The Prevelly Development Trust

Apart from being another piece of inappropriate development in a high bushfire risk area is there a common factor in the development of Prevelly and the development of Karridale?

 There seems to be.

It’s the developer; The Prevelly Development Trust.

For those of you thinking the land in Karridale was being developed by Nutan Pty Ltd and Juventus Pty Ltd, being given the name of the PDT might seem odd, unless you remember the mysterious and elusive Mr Michael Hale.

Mr Hale, described by his colleague Mr Pawluk in this section extracted from the “Community Facilities Needs Plan”;

“A local Karridale developer (Michael Hale, representing lot 100 to the north east of the crossroads) arranged another community meeting which was held at the Karridale Hall on 28 February 2007. This meeting was attended by approximately 60 people and again no record of the meeting was ever made available. The purpose of this meeting was to explain the developer’s intentions for his site.”

Those of you following along from the start of this blog might remember that there was a local journalist present at the meeting. Since that time the developers have indulged in a serious dose of cognitive dissonance. By changing their beliefs they have managed to convince themselves that; no record of the meeting was ever made available.

Changing your beliefs can make it possible to live comfortably with uncomfortable truths; many of the world’s most notorious criminal minds do this every day. They convince themselves that their actions are perfectly acceptable. Often they manage it by reminding themselves that what they are doing is legal; whilst conveniently forgetting that they have expensive lobbyists to manipulate how the laws are framed and the interpretation given to complicated legal rhetoric, and they also have lobbyists to influence the decision makers.

But cognitive dissonance does not change reality.

The reality is that the local Augusta Margaret River Mail subsequently published the journalist’s report and, as that newspaper is distributed freely throughout the shire, it can hardly be considered a secret account of the meeting.

Of course the developer’s intentions were explained that night. Those of us attending were all offered the telephone number of Mr Hale’s public relations man, Gary Knight, and told to make contact whenever we wished to have questions answered.

Some of us did make contact, and some of us have been joining up the dots in the Gary Knight saga ever since.

At the meeting, but not reported, was the developer’s explanation of his relationships with many of the Perth identities with whom he was closely involved, and with whom he enjoyed beneficial and “special” arrangements. He even brought an example of such a person along to create the illusion that were dealing with some serious players.

Becoming concerned that the activities of Gary Knight and Michael Hale in other parts of Australia did not appear to be consistent with sustainable development some people monitored events closely. The developments they were involved with were designed to remove all the growth in land values from the residents purely for the benefit of far distant investors.

In order to find out the identity of the characters behind the development corporations working their magic in Karridale it is necessary to undertake company searches, and these need to be verifiable.

For me to do that I needed the registered address of the corporation and the address of the one man we know is authorised to speak for that corporation, Michael Hale. At the meeting with no record Michael Hale was not prepared to give his own contact details, he prefers to communicate through his Public Relations company, Gary Knight and Associates, but Gary is not necessarily associated with Juventus Pty Ltd, which was the corporation we were told was subdividing Karridale.

Hoping for little, but doing my best, I contacted our shire planning officer and asked for the addresses I needed.

Here is his reply,

“Not sure of the currency of the postal address for Michael Hale as he doesn’t appear on our rates database, although I believe he participated in the KHSS process (i.e. is not registered as the owner of land in our Shire, or at least not the primary contact for any company). Juventus is the current owner of Lot 100, purchasing that land from (Mrs I think) McDonald in 2010 and their contact details are: 

Atf The Prevelly Development Trust

601/199 Regent Street

REDFERN NSW 2016”

So the mysterious Michael Hale remains elusive.

I believe he participated – nobody can confirm anything because shire records are just not maintained.

Not sure of the currency – what did this mean? I was given no address at all for him, current or otherwise.

Can any reader advise me who the Prevelly Development Trust are?

And why they want to develop Karridale?

Bit off their patch aren’t we?

Of course it could just be a coincidence. It could be another, different, Prevelly DT, nothing at all to do with the Prevelly we have in this shire.

At least Michael Hale won’t have been bothered by the rate rise this year; he is a local developer who apparently owns no land.

As explained earlier his mate Richard Pawluk describes him, for the benefit of anyone reading the planning documents, as “A local Karridale developer.”

But is it just possible that being described as “A local Karridale developer” might give some readers the impression that at least one local resident is going to gain some benefit from the subdividing of farming land in Karridale?

Weasel words?

Has anyone approached the Prevelly Development Trust for cash to develop the second access road? If the design was not fit for the purpose should they be asked to provide a remedy?