Dear Beagle Editor,
In 1980 or thereabouts a brand new piece of legislation aka EPA Act heralded a fresh new approach to town planning.
Written in plain english for all to understand it freed up and allowed development assessment out from under the strictures of the old stuffy Local Government Act.
Love was in the air, flowers in the hair and hippies were in the ascendency.
For awhile the new Act worked until the smarts, charlatans and just plain stupid worked in consort against the community good.
Eventually it had so many amendments and addendum that it was only QC’s who could interpret. So 30 years on it too was revamped.
The proposal by the Council and its planning staff for the draft Rural Strategy to eliminate environmental zoning and environmental overlays has that whiff of love is in the air, flowers in the hair, hippies dancing around the campfire again.
When three State Gov’t Departments (not always known for 'seeing eye to eye’) and the Council paid planning consultant all saying in the best bureaucratic ‘nice speak’ DON’T DO IT - I have a horrible sense of foreboding.
Suddenly the whiff of love turns to smoke in the air, the flowers start to wilt.
If we all saw eye to eye, loved thy neighbour and we all were good people perhaps we wouldn’t need environmental protection or many other laws but the smarts, charlatans and plain stupid among us means that Council, current guardians of our natural environment, must not go all hippie on us.
Ross Hayward
Broulee Below: Enjoy this gallery of stunning images from the Beagle Gallery that describes the landscape that drives the passion behind of all those standing firm to preserve the Eurobodalla environment from all quarters including State and Local Government policies and legislations - The Editor
