Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about an important issue in my electorate, particularly for those who live in our coastal villages. I wish to mention the alarming fact raised recently by Tweed Councillor Ron Cooper and also the New South Wales shadow minister for the North Coast, Walt Secord, that the Liberal-National Party, at both a local and state level, are plotting to build high-rise buildings in our beautiful coastal villages—in particular, Kingscliff. Many locals are rightly concerned that their very way of life is under threat from these plans; and, recently, extensive debate has swirled around the issue of high-rise in Kingscliff.

However, this kind of plotting and scheming is nothing new on the Tweed Coast. This is a fight that our community has had for many years—indeed, many decades—from the days of fighting to 'keep Fingal special', right through to the Daly inquiry in 2005, which resulted in Tweed Shire Council being dismissed. That inquiry found that conservative aligned councillors were elected as puppets of a developer controlled group known as Tweed Directions and that Tweed Directions constructed a campaign funded by money primarily sourced from developers intent on securing a pro-development majority in council.

The fact is that our community stands ever vigilant and continues to campaign for appropriate development in our coastal areas. Tweed Councillor Ron Cooper is a local who has been fighting against inappropriate development and fighting for the protection of our lifestyle for decades. Recently, Ron saw a problem when drafts of the new Kingscliff Locality Plan came out and one of the options was to go beyond the three-storey height limit. Ron responded by firstly launching a petition supporting the three-storey limit—a petition that has gained 40,000 signatures. This reflects the community's strong commitment to limiting building heights. On this very platform, Ron ran for Tweed Council in October last year and was elected primarily on a no high-rise agenda. During this campaign, we saw the collective forces of the National Party and their fake independent Nationals candidates, all of whom were in cahoots with the Liberal Party candidate too. They all aligned to attack candidate Ron Cooper over the issue of no high-rise in Kingscliff.

Well, despite their attempts to silence Ron, he was duly elected on the back of massive support from the Kingscliff community. Once in council, Ron Cooper then moved to ensure the Kingscliff Locality Plan maintained the community's wish of three storeys. Of course, true to form, the Liberals and Nationals attacked again. Lo and behold, Liberal councillor James Owen initially lodged a rescission motion in an attempt to have this overturned. This was subsequently withdrawn, but these actions by Councillor Owen will not be forgotten.

But Ron Cooper is not alone. Labor supports him all the way. I support him; state Labor supports him; and councillor Reece Byrnes, our Labor voice on the Tweed Shire Council, supports him. Most importantly, the 14,000 people who signed Ron's petition support him. Ron also has the support of his council colleagues Mayor Katie Milne and Deputy Mayor Chris Cherry, and I commend them for that.

But the people I do not thank and do not commend are the other three councillors, who have made a clear choice to push high-rise buildings against the wishes of our community; and they have done this with the full support of the state Nationals MP Jeff Provest. So when council recently voted to support Ron Cooper and protect the community's wish to remain at a three-storey height limit, we saw again, as we did before the election, a direct and concerted campaign against him by the Liberals and Nationals—a campaign, it seems, that is being spearheaded by Liberal councillor James Owen. In fact, in a radio interview with ABC Lismore on 20 April this year, he said: 'Five storeys is not high-rise. Five storeys is just allowing a bit of extra height in certain parts of town.' Well, we know that five storeys is high-rise—and it is just the thin end of the wedge. We know that the Liberals and Nationals want to go further than five storeys: they want 10, they want 15; they want to have high-rise throughout Kingscliff; they want to overdevelop Kingscliff.

But this comes as no surprise to those of us who know you simply cannot trust the Liberals or Nationals at any level of government. Just last week, in the New South Wales parliament, we saw the Liberals and Nationals vote against Labor's bill to ban property developers and real estate agents from standing in local elections—showing their true colours yet again. I put the New South Wales State government on notice today: if you intervene and overturn the decision of the council mandating the three-storey height limit and overturn the wishes of locals in Kingscliff and allow high-rise in Kingscliff, we will campaign against you every day on every street corner. When it comes to protecting our coastal villages, make no mistake: it is only Labor which will protect them, because we will always stand with our coastal communities. So if the Liberals and Nationals want to have a fight over high-rise in Kingscliff, bring it on—bring it on! Every day we will fight them over that.