18 August 2006

Byron Shire (Maggi Luke, Byron Bay)



Byron Shire people, please wake up and focus for a while on what is happening here. The majority of you live here because of our special alternative culture, naturally preserved coastline and mountains and you voted in a council to keep it like that. Therefore look at who is criticising our council and what their motives are. Don’t begin to believe all that it written against our council. Very few people go to the council meetings and see how the votes are going. Do you know that Bob Tardif who got into council with the Greens preferences has from the beginning of this council continuously voted with Ross Tucker on the developer side? Without the votes of Peter Westheimer on the green/progressive side one would think that our Shire had voted in a majority right wing majority developer council. This is why Jan Barham has to continually use her casting vote and is put under unnecessary stress. John Gudgeon when interviewed about Byron United is still talking about freedom of holiday lets in all areas and about the unworkable selfregulation of holiday letters. What about the many hours of discussion of this in the forums and the agreement by all responsible parties that it is not on to holiday let in most residential areas, as in the new LEP as well as the current one? There are millions of dollars at stake in this holiday letting issue, but let the money stay in Byron and go to all the legal tourist facilities. I was hoping that Byron United in its vision for tourism would represent all groups, like the artists, the alternative health, ecotourism etc, then we could continue to attract the people who like Byron Bay for what it is – free of drive-ins and with few chains and franchises. I thought that someone should do something about this and then I realised that I am someone.

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