Working for Us?

When the plans for the 250 lot housing estates at the Karridale crossroads were first advertised for public comment it will come as no surprise to most readers that I had a few queries.

During the searching around for information it came to light that at precisely the same time the late Geoff Broad, Acting CEO, was sending a new draft strategy to the WAPC for endorsement he was writing to the ABC SW with claims that I was misleading the lovely Ron Tait with my lies about 250 homes being planned for a high risk bushfire area and that this was simply not true. He was also adamant that it was another of my lies that the Augusta-Margaret River Shire had any involvement at all in the Leeuwin Ward Planning Day that I had said was being held on 21^st May 2011.

Deputy Shire President, Cr McGregor, also came out fighting when she heard me blathering on about this inappropriate development on the ABC.

http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2011/03/21/3169820.htm

She immediately telephoned the ABC and was given the chance to explain about all the employment opportunities available in the Leeuwin Ward. She also explained that there was no risk of a bushfire here in Augusta-Margaret River Shire because FESA had everything under control and the shire rangers had ensured the fuel loads were no risk at all. This was in March 2011 and the MR bushfires were months away.

Not content with completely annihilating my argument over the airwaves she felt it necessary to post onto Facebook too, where she also denied that 250 lots were being proposed and went even further than Geoff Broad by saying any development could be 30 years away.

Acting CEO Geoff Broad and President Colyer signed the strategy on an unspecified day in May 2011 and it was duly endorsed in on 18^th July 2011.

Bear in mind this was a strategy which was never adopted for advertising to the public for comment, the community had never seen this strategy, it was sent straight to the WAPC.

I do understand why they might be embarrassed to publish it for comment because it specifies 250 lots, and predicates demand on “investment/secondary holiday home.”

We do have the podcast of Geoff Broad's interview but have not found a link to the ABC, I'll see if they can help us out and add it to the two they currently have on their page.

To be fair the strategy does also say that Karridale people will increase due to “natural fertility”, but two interesting points need to be made on this proposition. Firstly the shire have redefined Karridale as a 400m circle at the crossroads, so that in the latest documents there are now only around 30-50 persons living here. Their natural fertility is very unlikely to make a significant contribution to the population increase. The second interesting point is that the shire only anticipate an occupancy rate of 2 persons for each household. Does this suggest a highly fertile community? Are they forecasting a huge influx of single parents living here? Will 2 person households really create a large number of new primary school children? How many children from these 2 person households are expected to use the $335,000 concrete path that the community will have to maintain?

Will they explain any of this – of course not.