IT S
Volume 3 #23 Thursday, February 17, 2011 Advertising and news enquiries: Phone: (02) 6672 2280 editor@tweedecho.com.au adcopy@tweedecho.com.au www.tweedecho.com.au
S N
THE TWEED
UTIO L O
PAGE 11
LOCAL & INDEPENDENT
Residents ‘bullied’ by legal threat Luis Feliu
State surf titles launched
Junior and senior members of the Cudgen Headland Surf Life Saving Club pose at last Thursday’s media launch of the NSW Surf Life Saving Championships. The second largest surf carnival on the national calendar will be held from March 11 to 20. Photo Jeff ‘Reel Life’ Dawson
but after a lengthy bid process, council’s proposal edged out bids from several other councils in the state. Tony Haven, president of Surf Life Saving NSW, outlined the massive logistical undertaking the event involves, but said the Far North Coast Branch of Surf Life Saving and the Cudgen Headland club and its members were more than capable of meeting the challenge. ‘The state championships has been a hugely popular and successful event over the last few years; they are key to developing the rescue and safety skills of members of the state’s surf clubs and that is why major sponsorship by Allphones brings significant benefits to our organisation,’ he said. Cudgen Headland club president, Gary Cain, said his members were
The upcoming NSW Surf Lifesaving Championships, launched last Thursday at the Cudgen Headland Surf Life Saving Club in Kingscliff which will host them, has been described as a coup for Tweed Shire Council which won the bid to stage them for the next two years. The event is billed as the second largest surf sports carnival in the country and set to attract tens of thousands of people to the region during March, with almost 8,000 competitors taking part. A council spokesman said the Tweed had not hosted a major championships event since the early 1990s
looking forward to staging a worldclass event and welcoming competitors from throughout the state. ‘Cudgen has some great surf sports athletes, including guys like Jarrad Cain, Rohan Small and Scott McCartney. They’re busting to do battle with other top competitors, right here on their home turf,’ he said. The state’s finest junior surf life savers will kick-start the ten days of competition from March 11 to 13, while the Masters and Opens competitors will hit the stage from March 17 to 20. The championships will involve 600 volunteer officials from across the state with 400 events and 1,800 races to be held. Tweed mayor Kevin Skinner said the event would be a huge boost for sports tourism in the region.
Tweed Shire Council has been accused of bullying and intimidating members of a residents’ association who received leaked documents related to a controversial proposal for a caravan park at Cabarita. Council has also been slammed for calling in the state corruption watchdog, the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), as an abuse of the spirit in which it was founded. The legal threats by council have been blamed for the sudden resignation, due to stress, of the pensioner president of the Cabarita Beach Residents Association, Cath Lynch, who told The Echo the ordeal had affected her health and she was advised to take a rest. The association has rallied behind her and set up a fighting fund and is appealing for public donations. The documents included a business plan for the van park which was posted on the residents’ website but taken down as a result of the threats. However, the information is still in the public domain and on a social network site. A meeting of the association on Monday unanimously moved to write to the Minister for Local Government, Barbara Perry, in protest at the intimidation of the executive of the association. The meeting also moved to protest to the minister over the process employed by council, including the witholding of information ‘vital for community decision making’ over development plans for a 230-site beachfront caravan park and 37-home subdivision in the southern section of the village.
The association was hit last week with an urgent legal demand to return allegedly confidential documents relating to the contentious $22 million caravan park proposed on Crown land by the NSW Land and Property Management Authority (LPMA) and the Tweed Coast Holiday Parks Reserve Trust, made up of all seven councillors and senior officers. Mrs Lynch said she had relinquished her position as she was ‘ill with worry’ after receiving two threatening legal letters in the past week demanding she immediately hand over all copies of the documents she had received. But she said she could not afford a solicitor and was hoping for legal aid to advise her.
Mayor ‘upset’ Mayor Kevin Skinner defended the legal threat against the association and its pensioner president, telling ABC Radio on Tuesday that he was ‘upset’ about the leak and council wanted the documents back because they ‘belong to council’. He warned that council’s legal team would pursue the matter ‘to the nth degree’. However, Cr Skinner said he ‘didn’t know’ if ICAC had become involved to find out who in council leaked the documents, saying he ‘honestly couldn’t say’ if the corruption body had been notified. But he then went on to say that if it was proven that staff were involved, they would be ‘reprimanded and held accountable’. His comments were in stark contrast to those made to the media last week when he had confirmed ICAC had been asked to investigate. He had said the decision to take continued on page 2
49 GREENWAY DRIVE, TWEED HEADS SOUTH PHONE 07 5524 4855 HONDA MOWERS
FROM
FREE FIRST SERVICE WITH EVERY MACHINE SOLD
729
$
HONDA BLOWERS
499
$
HONDA TRIMMERS
FROM
369
$
OFFER ENDS FEB 24 2011
4 YEAR WARRANTY <echowebsection=Local News>
FROM