Many residents in the old Goodwood South Ward, now Clarence Park Ward were justifiably upset at the suggestions being mooted in the recent DPA 2 consultation.

If you think that was bad are you prepared to stand up and be counted in what could be a way more devastating blow to development in your street and therefore the amenity of your street?

You would also be aware that your voice WAS heard by council and we are making changes to the plan. We will (as previously reported on this blog site) be going back out to you with those changes earl next year after the new council has had a chance to settle in.

Of course convincing council may be irrelevant with a State Government hovering above us and doing all they can to make local government irrelevant in planning matters. While they have the Expert Panel going through their motions the Minister for Planning keeps pushing through legislation that preempts the panel’s findings.

This minister and his government are hell bent on removing councils from the planning process. Why? One of his claims is that elected members acting on development assessment panels take too much notice of the neighbours and that this is stifling development in this state. Surely that means removing councils from having an influence removes your chance of having any influence.

So he is setting up yet another layer of bureaucracy at cost to you the tax payer so that developments in excess now of $ 3m can simply circumvent the local government development assessment boards.

Is this what you want. How many of you will protest this as you did the recent DPA2. I am. I have signed the petition being put together by Greens MLC Mark Parnell. Will you? It can be found on Mark’s website

And don’t forget that as much as Council may listen to you on DPA2 don’t expect that the minister will be as sympathetic. This government’s track record of announce and defend has not changed as evidenced by their current actions.

Just for the record the following is what I wrote in the general comments in the petition:

Help protect your street from the potential we know what is best that this government has a history of doing. I don’t know what chance we have of stopping this but I do know you will have next to no say in future development proposals if the State Government are in charge via a centralised rather than a local system.

Sign the petition. It may be your last and only chance.