Sunday 10 July 2011
Lifestyle Resorts Australia spins its financial woes
Lifestyle Resorts Australia Pty Ltd - the Queensland-based company that owns the Oyster Cove Resort and whose approach to development has over the years caused a great deal of annoyance to homeowners in adjacent residential development in Yamba - has gone into receivership recently.
In 2010 this resort was also the subject of tenant dissatisfaction with regards to maintenance and safety issues.
According to The Daily Examiner on 7 July 2011:
Residents received letters this week from the parent company, Lifestyle Resorts, saying the senior living complex had been placed in the hands of receivers.
Lifestyle Resorts chief executive officer Sally Morrison said yesterday trading conditions were difficult, as they were for many companies around the world, but the aim was to try to trade out of financial trouble.
She said she wanted to assure residents their tenancies would continue as normal.
"A change of ownership does not affect the rights of tenants," she said.
"The important thing for residents to realise is that, for them, things will not change.
"People can become concerned when this sort of thing happens, but they have no reason to be."
She said a decision was made last week to appoint receivers Deloitte following meetings with the company's bankers.
Lifestyle Resorts has 186 occupied properties at Oyster Cove and has operated the complex for the past eight years.
Residents own their dwellings, but have a long-term tradeable lease over the land.
It has similar resorts on the Gold Coast and in Rockhampton. The Rockhampton facility, which has 140 properties, 119 of which are still available, is undergoing expansion.
In a letter to residents, director, Bob Morrison, said it was business as usual as per the terms of the site agreement.
"The receivership is to allow Lifestyle Resorts to continue to operate and ensure a continuity of service to you as a resident," he said. "All facility maintenance services will continue as normal with the same staff attending to your community."
Rather oddly, as of 8 July this was not news the company appeared willing to share with readers of its promotional website where it seems all is rosy in the garden still.
However the website is careful to make this claim:
Lifestyle Resorts Australia Pty Ltd makes no representations about the accuracy or suitability of the information or links provided on its web pages. Without limitation, this extends to any market research or commentary contained in this website.
It wasn’t that many years ago that Lifestyle Resorts Australia was telling the world that; The company has sold residential product totaling $70 million across six resorts, from northern NSW to central Queensland.
Apparently its white shoes are now sadly scuffed and down at heel these days.
Saturday 9 July 2011
Clarence Valley worry that Coalition cronyism is about to bleed health dry has NSW Health Minister throwing counter punch
The Daily Examiner Health is bled dry 4 July 2011:
TWO members on the North Coast health advisory board have been dumped and replaced by two failed former Coalition political candidates on the re-titled Northern NSW Local Health Board District, leaving the Clarence with only one representative on the 10-member board.
Yamba-based solicitor Bob Thompson and Tweed-based doctor David Hodgson were both dropped from the board appointed under the former Labor government and replaced with former Liberal Party candidate for Page Malcolm Marshall and former National Party candidate for Richmond Dr Sue Page Mitchell.
Former board member and Grafton radio station manager Ron Bell resigned a few weeks ago for personal reasons and has not been replaced by another representative from the Clarence Valley.
It leaves the Clarence area with only one member on a board dominated by members from the Richmond area, and has raised serious concerns the health needs of the Clarence will be swept aside because of the political strength of representation in the Richmond……….
The lack of representation from the Clarence area was a major concern and he cited the recent appointment of an orthopedic surgeon to Grafton as an area of potential problems.
…. that surgeon would treat patients who previously would have been treated at Coffs Harbour or Lismore, but the funding needed for those operations now needed to be transferred from Coffs and Lismore to Grafton.
Taking money from the Coffs and Lismore budgets would be difficult, because of the strong Richmond area representation on the board.
Mayor Richie Williamson, Mr Bell and chairman of the Grafton Base Hospital Medical Staff Council Dr Allan Tyson all expressed similar concerns about the composition of the board and the lack of representation from the Clarence Valley.
The Daily Examiner NSW Health District Board changes 5 July 2011:
“There were people who were not re-appointed.
“In some cases, that was simply due to other applicants being more experienced and skilled in the required areas of governance and finance.
“In other cases, it was because those people were not performing adequately.”
Ouch....
The three amigos who dragged international jouralism ethics through the lowest of noisome gutters
The two editors and owner of Britain's 168 year-old News of the World online and print newspaper Andy Coulsen (top left)Rebekah Brooks (top right) Rupert Murdoch (centre) in church in 2005 - during a period in which they allegedly oversaw sytematic unlawful hacking of the phones of public figures and ordinary people, as well as alleged suspect payments to police, and who between them managed to close the 168 year-old Sunday tabloid this month as the scandal broadens and more arrests are expected.
If old Sir Keith were still alive even he would probably give his son a right-old bollocking.
Thank heavens Rupert renounced his Australian citizenship - officially he's not our blacksheep now!
http://youtu.be/v1AJjnl2y8U
And then there's young James.......
From Granny Herald on 8th July in "The wrong redtop goes"
"There were a few noble politicians prepared to go where others would not and criticise the News of the World despite the likelihood of offending Britain’s most powerful media companies.
But there are plenty of villains. Andy Coulson, who replaced Brooks as editor and was there when the paper appears to have been its most hack-happy; after resigning twice over the affair, once from the Prime Minister's office, he is reportedly close to being arrested. Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who did much of the hacking and served time in jail for it. The many others who surely knew what was going on, sanctioned it and so far have gone unpunished.
And there is still Rebekah Brooks. As then editor and now chief executive, the buck stops with her. As long she keeps her job, her immediate boss, James Murdoch, is a villain too. Without her departure, he will be the man who sacked scores who had no responsibility, and saved the neck of one who did."
UPDATE:
The Guardian UK Friday 8 July 2011 13.16 BST
Andy Coulson arrested over phone-hacking allegations
"Andy Coulson, the prime minister's former press spokesman, has been arrested and is being held in custody at a police station in south London.
Scotland Yard said that at 10.30am on Friday officers from Operation Weeting – the phone-hacking inquiry – and a team investigating illegal payments to police officers within the Metropolitan force arrested a 43-year-old man who had arrived by appointment.
Scotland Yard said he was being held in custody and would be questioned in connection with allegations of corruption and phone hacking.
The arrest came after Operation Weeting officers were handed further information from News International three weeks ago which detailed allegedly illegal payments to a handful of officers at the Yard.
It is understood Coulson, a former editor of the News of the World, will be held for several hours for questioning. Officers will take him through documentation, much of it handed over by his former employer News International.
He will be questioned on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, contrary to Section 1 (1) Criminal Law Act 1977 and "on suspicion of corruption allegations" contrary to Section 1 of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906."
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