not in the longterm interest of Byron Shire! Roger Seccombe Bangalow
Q
Dunstan’s past I am a visitor from Melbourne to your wonderful Shire. I read with interest the article in the July 6 edition describing Graeme Dunstan as a ‘veteran anti-war activist’. I remember Graeme from the late 60s from our mutual involvement in the student movement and the anti-war campaign. What I didn’t know then, but do now as a result of his own admissions in his blog, is that Graeme was also an ASIO
THE
policies, profits would have been greater. Cases brought by corporations would be heard and decided, not in national courts but in secretive tribunals run by gun-for-hire arbitrators and inaccessible to community-interest organisations. This tedious, backroom stuff presents a very real and substantial threat to Australian society as we know it. Two critical issues are Medicare and gun control. Once the TPP becomes the head policy document of the economy, American ‘health care’ (joke term) corporations will infiltrate our society to replace a shrivelling Medicare and public hospital system. Public health care in Australia will become second-rate and vestigial. We will be thoroughly screwed by American health profiteers. And can there be any doubt American gun makers and dealers would love to Americanise our gun laws? After all, only Australian laws stand between them and anticipated mega-profits. What better than the TPP to kick our laws down? Unless Labor finds the guts to oppose this insidious agreement only concerted community action and a refractory senate, where the Greens might find themselves voting with Pauline Hanson, will stop the TPP coming into force in Australia. Adrian Gattenhof Mullumbimby
Green failures Tom Tabart’s modesty in declining my attempt to enlist him – or anyone really – to replace Richardson as Greens mayoral candidate (Letters, continued on next page
RAILS
THE RAILWAY FRIENDLY BAR, BYRON BAY 6685 7662 • therailsbyronbay.com
AND THE FAMOUS
RAILS kitchen
Thursday 14 July
GEOFF TURNBULL Friday 15 July
KELLIE KNIGHT & THE DAZE Saturday 16 July
LUKE MORRIS BAND Sunday 17 July
CHRIS COOK BAND Monday 18 July
STEPHEN LOVELIGHT Tuesday 19 July
LEIGH JAMES
Wednesday 20 July
SCOTT DAY-VEE North Coast news daily: www.echonetdaily.net.au
The Byron Shire Echo July 13, 2016 9