Why might it be easier to gather mass support for an iconic stretch of coastline rather than a small location dedicated to agriculture and viticulture?
Smith's Beach has thousands of visitors every year, Karridale doesn't, Karridale is not a tourist destination.
The Smith's Beach battle was fought over environmental issues, the green movement has a strong voice that is willing to defend the natural environment. The majority of supporters challenging the Smith's Beach development were probably more concerned with outcome than process.
As it transpired it was a corrupt process within the heart of Busselton Shire Council that had enabled a bad outcome, but the initial interest was garnered for resistance to the outcome.
Karridale is primarily a battle for democracy and social justice. I would certainly never spend time battling over a few houses at the crossroads, they will have no effect on me or my family. But the erosion of democracy and due process will.
If there had been open and transparent planning for Karridale nobody knows what the outcome might have been. It is possible the community would have decided to embark on a programme to develop some of the interesting ideas that came out of the Leeuwin Ward Planning Day and the Karridale Progress Association planning meetings. The residents may have wanted to progress the concepts they believed would drive economic improvements here and offer low cost housing.
None of us can know.
Nobody is battling about the outcome, it is purely a battle to get recognition that we experienced the failure of due process; and to determine why this happened and implement controls to stop any further failures.
Our rates are paying for an executive leaders team, and elected councillors, to oversee the administration of this shire. Why has this oversight failed so many times? Apparently nobody noticed, neither public servant nor councillor could see the failures?
The correspondence from the Karridale Progress Association was discounted as anti-development nonsense. Just noise from a few rustics too thick to recognise the iconic future they might have if they would just embrace the new ideology and begin to believe what they are told without question. An ideology that requires total obedience and suspension of all critical faculties.
The correspondence from the Karridale Progress Association was discounted as anti-development nonsense. Just noise from a few rustics too thick to recognise the iconic future they might have if they would just embrace the new ideology and begin to believe what they are told without question. An ideology that requires total obedience and suspension of all critical faculties.
I don't think our public servants or our elected representative were anything other than fully aware of the malignant influence of Brian Burke, Michael Hale, and the others involved in this scandal at Karridale. They were all written to on many occasions. They knew where the problems were but for their own, very private reasons, they chose to ignore them.
Cr Smart, and a shire employee, have both accused me of being "anti-development", and I would like to answer this charge.
Firstly, it is inappropriate for a shire administration employee to claim knowledge of my position regarding development at Karridale as they have never discussed this with me; neither is my preferred outcome of any relevance to the discussion. The fact is that I hold a deep and sincere belief that we must have an open and transparent system of planning that follows a process that has been democratically determined.
I hope that my determination to highlight the issues would be as strong regardless of the outcome.
Secondly, if I was "anti-development" that need not be a position that would embarass me. If the facts are examined and development, in the form proposed, is inappropriate at this time then I can see nothing wrong with opposing development. The only significant growth this shire has seen over recent years is in property, not residents, not jobs, just houses and house blocks. We have the unenviable reputation as the shire with most empty houses and subdivisions.
Thirdly, Cr Smart suggests in his email last week that the planning process for Karridale was random, but acceptable to our elected Council, and therefore I must stop asking questions. His attitude is not one that I can ever be reconciled to. Our Council accepts failures in process without any making any enquiry as to why they happened, I do not.
The people of Karridale have been treated unfairly, they have not received the good governance we are entitled to anticipate from an Australian local authority. They have not received value for money. For reasons as yet unknown there has been a failure with our Council. Cr Smart expects me not to look back at the accolades and praise being heaped upon the planning PROCESS in 2009, a period when he claims we had inexperienced planners with less than competent management.
Somebody must be wrong, Harrison? or Smart?
Compare and contrast? Maybe both men are economical with the truth?
