Get off the train
Andrew Constance – you’re (supposedly) our voice in Parliament. Just quickly hop off Gladys’ fantasy fast rail to Nowra. It’s going nowhere. And don’t even think about extending rail to Ulladulla, Bega or Eden.
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Numerous inquiries have examined these possibilities in the past, each and every time very conclusively determining that to do so would be the equivalent of economic lunacy.
But, we note, your government is, yet again, now spending $1million of our money to simply conclude that extending rail to our part of the South Coast will be absolute stupidity.
And now you suggest that extending a rail line to this area will stimulate more local development than the cost of the line.
It’s time you and Gladys added a lot more water to whatever it is that you’ve been drinking! Because, sorry, you’re absolutely, absolutely, absolutely wrong.
Please provide us with just one example anywhere in Australia where a government building a railway line in the past 150 years has provided a positive economic benefit to a local community. You’ll be unable to find one – so why should the NSW South Coast be any different?
Please concentrate your efforts on fixing our roads.
Simply widen roads, simply re-mark all the overtaking lines that we have noticed have been removed from our local highways over the past few years while you’ve been our local member supposedly looking after our interests.
Even consider paying all of the costs of road freight for the very small number of South Coast producers if they ship their products out of the area at night (a cost that will be mere fraction of the ridiculously high cost of building a rail line to the area).
And as a first priority fund a decent four-lane road from Canberra to Batemans Bay rather than spending your time fiddling while the community suffers and an inordinately high number of people are killed on what should be a world-class major highway.
Peter Lacey, Quaama
RFAs defy public opinion
Federal and NSW Governments slipped out an extraordinary statement late on a Friday evening announcing that Regional Forest Agreements would be renewed for a further 20 years.
We must wonder what they have to hide, making such a major announcement in such a furtive way.
It is obvious that the haste in renewing the RFAs, months and in some cases years before they expire is driven by the woodchipping industry, whose wood supply agreement expires on December 31.
The governments are making a huge mistake and are defying public opinion.
The hasty renewal treats the forests as a ‘magic pudding’ for woodchips, when they could be valuable carbon stores, homes for wildlife and protectors of soil and waterways.
Both governments are well aware that new industry funded research shows almost 70 per cent of Australians oppose native forest logging. The same study shows that 68 per cent of South Coast residents oppose it.
We understand that around 85 per cent of those who made submissions on the RFA renewal were opposed to native forest logging.
Eden-style logging is now notorious as the most intensive in NSW and Eden is leading the race to the bottom in the rest of the state.
While we are dismayed that both governments have shown their contempt for the forests and the public by renewing these disastrous RFAs, we don’t expect them to run their full course.
It is likely that the forests will not be able to supply the wood promised and that prospective customers for these low value products will adopt higher standards and buy their raw materials from plantations.