Dear
Colleagues,
A
quick rundown on the Rail issue Newcastle which started in May 1988 with the Hirst Consulting Services
P/L NEWCASTLE CBD BUSINESS PLAN and is now part of the Baird Government’s sell
off of public assets.
Mike
Baird thinks he is a once in a lifetime opportunity for NSW to sell off public
assets and buy the infrastructure that
we all know we need! Look what he did
for Newcastle. He sold
off the Port of Newcastle 98year Lease and with some of the money he started the
destruction of the Newcastle rail
infrastructure and he now tells us he intends to sell that too for nice
waterfront buildings.
He
thinks truncating (closing) rail services to
Newcastle is a good
thing and that’s what Labor wanted to do anyway. Mike doesn’t understand that
the labor woman in the seat of Newcastle was voted
out last election basically because she was going to close the
railway.
Ironically
it was the not so honest Right Wing of the ALP that put the former ALP Member in
the seat and finally undermined her to get rid of her too. Sadly for
Newcastle it got a
not so honest Liberal Party to replace her. The Liberal Party just listened to
the same vested interested ALP/Lib
property lobbyists rather than help instigate the good transparent governance
that the we so desperately needed. Now the Liberal Member has had to depart the
scene disgraced by the revelations in ICAC before he could be voted out.
1) No Hunter
candidate who has promised to close rail services has ever been
elected.
2) No Hunter
politician who has promised to close rail services has ever been
re-elected.
3) The three recent
elections in the Hunter have returned candidates who have promised to return
rail services.
The
‘Remove the Newcastle Railway & Open the City for Real Development’ Lobby
groups’ were the City centre Committee 1988, The Newcastle Alliance 2000, and
the Newcastle Now 2012 (Newcastle Business Improvement Association Inc). These
groups were all established by the Newcastle City Council and well funded since
1988 through the Council’s committee system. They seemed to have operated
outside of Council but helped along with a 9% Special Rate Levy on
CBD
properties. They were originally setup
to improve commerce and encourage vitality but they became the lobbyists for
removal of Rail services and for property interests. One would have hoped that Councillors who wanted to keep passenger rail services to
Newcastle would have
acted over the years in Newcastle Council to oversee the way rate funds were
used by these committees.
It
doesn’t look as if ICAC can now look at these committees, the Carpet-man or
former Lord Mayors.
On
top of normal Council operations Newcastle has had the
powerful HDC in Newcastle’s central
area with $100milion Commonwealth seed funding. It has operated as a not so
transparent
planning and development arm of Government. HDC was formerly the
Honeysuckle Development Corporation and has had the removal of rail services as
a principal part of its Approved Scheme since 1993. Successive Ministers for
Planning have never bothered to see that HDC varied their Approved Scheme in
accord with the Growth Centres Act
1974.
.
Old
Newcastle is a unique
and precious heritage town with its Cathedral on the Hill and its birth site at
Nobbys and Colliers Point. Planners should
identify the good things and encourage commerce and
vitality.
The
Baird Government mired itself in bad faith at
Newcastle with its
disgraced members and in arbitrarily starting the rail closure without
transparency or parliamentary approval.
Baird should bring back the
passenger rail service and replace
the rail crossings taken away in recent years by the HDC straight-jacket
planning.
All
political parties should know that closing railways in this day and age is not a
vote winner. I hope that the ALP is returned at the election on the
28th March and is able to restart the
Newcastle revitalization in a transparent way and restore Passenger Rail services to
Newcastle as
promised.
Doug
Lithgow Freeman of the City of
Newcastle & President of P&PM
