From the Far End of the Council Table - 22 March
Date: 22-Mar-09
Author: Councillor James Ryan
Another long Council meeting
Another long Council meeting finishing just before 10pm was the result of actual debate happening at Cessnock Council. I know some people have criticized the longer Council meetings but to me,after the experience of the old Council, it is a breath of fresh air that the Councillors are actually discussing stuff.
Some of the highlights.
Despite the pleas of the Wine Industry Association the Council voted to rezone enough land in Bellbird for approx. 4000 homes. Their letter to Councillors had identified that some of the land to be developed would make good grape growing area, and the impact on tourists from the expanded town of Cessnock would not be good.
I hope some day we don't wake up to find that we are no longer the prime wine tourism area in NSW and our visitor numbers are declining and our jobs are shrinking.
The Council also resolved to write to the NSW Government over the HEZ. The developer is currently trying to get the rules changed in the HEZ to allow small industry and for approx 100ha to be subdivided before any industry has establish. This is contrary to the original intention of the HEZ which was to preserve the area for a big industry with large bushland buffer zones to protect both residents and wildlife. The Council is particularly concerned that the management of the wider industrial estate will be left to a private company (the HEZ Association) which could go into liquidation and subsequently leave no-one responsible for upkeep an maintenance of the site.
The Council voted to boycott Pacific Brands as a result of their announcement to cut 83 jobs from the Cessnock Bonds Factory. There has been some criticism of this with people arguing that a boycott will hurt Pacific Brands workers who are still employed in Australia. The debate in the Council was very much about supporting Australian made.
The point I emphasized in the Council was that while we are angry with Pacific Brands - it is the policy of successive ALP and Liberal Governments, including the current Rudd Labor Government of reducing protection to Australian industry which has resulted in the decimation of the textile and clothing industry in Cessnock and Kurri. I remember Austi and Depict factories in Kurri which were huge and employed a lot of people. All those job losses as a result of Paul Keating's so called ‘level playing field'.
I was pleased that Council also supported my motion to ask the Federal Government to abolish the rule that a person who is made unemployed must spend their savings before they are eligible for the Newstart allowance. It is a totally unfair situation where a person become unemployed through no fault of their own (such as Pacific Brands closing a factory) and to then ask that person to spend all or most of their nest egg before we can afford to offer them a very small amount of money each week to live on. Disgraceful. The Rudd Government should abolish this rule.
Make sure you have your say.
