This DA was rejected by Shoalhaven Council staff, councillors and the Joint Regional Planning Panel. The development was illegal under the council's own SLEP.

The mediation is to be held behind closed doors. This means local residents are not to be privy to these discussions.

Either a development is illegal or it is not. Making changes to remove a function centre, but keeping a restaurant which could be used as a function centre is just rearranging the chairs. There are many more serious problems regarding this development.

If the council can manipulate regulations so easily, then can I now subdivide my property It is not allowable either.

Politicians say this election is about jobs and growth. They don’t talk about the statement by Australia’s Threatened Species Commissioner that Australia is experiencing an “extinction crisis” - with 55 of our animal species already extinct and another 1700 plant and animals threatened with extinction, just jobs and growth.

The Great Barrier Reef is threatened by climate change, which the World Health Organisation says is “the greatest threat to global health”. The main causes of climate change are the burning of fossil fuels and vegetation clearing. Yet our governments support the creation of huge new coal mines; are introducing laws in that will speed up the rate of land clearing; and telling us to focus on jobs and growth.

This month we heard Queensland’s Bramble Cay melomys is the first mammal to be driven to extinction by climate change. There has been a global decline in key pollinators including bees, birds and bats. Without pollinators forests will die, crops will fail, entire ecosystems will collapse. Yet our government wants to remove a keystone pollinator (Grey-headed flying-fox) from the threatened species list. Our wildlife, forests, crops and human health are in danger, but politicians want to talk about jobs and growth.

Australia’s environmental performance has been criticised nationally and internationally, and our government’s policies are making thing worse as they put political gain ahead of our long-term future.

One way or another, the numbers you pencil in on the ballot papers On July 2 will determine the future for your children. For them, it’s not about jobs and growth, it’s about life and death. 

On June 16 more than 200 people attended a candidates forum organised by the local Get Up group. Only two candidates turned up, The Greens’ Carmel McCallum and Labor’s Fiona Phillips. Ann Sudmalis who had confirmed her attendance, failed to attend. All candidates were to answer a range of questions on the policies of their respective parties.

I am stunned by her non-attendance. At 5pm she was apparently stuck in Sydney traffic. I ask why she had gone to Sydney and was still there at 5pm when she was due in Bomaderry at 6pm. Sudmalis suggested she might arrive at the forum by 6.45pm.

The forum received a second call saying she was stuck in more traffic around Gerrigong. The organisers offered Sudmalis the option of participating by phone – she declined.

Did she ever intend to go to the Get Up event?

It was remarkable Sudmalis could actually make an early appearance at a Vincentia ratepayers meeting with only 30 or so attendees, while the Labor and Greens candidates went all out to make both meetings. Maybe the local Liberal’s three word slogan should be change to Missing In Action.