Stay away if you wanna stay safe

Its simple really - if you want this great area of Australia to be developed with great care , you must ensure your representatives  employ people who know what they are doing with the environment. Not only that , like all good health professionals,  those highly trained people won't just treat problems,  they will prevent problems arising - they will plan well  . Those sorts of people won't just place the world outside in the too hard and don't dare touch baskets.
Even though we reopened this,  the first road into Apollo bay , after Wild dog Road  had been closed for 2 years , most of the work I was doing in three Shire for 3 decades was preventative work .
If all our reps ever do is fix up disasters , the budget will soon be blown with disasters - who would wanna be a counselor when that's the brief you get when you join  . Vote 1 for production ecologists .

Top down decision making doesn't work

Point Bunbury  Lorne south. centre of the photo is where new Cumberland hotel fill materials were placed to create a recreational area.


RE letters to the Colac Herald this week about $25000 worth of fuel used to cart soil from one side of the Otways to another as a result of recommendations from on high  to dump it " in a safe place ". The material was from soil movement onto one road in one valley near Apollo bay . Cost was $150000. 

If Councillor Frank Buchanan is right,   any increase in the road funding from Mr Cheeseman or Mr Mulder could well go to just shifting the soft stuff around the country;  Both our representatives would be better off stopping their own advisors from writing stupid instructions to Councils.  As the one who planned, designed and supervised the reopening of Wild Dog Road landslide area ( closed road for several years) nearly 10 years ago,  it's obvious that many such effective problem solving  processes wouldn't happen today;  with  practical problem prevention also on the backburner .  Even the most basic environmental decisions are being caught up in ridiculous and impractical red tape and referral systems with people who aren't accountable for the practical implications of their recommendations;.  I know 4 hardworking long suffering ratepayers in this Shire who can't even get to use their properties for the purpose legally determined for those properties. . I hope readers will vote for some practical  person who will stand up to our disrespectful state and commonwealth governments and their careless interference in the process of sound  decision-making here.

On Wild Dog Road we placed the huge amounts of landslide materials locally ,where it made geomorphological sense to do so.  In Lorne we placed the landslide prone materials from the Cumberland Hotel site at Point Bunbury where, once drained,  it made perfect environmental and recreational sense to do so. ( see photo)

Ratepayers in the biggest landslide risk area in Australia should be aware that one of the key conclusions of the Coronial Inquiry into the Thredbo disaster was that that  incomplete pictures painted by consultant reports was a significant reason why the real landslide risks in the Thredbo situation were ignored. You can read more about these studies on Otways Internet networks. 

Don't vote for anyone who will allow this superficial, irresponsible and ineffective system to continue.