OPINION: The silence is deafening Opinion by News Of The Area - Modern Media - October 14, 2022 DEAR News of The Area, IN an article in this newspaper three weeks ago, I questioned the validity of both the 2018 GHD survey and the 2021 Ethos Urban survey with regards to the Jetty Foreshores Revitalisation, given an analysis I had sent to the Minister for Planning, Anthony Roberts and our local member for Coffs Harbour, Gurmesh Singh. I questioned many of the findings of both these surveys. To date, I have not received a reply from the Minister for Planning, which is probably to be expected given I wrote to him once before and it took several weeks for a reply to be forthcoming. However, given I emailed Gurmesh Singh three weeks ago, I was hoping for a much quicker response given the importance of this issue. Instead, all I have seen is Gurmesh Singh standing before Parliament with impunity, attacking his constituents and the Mayor and Councillors, for not being happy with what is being proposed by the State Government for the Jetty Foreshores. It was like a child spitting the dummy because we have a difference of opinion. Part of his attack on Councillors was that they had voted to spend $20,000 in a marketing campaign to let the residents of Coffs Harbour know the reasons behind their rejection of the Draft Masterplan in its current form. In the interests of transparency, which the Government insists it is all about, I would like Gurmesh Singh to let us know how many hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars have been spent over the years, trying to get this Masterplan to fruition. The latest multipage fancy marketing brochure full of pretty pictures must have cost an arm and a leg on its own. I also questioned the Precinct Development division of PDNSW on several issues, and have only just received a reply after numerous reminders, stating that they handballed the issue to Ethos Urban three weeks ago. Needless to say, I have not heard from Ethos Urban either, so forgive me if I am sceptical about the entire process. As the saying goes – the silence is deafening. Regards, Helen OLIVER, Coffs Harbour.
This seems to be par for the course wrt correspondence between Australians and their Politicians. I have even been accused of being “vexatious” when I continued to ask for more information on a certain subject. It makes it very difficult to take them seriously. Reply
