TO correct L. Hawkins (SCR Letters, March 18), it should be noted that the vested interest in Heritage Estates is a community and an environmental interest pitched at the highest possible level and recognised through national legislation, the Environment Protection, Biodiversity and Conservation Act.
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The balance of power only shifted when national assessment was required to test the legitimacy of a residential subdivision model arising from the 1999 NSW Committee of Inquiry. One of the significant reasons for this inquiry was the wilful intransigence of landholders who had insisted on a total development of the estate environment.
The outcome of this assessment, announced in March 2009 by the then federal minister, was clearly and unequivocally in favour of conserving the estate environment and not allowing residential development. After quite considerable work among the various agencies with this clear, concise and dedicated interest, the point has been reached where over $5 million of federal money has been allocated to support a resolution with all monies going to landholders.
This points very clearly to the established fact that there is one clear way to proceed and it is the right way based on the facts and processes involved. It does not cease to be so because it does not suit the L. Hawkins’ argument of some imagined pendulum of circumstance or because at some point in time the landholders had unwarranted councillor support.
In the infamous words of a councillor who voted in 2012 not to rezone the estate to Environment Conservation at a development committee meeting, “They gambled and they lost.”
The Hawkins suggestion of involving an eco-developer [sic] in applying a Queensland urban development model, which would make us all happy in a win-win-win-win situation beggars credibility.
C. Grounds,
Erowal Bay.
