Will the incoming Minns Labor Government fix the unholy mess that the outgoing Perrottet Coalition Government made of NSW planning & environmental laws in NSW?

 

The former Baird, Berejiklian and Perrottet coalition governments deliberately put a wrecking ball through NSW planning and environmental law for almost nine years.

The burning question is; 'Will the new Labor state premier, his cabinet and, specifically those he chooses as his ministers for planning and environment, walk back the legislative and regulatory power grab which leaves much of regional New South Wales vulnerable to exploitation?'

This opinion piece by Lindy Smith, President of the Tweed District Residents and Ratepayers Association (TDRRA) in the Echo, 21 March 2023, reflects similar concerns expressed by residents & ratepayers across the seven local government areas of the Northern Rivers region:

 The NSW Planning Rezoning Pathways Program was released the day before caretaker period started for the NSW government on 3 March.

This will service the agendas of developers and land bankers which is very much alive in the Tweed Shire, particularly the Cudgen Plateau, State Significant Farmlands (SSF). Under the guise of the need for housing (which we all agree is needed) there continues to be a failure to acknowledge the herd of elephants in the room – that any new house can be built and purchased for Short Term Holiday Letting (STHL) under the Governments changes to the NSW Environmental Planning & Assessment (EP&A) Act.

Does not increase housing supply

This means that there is no guaranteed actual quantitative increase in the housing supply. While the government’s focus has been driving population growth it has seriously failed in its upkeep of social and affordable housing. In fact they have been selling off such sites.

The questions that the NSW government fails to address are:

What quantity of social housing is to be part of the Program?

What is affordable housing, and where are the plans and mechanisms to provide them? How they will be protected as affordable housing into perpetuity, rather than reentering the private market after ten years?

Undermining local councils

The Planning Rezoning Pathways Program enables the overriding of much statutory investment and work that has been undertaken by local councils and communities. Many local councils and community groups have spent significant time and energy developing locally appropriate planning tools and long-term strategic planning utilising local knowledge which is key to the sustainability and liveability of their communities.

The NSW coalition government swept into power 2011 on the back of the then-controversial Part3A assessment system, promising to give planning powers back to local communities. What we have instead been dealt with is the repeated undermining of the NSW EP&A Act and the NSW state taking over so much more of local communities planning controls.

No public consultation

Further, under the former Premier and former Deputy Premier of NSW development of RegionalEconomic Development Strategies was undertaken with zero public consultation, nor any transparency. These documents only recently came to light in the public arena.

Just two days before the caretaker period the NSW Government then released its program to rezone our Crown lands for development with zero public consultation, nor any process to turn over our Crown land to development.

The mismanagement of our Crown land is well documented with the damming evidence to the Crown lands inquiry and the damming findings of the Auditor-General Report into the Sale and Lease of Crown Lands….

Labor has won the state general election of 25 March 2923 and will form government for the term of the 58th NSW Parliament

 

The mainstream media hyped 'close' NSW state general election that wasn't.....

At approx. 7:55pm on Saturday 25 March 2023 just one hour and twenty-five minutes into the official NSW Electoral Commission count of est. 2,669,688 formal ballot papers on the night and with less than 13 per cent of all votes counted, elections analyst Antony Green called the general election for the Australian Labor Party (NSW Division) on the national public broadcaster, the ABC. 

Labor MLA for Kogarah, Christopher John "Chris" Minns is now 47th Premier-elect of New South Wales and is expected to lead a government of between 47 to 50 members sitting in the 93 member Legislative Assembly. 

At around 10:20pm on the night the Liberal MP for Epping and current Premier Dominic Francis "Dom" Perrottet conceded defeat on behalf of the Coalition, being the Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division) and National Party of Australia (NSW Division). Mr. Perrottet had been the state premier for less than 18 months.

The official ballot paper count continues on Monday 27 March and details can be found at 

https://elections.nsw.gov.au/elections/state-government-elections/2023-state-general-election.  

The initial formal first preference ballot count on the night of 25 March indicates that Labor's Janelle Saffin has retained the seat of Lismore.  Nationals' Geoff Provest is expected to retain Tweed and The Green's Tamara Smith is also expected to retain Ballina, with Nationals' Richie Williamson is expected to gain Clarence after retirement of the previous incumbent, the National's Chris Gulaptis.

To recap: the Labor Party now governs at federal level and in every state & territory across Australia, with the exception of Tasmania where the Liberal Party still governs.

IMAGE: via @MColvinMcKenzie

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gives update on Indigenous Voice and referendum wording

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dwC0xmBCKA&t=16s

 

NORTHERN RIVERS VOTES 2023: NSW Electoral Commission Virtual Tally Room opens 6:30pm Saturday 25 March for counting of ballot papers in the NSW State Election of the 58th Parliament

There are a total of four NSW state electorates covering the Northern Rivers region - Tweed, Ballina, Lismore and Clarence. 

Across these electorates there were a combined est. 231,247 registered voters recorded by the NSW Electoral Commission on 7 March 2023. 

Based on Pre-Poll figures and Postal Vote applications as of Friday 24 March, up to 76,383 or 33% of those electors in the Northern Rivers had voted before polling booths opened on 25 March.

That leaves est. 154,864 people who will be lining up to between 8am and 6pm today.

All vote count results will be published on the Virtual Tally Room as soon as practicable after completion. Results will commence publishing from approximately 6:30pm on election day, Saturday, 25 March 2023. No vote counting will occur on the Sunday 26 March but will recommence on Monday 27 March. 

NSWEC Virtual Tally Room at  

https://vtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/SG2301

ABC NSW Votes election night commentary from 6pm at https://iview.abc.net.au/video/NS1413V001S00. As per usual Antony Green will be giving his voting analysis throughout the evening.

New words and phrases entering the Northern Rivers lexicon

 

The first phrase in this occasional segment is:

“disaster investor” [origin unknown, circa 2023] — a person who deliberately seeks out homeowners whose properties have been flood damaged and offers these homeowners as little as 10 cents on the dollar of the pre-flood value of a freestanding house.

Tweets of the Week

 

#NSWForestry 2023 native forest #logging schedule targets 1000's of hectares within the proposed #GreatKoalaNationalPark.
Unburnt core koala habitats being intensively logged this week ahead of #NSWElection. #VoteForests #VoteForKoalas #NSWVotes pic.twitter.com/tifROE4IBO

— Meredith Stanton (@CloudsCreek) March 22, 2023

 

After 2 more failed attempts by LNP’s Paul Fletcher to block evidence from the #RoboDebtRC , he can’t stop Bill Shorten revealing Stuart Robert’s evidence, where he threw Scott Morrison under the bus & insisted that:
“The member for Cook make him do it” 🔥🔥 #QT pic.twitter.com/hMsTZSP3Xv

— stranger (@strangerous10) March 22, 2023

 

Addressing flood trauma in Northern Rivers children thirteen months after a catastrophic unnatural disaster

 

The Sydney Morning Herald, “Northern Rivers in youth mental health crisis”, 20 March 2023, excerpt:

A soon-to-be-published resilience survey has found levels of depression and anxiety symptoms are now higher among Northern Rivers children and young people than the national average of earlier survey participants for some student groups.

Conducted almost six months after the February 2022 disaster, the survey was taken by 6611 school students, nearly 13 per cent of all young people aged between five and 19 in the region.

It found that almost one in three Northern Rivers primary students and more than one in three secondary students were at risk of depression and anxiety.

More than 40 per cent of primary students were at risk of trauma-related stress. For secondary students, it was almost 20 per cent.

Inundated, isolated, in despair: Floodwaters around Lismore’s St Carthage’s Cathedral and Trinity Catholic College.CREDIT:GETTY

Healthy North Coast, a not-for profit organisation delivering the Australian government's Primary Health Network program in the region, commissioned the research as the first step in its Resilient Kids initiative, funded by a $10 million grant from the National Emergency Management Agency.

Healthy North Coast chief executive Monika Wheeler said that the survey established a baseline which could help to measure the mental health and wellbeing of young people in the Northern Rivers over time.

She said young people reported generally feeling supported and connected within their schools and communities. However, the survey also highlighted areas to focus on in future.

"The Resilient Kids initiative will use local insights to design tailored mental health and wellbeing supports," she said.

"We know that successful recovery is based on understanding community context and is not a one-off event.

"It's multi-year, multi-layered, and our approach to supporting our young people might change over time as we see how they respond."

Tens of millions of federal and state dollars has been promised for mental health and wellbeing programs in the region's schools and wider community.

Safe haven hubs have opened across the region to provide free mental health support. Drop-ins are encouraged and there is no need for referrals or appointments. For young people, dedicated online and phone services also are available.

The difficulty is reaching those who won't, or can't, use these services.

Children's charities Unicef Australia and Royal Far West are rolling out a $4.5 million support program covering 30 state primary schools and preschools in the Northern Rivers and south-east Queensland.

Social workers, psychologists, speech pathologists and occupational therapists will enter school communities to help staff address learning delays in children.

Unicef Australia chief advocate for children Nicole Breeze said thousands of children will need intensive support, as the effects of the disaster can potentially remain hidden for years.

"Our first engagement in this space was after the Black Summer bushfires," she said. "With children the impact can stay hidden, it can take a year or two, sometimes three. The good news is that with the right support, at the right time, they can bounce back."

The plight of Northern Rivers children garnered international attention Last April when Prince William spoke online with Jeanette Wilkins, the principal of St Joseph's Primary School Woodburn, who told him the community had lost its school and "everything in it" and the mental health of the community had taken a major blow.

The school was underwater for eight days.

"We're two months down the track and nothing has changed, those 34 families are still displaced, so there's no certainty for those children," she told the prince.

"For us, the most important thing was to make contact with our families and our children, and as fast as possible to set up a school somewhere just to get the children back to some form of normality and start dealing with their trauma."

At Christmas, 29 families of students and staff at St Joseph's (more than half the students) were still living in some form of temporary housing such as a caravan, shed, shipping container or the shell of their flood-stripped home.

Ten Catholic schools in the Lismore diocese were directly affected by the floods, including St Joseph's. Three schools are inaccessible, and 1250 students are being taught in temporary facilities.

Morning tea and lunch are provided in some schools, as are new school uniforms and shoes, to help address absenteeism. A team of 30 counsellors is working in 23 schools, and community services provider Social Futures is operating in seven of the flood-hit schools to assist families in gaining to access additional mental health social and financial support.

Thirty-seven state facilities suffered significant damage, and five schools still operate away from their original site.