ACT NOW - Crown Lands Amendment (Multiple Land Use) Bill 2013

DANGER -  ALIENATION OF CROWN LAND RESERVES - ACT TODAY

Please write or phone Upper House Members of Parliament:

The Premier of NSW (premier@nsw.gov.au)
The Hon Tim Owen    newcastle@parliament.nsw.gov.au
The Leader of the Opposition LOP@parliament.nsw.gov.au
The Shadow Minister  Luke.Foley@parliament.nsw.gov.au
The Hon. Robert Brown robert.brown@parliament.nsw.gov.au
The Hon. Robert Borsak  robert.borsak@parliament.nsw.gov.au
The Hon Fred Nile F.Nile@parliament.nsw.gov.au
The Hon Paul Green paul.green@parliament.nsw.gov.au
The Hon. Jeremy Buckingham jeremy.buckingham@parliament.nsw.gov.au

WHAT IS THE ISSUE? 

Crown Lands Amendment (Multiple Land Use) Bill 2013 is now before the NSW Legislative Council (Upper House).

This Legislation will give the Minister and his delegate controlling Crown Lands the power to alienate the lands with extra uses without notification. The meagre safeguard of public notification and management principles in the current Act will be bypassed.

The changes further weaken the current Crown Lands Act and deny the public protection of Public Reserves and should be rejected. It will only clear the way for clandestine corruption.

PLEASE REJECT THIS BILL

FURTHER BACKGROUND  - ALIENATION OF CROWN LAND

There is currently before the NSW parliament a bill to amend the Crown Lands Act. It has passed the Lower House and will be debated in the Upper House on Tuesday or Wednesday.

The amendment allows the Minister to override the dedication of the land and grant a lease without the present constraints of the Act.

Presently, the Minister has the power to grant a lease for purposes that are contrary to the dedication of the land but the lease has to be gazetted and subjected to parliamentary scrutiny.

These checks and balances will be removed if this bill is passed.

Crown Land will no longer be protected.

It will allow the effective sell-off and commercialisation of some of the most important and prominent pieces of real estate in NSW.

It is done under the guise of protecting the validity of existing leases. This is a nonsense!!
Scout halls, kiosks, surf clubs are valid community uses of public land and are hardly likely to be challenged. This is a grab by the state government for precious public land that is supported by many cash strapped Councils who can see a cheap and easy option to make money out of crown land.

Friends of King Edward Park Inc. have been fighting for 2 years in the courts to protect publicly dedicated land in NSW against development that is contrary to its dedication and to preserve the Headland Reserve. This has been acknowledged in the Land and Environment Court as a test case with merit. The introduction of the amendment neatly absolves the Minister of his liabilities.

Don’t let this bill pass through parliament. Put your objection in an email today. Preserve our precious public spaces for future generations. Use the points above if you can for your email or forward the attached form letter.

Doug Lithgow
President of the Parks and Playgrounds Movement
A Freeman of the City of Newcastle

Open Letter to the NSW Planning Minister

The Email letter below and the attachments have been sent to the Minister for Planning the Hon. Kristina Keneally MP.

* What are the planning and development roles in the Hunter Region that have been given over to the HDC?

* Why did the HDC fail in the past to vary their Approved Scheme in accordance with their statutory obligations?

* What regional representation on the Board has been provided for?

* What actions have been taken by the Board to meet their statutory obligation to their total Growth Centre as constituted?

* What is needed to make their actions responsive and more transparent to the regional electorate?

The public interest requires that these matters are professionally and transparently investigated and publicly resolved.

The rail issue was made intractable by the failure of the HDC to comply with Hunter REP Central Honeysuckle amendment 3 over the past decade and HDC’s apparent unwillingness or to respond to the Government or the people of the region. This has been made worse by the recent HDC Revitalisation Report being so biased in considering the role of the railway and provision of passenger rail services to historic Newcastle without any consideration of their obligation to the Growth Centre as constituted for the region. HDC has allowed rail crossings and overbridges to be removed and not replaced and criticises lack of connectivity.

P& PM resolved at its last meeting to request the Minister to hold an inquiry or for the parliament to hold an Legislative Council inquiry into the HDC.

July 26, 2009

The Hon Kristina Keneally MP
Minister for Planning & Minister for Waterloo
office@keneally.minister.nsw.gov.au


Dear Minister,

Reference is made to my Email on 12/5/2009 and your kind acknowledgment and your letter dated 3 July 09 - D09/2844

Our Email 12/5/2009 Email read:

You can readily understand how this cut rail stupidity which has gone on since the Newcastle Earthquake 20 years ago has destabilised the city and damaged the ALP in its heartland. The enclosed letter reveals how this situation developed. It is in your power as Minister for Planning to direct that a legal varying scheme be developed by HDC and approved. This is essential if this matter is to be properly resolved.

Minister, the Parks and Playground Movement was pleased to receive you letter which we believe means that you have directed the HDC to submit a varying scheme in accordance with the Growth Centre (Development Corporations) Act 1974.

Newcastle had been poorly served by the HDC Honeysuckle Board operating without a proper Scheme even after the Minister Craig Knowles made Hunter REP 1989 Amendment 3 Central Honeysuckle Dec 1997. We were outraged when we heard recently that the Minister for the Hunter had asked the HDC Hunter to prepare a renewal report for Newcastle. We knew that HDC had no legal scheme for their Growth Centre which as you know includes every Local Government Area in the Region.

Since our Email the HDC has displayed a report titled Newcastle City Centre Renewal Report to NSW Government March 2009 and we are pleased to attached a pdf file of our letter to the Hon Jodi Mckay MP Minister for the Hunter. We ask you to consider our letter to the Minister for the Hunter as a submission to the HDC report.

Parks and Playgrounds Movement request that you initiate an inquiry into why the HDC did not comply with the strategic direction of the Hunter REP 3 Central Honeysuckle made by the Minister for Planning in Dec 1997 and why the HDC (Hunter) did not prepare a scheme for the Growth Centre as required by statute when they were constituted by parliament.

Furthermore we would be grateful if you would direct that the HDC Board act in a transparent way and seek the views of the people of the Hunter Region when preparing the their revised Scheme for the Hunter Region Growth Centre as set out in the Schedule 1 of the Growth Centres (Development Corporations) Act 1974 Viz. Hunter Development Corporation: All those pieces or parcels of land within the local government areas of Cessnock, Dungog, Gloucester, Great Lakes, Lake Macquarie, Maitland, Muswellbrook, Newcastle, Port Stephens, Singleton and Upper Hunter as at 1 January 2008.

Parks and Playgrounds Movement would be pleased to participate in the preparation of a Scheme with the HDC and to place evidence before a public inquiry into failure of the Corporation to comply with the REP Central Honeysuckle or prepare a Scheme for approval.

We trust that you will enquire into HDC so that they are better able to fulfil their statutory responsibilities to the Hunter Region in the future.

Yours Sincerely

Doug Lithgow
Parks and Playgrounds Movement Inc.

Honeysuckle should revise its irrelevant 1993 Scheme

Why has the Hunter Development Corporation (HDC) been allowed to operate for over ten years without a relevant Scheme for its Growth Centre as constituted?

Hunter Development Corporation General Manager Craig Norman explains some of the proposals for the New Year (HDC manages to keep all the gloom at bay The Herald 31.12.08) but we are left in the dark about the Corporation’s relationship with its “Scheme”.

The HDC formerly Honeysuckle Development Corporation is a ministerial corporation constituted under the Growth Centres Act and is required under Sections 14 and 15 to prepare a Scheme and Section 17 to implement an Approved Scheme within the framework of the law. Its scheme was prepared in 1993 and is irrelevant to the currently proclaimed Hunter Growth Centre. HDC has done good work but has been shackled to a non-conforming 1993 Scheme & Masterplan at Central Honeysuckle.

HDC began with a $100 Million dollar windfall from the Commonwealth’s “Building Better Cities” program but we believe it blundered at Central Honeysuckle by disregarding the 1981 winning design from the Newcastle Harbour Foreshore and Urban Design Competition with its landscaped foreshore and rail corridor entrance into the city. HDC failed to integrate the new Honeysuckle with the existing city structure:

• The Masterplan was approved without the planning research and the geotechnical investigation needed.
• The wharf fender line is the cadastral boundary and the HDC acquired the longshore wharves from the port authority and demolished them leaving much of the planned foreshore and openspace under water!
• The Masterplan proposed a cove and bridge at Civic that had no relationship to the original Honeysuckle Point foreshore or the historic railway buildings and built out the whole area anyway.
• The sensible wharf road was ripped up and a contorted road layout constructed and reconstructed.
• HDC advertised for a hotel before the planing framework was in place. The Minister blamed the Council and used the excuse to gazette his Hunter Regional Environmental Plan REP Central Honeysuckle and remove the Council’s consent powers.
• .The HDC failed to vary their Scheme to conform to the Minister’s REP 1997 for Central Honeysuckle.
  

The HDC is required by statute to prepare a “Scheme” and should start by deleting the irrelevant 1993 honeysuckle master plan and establishing clear transparent parameters to guide the HDC in its widened Growth Centre role for the Hunter Region.