Why I remain a New England New Stater 8 - the electricity asset grab

Note to readers: This post is one in a series using personal examples to illustrate why I continue to support both agitation for New England self-government and self-government itself. Agitation, because its very existence forces forces the Sydney Government to consider New England interests. Self-government, because there are some things that we cannot achieve without this.

The Sydney media has been full of the Sydney Government's plans to privatise the NSW electricity system. I have very mixed feelings on this one. I suspect that it is both inevitable and desirable. But it also rubs raw a past wound.

Back in the nineteen nineties, electricity distribution was controlled by country councils, some of whom also had generation capacity. The Sydney Government put forward a reform program for the electricity sector.

At the time I was running a consulting business out of Armidale. I was also chair of Tourism Armidale. In the first role, I was interested in the electricity sector as a possible consulting marketplace. In the second, I was interested in the New England County Council as a source of tourism funding.

As part of market scoping I looked at the official Government material on the proposed reforms. Essentially these involved folding the distributors into larger corporatised entities. Two justifications were advanced.

The first lay in the national restructuring of the sector, including introduction of competition and the creation of a national electricity marketplace. This, it was argued, required larger entities. Smaller entities could not compete.

The second justification lay in enhanced efficiency. According to the NSW Treasury, the existing country councils were not subject to proper disciplines to earn returns on the assets they held. So consolidation and corporatisation would increase revenues while benefiting consumers.

Now I had problems with these arguments at the time. The New England County Council was owned by local councils and was formed through the acquisition of Council assets. Its growth had been funded by surpluses plus borrowings. The State had controlled and guaranteed those borrowings, but to my knowledge had never contributed a dollar of funding.

As part of its development, the NECC had built its own small hydro power station. This had been funded by its consumers through higher electricity prices, significantly higher than the state average. This investment had reached pay-back time. The NECC was quite profitable, generating funds for local projects, while its electricity prices were some of the cheapest in NSW.

Local concerns across NSW about the plans, about the Sydney Government's grab for assets, were ignored. So what happened?

The first thing that the Sydney Government did was to increase borrowing against the assets, thus generating cash for its own purposes. The second thing was to strip money out through dividends, creating more cash for its own purposes.

In the drive for efficiency, many jobs were cut, in cases such as linemen over cut, creating later shortages that impeded efficiency. There was also underinvestment.

Did consumers benefit? This is hard work out accurately. Certainly bigger industrial users did.

Did the original local owners of the assets benefit? Almost certainly not in the case of NECC. The area lost higher level jobs, plus access to the surplus that had been available to fund local activities. I also suspect that local electricity prices have increased more than the state average simply because they were low to begin with.

Would self-government have prevented this asset grab? Perhaps not, because the Sydney Government's approach was in part part of a broader trend in public administration. But we would have had a much higher certainty of local benefit since funds would have been spent within New England, not sucked away to help fund the inefficiencies of the broader NSW system.

Return to introductory post

Githabul people win land title recognition

Back in January 2015 I reported on the agreement between the Githabul people and the NSW Government about a large native title land claim over a large portion of New England. Now the claim has moved another step forward. I was going to give you a link, but the story seems to have vanished into Fairfax's digital store, so I will just report the key facts.

In the first claim in ten years settled under the Commonwealth's Native Title Legislation and the first time that the Sydney Government and an indigenous community have jointly sought a decision, the Githabul people have won rights over an area of 112,000 hectares including nine national parks and thirteen state forests in the Kyogle and Tenterfield Shires.

The decision will afford traditional owners the right of access to the area for spiritual purposes; to camp, fish, hunt and gather animals, plants and water there for non-commercial needs and to lawfully protect places of importance to them.

One thing that made me sad, though, was a comment from Trevor Close, the successful applicant of the claim. He said:

You will never see this again in NSW. Too many elders have passed away who
hold the information and language necessary to pass the evidence test.

In the midst of all the macro Australian argument about things like reconciliation and saying sorry, my concern has been much more local. Recording and preserving what we have now, while meeting the needs of New England's indigenous peoples as they are today.

Why I remain a New England New Stater 1 - Introduction

I was asked the other day why I still pursued the dream for New England Statehood. I know that time has moved against me. But I still think that this is the only way to control our future in a meaningful sense.
Let me take a simple, practical, if disguised example.

Note to reader: Upon reflection, I have removed the example because I felt uncomfortable that it might be recognised even though disguised. I will use some other examples in later posts to make the point.

Still later: I have decided to use this post as an introductory post for a series of short posts using a range of examples to explain why I think that New England's future really depends upon the renewal of agitation for self government, the reactivation of the New England New State Movement.

At one level it does not matter whether we get self-government or not, although that remains my personal aspiration. In simple political terms, the very existence of new state agitation forces Governments to recognise and respond to New England needs in a way that does not presently happen.

The examples that I will use are all drawn from my own experience. They show the often unseen ways in which existing structures work against New England interests. Longer term reforms cannot be achieved without changing those structures. In the short term, political pressure can force responses from existing structures.

Some of the examples will seem small, even trivial. But it is the overall pattern that I want to draw out, because the cumulative effects are not trivial in the slightest.

Posts in the series:

• Why I remain a New England New Stater 2 - Industry Representation
• Why I remain a New England New Stater 3 - the conservation laboratory case
• Why I remain a New England New Stater 4 - Cockington Green
• Why I remain a New England New Stater 5 - the case of Tasmania
• Why I remain a New England New Stater 6 - conflicts in NSW tourism branding
• Why I remain a New England New Stater 7 - the case of the big river
• Why I remain a New England New Stater 8 - the electricity asset grab
• Why I remain a New England New Stater 9 - the price of neglect
• Why I remain a New England New Stater 10 - the sad case of Newcastle
• Why I Remain a New England New Stater 11 - capturing local talent
• Why I remain a New England Stater 12 - frustrations with New England tourism
• Why I remain a New England New Stater 13 - the fallacy of the NSW economy
• New States and Ontario
• Sydney's 1995 electricity heist

Why I remain a New England New Stater 10 - the sad case of Newcastle

Note to readers: This post is one in a series using personal examples to illustrate why I continue to support both agitation for New England self-government and self-government itself. Agitation, because its very existence forces forces the Sydney Government to consider New England interests. Self-government, because there are some things that we cannot achieve without this.

I was listening to a radio discussion on the way home from work. A southern commentator compared the favourable treatment (and publicity) that cities like Hobart or Adelaide obtained compared to Newcastle. The reason given was that they were state capitals, whereas Newcastle was treated simply as an extension of Sydney.

I think it true that Newcastle is much neglected.

From the time the Hawkesbury rail bridge was opened to Sydney with rail freight rates set so as to attract freight from elsewhere in New England to Sydney, the city has suffered as Sydney's much smaller and poorer second cousin.

Would Newcastle have benefited from New England statehood, given that it would not have been capital? It is hard to argue otherwise. As New England's major city, Newcastle would necessarily have attracted attention and promotion in a way not possible in NSW.

In 1967 Newcastle voted no to self-government out of loyalty to the then Labor Party who opposed separation. I think that I would challenge those in Newcastle who opposed self-government in 1967 to name a single thing that Newcastle has gained since that the city would not have gained as part of New England.

Since 1967 Newcastle has declined in relative terms. The city is no longer as important or relevant as it was. Some of the decline has been due to broader causes such as industrial change. However, part of it is due to the way that Newcastle has been increasingly sidelined within NSW.

Return to introductory post.

New England Australia - Newcastle's decline

I think that many Newcastle people would be surprised by the heading of this post. But it's true.

Growing up, those in country NSW used to refer to NSW as Newcastle, Sydney and Wollongong. Now NSW should be written nSw.

Growing up, Newcastle was NSW's second city, the biggest city in New England. It had a unique and distinct place. That place is going.

The use of language by the NSW Government and the Sydney media shows this clearly.

I was surprised during the last elections to find that the Sydney Morning Herald included the Lower Hunter in its central coast election maps. Talk about the tail wagging the dog. But then I found a series of NSW Government maps that simply showed Newcastle as part of Greater Sydney.

We can see this in the NSW State Plan where Newcastle is treated as one of Sydney's ring cities.

Newcastle people really need to watch this or the place will become just another Sydney suburb.

The Clarence River and the Great Big Water Grab 2 - the issues

Photo: Clarence River near Ulmarra

In my last post I spoke of Mr Turnbull's grab for the waters of the Clarence River to provide water to the people of Brisbane and South East Queensland. In this post I want to spell out the issues as I see them as simply and as clearly as I can.

Any proposal of this type will generate opposition as well as a range of responses, especially from those with environmental concerns. These are important issues that need to be addressed. But I think that there is a broader set of principles involved.

As a statement of general principle, most if not all Government decisions over resources create a pattern of winners and losers.

In the case of the Big River, the immediate losers are the people of the Northern Tablelands and the Northern Rivers who lose access to a resource, the winners are the people of Brisbane and SE Queensland who gain water.

There are direct and indirect or longer term losses associated with the Clarence proposal. Direct losses include the potential affect on the livelihood of those who depend upon the river. Indirect losses include the opportunity costs associated with loss of alternative uses of the water.

There are no benefits that I can see for the people of New England to offset these losses. All benefits flow to the people of Brisbane and SE Queensland. To add salt to the wound, to the degree that the Turnbull proposal involves tax payer money, then the people of New England will in fact be subsidising Brisbane.

This leads me to my first conclusion. If the dam is to proceed, the people using the water should pay the full cost of the water including any direct losses plus opportunity costs, the people of New England should be compensated for those losses and costs.

Two issues then arise. How do we place a value on the losses and opportunity costs? What mechanism might be used to distribute the payment for the losses and opportunity costs?

These are not easy questions to answer to begin with, with the difficulties increased by the absence of any form of New England Government.

To illustrate this last point, consider the difficulties facing the NSW Government in responding to this issue.

The NSW Government does not recognise the New England I am talking about as an entity in any sense what so ever. This makes it hard for it to deal with the issue.

The Iemma Government faces a second problem in that adoption of the approach I am talking about would in fact seriously constrain the future freedom of the NSW Government to do as it wills. Here we have already seen in the case of the proposed Tillegra dam that Sydney itself is quite prepared to play water politics, to override local interests, to gain immediate political advantage.

In all these circumstances, I think that the most that we can expect from the NSW Government is a political response determined by its judgement about the various political forces involved.

This leads me to my second conclusion. If we cannot rely on either the Federal Government or State Government to recognise, let alone respect, the New England interest, then it is up to the people of New England to discuss and present issues in a way that forces consideration of the New England interest. The starting point here needs to be a revived conversation about possible uses of the waters of the Clarence.

I say conversation because I do not think that there is any present agreement even on the issues themselves. I may be wrong, but I have the strong impression that the water grab took people by surprise even though it has been clear for some time that water politics would lead to such moves.

In the meantime, political forces are likely to stall the dam in the short term.

The Federal ALP has attacked the dam, while the Federal National Party itself is vulnerable in some New England electorates. However, the issue will not go away. For that reason, I think it important that the conversation be pursued.

Why I remain a New England New Stater 9 - the price of neglect

Note to readers: This post is one in a series using personal examples to illustrate why I continue to support both agitation for New England self-government and self-government itself. Agitation, because its very existence forces forces the Sydney Government to consider New England interests. Self-government, because there are some things that we cannot achieve without this.

It has been a little while since my last post in this series. I was reminded of the need to start again be a lunch time conversation here in Sydney. It was a work group.

The conversation turned to history. One remarked that the Welsh really just complained, while the Scots had sought independence for a long while. A second, that there had never been an Australian equivalent. I mentioned New England, but was cut off because (to the audience) it seemed odd and irrelevant. Yet the specific example I was giving went back in history to the point at which NSW was on the point of civil war.

Looking round the table, I realised that of the eight of us, only three were born in Australia. Of the three, one had New England links and was interested. Of the overseas born, none had had any access to any form of New England history.

Having one's personal history rejected as not important is obviously a pain. But there is a broader issue.

Those sitting around that table actually make decisions that affect New England. They all see New England in terms of a series of sub-regions with little understanding of the linkages between areas. They also see New England within a metro frame set by NSW statistical divisions and definitions.

There is nothing to force modern decision makers to consider the broader New England interest. Everything becomes fragmented.

In saying this, I am not in any way impugning the character of decision makers in NSW or nationally. Many care passionately about the things they work on. Yet the system they work in works against New England.

In a way we have created this position ourselves.

Since the decline of the New England New State Movement after the 1967 referendum loss, since New Englanders became locked into their narrow local or regional worlds, there has been nothing to force outsiders to consider us as other than a series of small and separate areas.

We cannot expect others to consider our broader needs if we cannot articulate and argue them ourselves.

Return to introductory post.

New England's Poor Towns - a failure in public policy

One of my consistent arguments on this blog is the need for New England to develop an effective voice.
In my posts on the NSW Government's State Plan, I began by looking at New England's needs. As part of this I pointed to the need for economic development to provide jobs and overcome economic and social deprivation.

In my second post I examined the Plan against New England's needs. I concluded:

If you look at my simple analysis of New England's needs in the previous post, and then compare it to the Plan you will see that most of New England's needs are not addressed or addressed in a peripheral fashion.
In this context, one way of testing the potential value of a plan is to ask what the position would be at the end if every target were to be achieved. Here I think that we can say that at the end of ten years New Englanders will be at best marginally better off, more likely they will have seen a further deterioration in New England's position.

Professor Vinson's new national study into economic and social disadvantage drives home my argument about the failure of Government policy to address New England's needs.

Nearly all the poorest and most socially disadvantaged towns and villages in NSW can be found in New England.

Bonalbo, Kempsey, Tingha and Windale. Bowraville, Casino, Deepwater, Urunga and Coraki. Nambucca Heads, Tweed Heads, Walgett and Forster. Kurri Kurri, Woodenbong, Boggabilla and South West Rocks. Tenterfield, Ashford, Iluka and Inverell. Sawtell and Taree. The list goes on.

Circumstances vary from place to place.

I think, for example, that Inverell would be surprised to find itself on the list, yet on the key social indicators used by Professor Vinson the town ranks low because of the presence of disadvantaged groups. On the coast, the presence of retirees pulls average incomes down. There is also , I suspect, a close correlation between the relative size of local aboriginal populations - the Aborigines form a much higher proportion of the New England local population than the national average - and the average measures of economic and social deprivation.

Whichever way you cut the numbers, many New England towns and villages have been going backward in relative terms, in some cases absolute terms, for many years. In some parts of New England real youth unemployment ranges from 20 to over 40 per cent. This sometimes sits side by side with the presence of skilled labour shortages that compound the problem by reducing incomes and support jobs.

I can see no sign that these problems are being addressed. Just the opposite.

The Mid North Coast has the lowest average incomes in NSW with above average unemployment. Yet the NSW State Government's coastal strategy for the Mid North Coast postulates a population increase for the area of 91,000 over the next twenty five years. The strategy is silent as to where the jobs will come from to employ these people.

Unless and until New England can again get its act together to force our politicians to look at New England's needs as a whole, these problems will remain unresolved.

Take Kempsey as an example.

The simple reconstruction of the inland road over the Big Hill to Armidale would increase traffic through the Upper Macleay valley to Kempsey and the adjoining resorts. It would also open up the inland to Macleay valley products. An effective inland New England development strategy would add to the impact.

There are already close links between the Macleay valley Aborigines and those in Armidale. Many of Armidale's Aborigines came to the city in the 1950s from the Upper Macleay Valley. There is scope to develop an Aboriginal tourism strategy that links the Macleay Valley and Armidale. New England as a whole has to learn to recognise its Aboriginal people as a New England asset, not a local concern.

These are not complex suggestions, now will they solve the problem in total. We need to try a whole range of things. But this will not happen so long as New Englanders continue to be bound by localism.

Update 25 July 2015

Over five years since I wrote this post. The latest data shows that the problem continues. 

Storms gather over UNE colleges

Photo: Lightning above Drummond Smith College

Sometimes I despair about my old University, I really do!

I heard from ABC news that proposals by the University of New England to lease its residential college system to private enterprise were to be discussed at a public meeting in Armidale.

The university stated that it would take about $22 million to fix longstanding maintenance problems, something it could not afford to undertake itself.

Then on 7 February ABC news reported that the university had promised widespread consultation over several months before making a decision following a public meeting attended by more than 300 people to hear details of the proposal.

Before going on, oh ABC, since when was Armidale in north western NSW? As a colleague commented, he has heard Tamworth referred to as far north west!

The university repeated that it could not afford the $22 million it would take to refurbish its colleges at a time when occupancy rates are declining.

Vice-chancellor Professor Allan Pettigrew defended what critics say is the failure of the UNE to consult more widely with the college community.

"We're in a position where we're preparing draft documents at the present time. They have to be considered by the appropriate committees and the university council itself. We haven't reached that stage yet," he said.

The meeting organiser, Rosemary Leitch, who is a senior common room member of Earle Page College, was critical of the university.

She believes (correctly) that it had not consulted the wider community before beginning the development of plans.

What those at the meeting were probably not aware of is that UNE's move comes at a time when both the Universities of Sydney and NSW are in the process of finalising plans for major expansions in college facilities to enhance the on-campus experience.

Now it may be that UNE has let cyclical maintenance slip to the point that it is now between a rock and a hard place. It would not be the first organisation to do so. Indeed, it has done so before! However, the thing that stands out to me is the continuing failure of the university to capitalise on what should be one of its greatest assets, its residential system.

The reasons for this lie deep in UNE's past and centre on the nature of the relationship between the University and its colleges.

UNE developed its colleges to provide residential on-campus accommodation. This was necessary, but the colleges were also seen as central to the University experience. Even those living in town such as myself were required to be affiliated with a college, in my case Wright College.

The formal trappings of the colleges - senior common rooms, junior common rooms, tutorial systems, masters - were drawn from Oxbridge. However, they were not given independent governance, but instead were treated as residential arms of the university.

As I argued even back the sixties and seventies, this was a fundamental error because it prevented the colleges developing a real independent presence including access to external funding sources, leaving them dependent on changing attitudes in a central university administration often pre-occupied with short term problems.

Wright and Drummond Colleges can be taken as examples.

Wright was threatened with closure in the eighties because residence numbers had dropped, maintenance costs were up. This was fought off for a period, but only for a period. Finally, the costs of full refurbishment were seen as too great, and the college was closed to the great distress of its alumni.

In Drummond's case, the college was closed because of a decline in student numbers, then re-opened, then merged with S H Smith House to form Dummond and Smith College.

I am well aware that part of the colleges' problems lay in changing student attitudes to accommodation, including a desire to live of campus, as well as needs for new types of accommodation. I am equally well aware of the nature of college costs, including the fact that they can bleed money should student numbers drop below break-even. My point is that poor governance arrangements contributed to the problems.

My wife is chair of council at Sydney University's International House. I go to many of its functions as handbag.

International House faces many of the same problems as UNE's colleges. It, too, is formally part of SU in a legal sense. It, too, faces challenges in attracting students, in deciding what to outsource (catering has in fact just been bought back in house because complaints about standards had begun to affect student numbers), in achieving viability with a relatively small number of residents. But what a difference a council makes!

IH's council is no cipher. It approves budgets, oversights finances, plans IH's future, negotiates with the University, helps sell the IH story. It provides both continuity and a structure that maintains involvement by others - alumni for example. The IH Director reports first to council.

Now compare this to UNE. There, as I suggested, the colleges are no more than subservient units of the central administration. They do have their own character and systems, don't get me wrong on this, but they have never had a chance to carve out a real independent role for themselves.

Back in July and August 2006 when I was trying to make some suggestions on UNE's strategic plan, I made two points relevant to the current discussion.

Point one was UNE's unique residential character. I have returned to this point a number of times. UNE is still a university, not a big degree shop. This is reflected in the way the place consistently scores high on student satisfaction ratings. I suggested that this was a key marketing strength that UNE must maintain.

Point two was the potential role of the college system in marketing UNE if the place could but take advantage of it. UNE has held on one, but gone back on two.

In all this, UNE's consistent mismanagement of its colleges over decades may now have reached the point that the college asset has been lost. If so, I hope that the administration has at least done its financial modelling properly.

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Outsourcing, public-private partnerships, come at a cost. Private participants must earn at least a market return on their money. This comes from improvements in efficiency because of the private sector control, from payments by the agency to the private partners, or some combination of the two.

It may be that UNE has got to the point that it has to take the money now, paying the price later. If so, it might take a lesson from social housing in NSW.

Ten or so years ago, cut-backs in housing funding led to a decision to spend available funding on leasehold instead of capital properties. This did allow many more properties in the short term, meeting immediate needs. Today with funding still tight and rents through the ceiling, NSW is struggling to maintain the number of leasehold properties.

Sydney Government's Coastal Planning Strategies

New England's neglected inland. Photo Gordon Smith

With the release of the draft Mid North Coast strategy (story), the Sydney Government has now released strategies for the entire current NSW coastal strip. You can access all the strategies here.

Having looked at the strategies, there is something almost obscene about the way the Sydney Government is ignoring NSW outside the coastal strip. The whole focus is on directly controlling anticipated population growth along the coast, nothing about building population elsewhere.

Some facts first.

At the moment, the NSW population is around 6.8 million. Of this:

• 4.1 million live in Sydney
• over 166,000 live on the South Coast
• 280,000 live in Illawarra
• 300,000 live on the Central Coast
• 515,000 live in the Lower Hunter
• 330,000 live on the Mid North Coast as now defined by the Sydney Government
• 228,000 live on the Far North Coast
• leaving around 800,00 in the rest of the state.

Let's track forward. According to the Government's projections, in twenty five years:

• Sydney's population is projected at 5.3 million, up 1.2 million or 29 per cent
• the Central Coast population is projected at 226,000, up 60,000 or 36 per cent
• the Illawarra population is projected at 328,00, up 48,000 or 17 per cent
• the Central Coast population is projected at 370,000, up 70,000 or 21 per cent
• the Lower Hunter population is projected at 675,000, up 160,000 or 31 per cent
• the Mid North Coast is projected at 424,000, up 91,000 or 31 per cent
• the Far North Coast is projected at 289,000, up 61,000 or 26 per cent.

If we look at the totals, the Government is projecting a population increase in the coastal strip of 1.69 million, 1.2 million (71 per cent) in Sydney. If my maths is correct, this equates to an average annual increase in the coastal strip of 68,000, of which 48,000 will be in Sydney. The population increase in the New England coastal strip is projected at 312,000, around 13,000 per annum.

All the various strategies focus on controlling and accommodating the population growth as projected. The various commentaries on the strategies, positive and negative, focus on the adequacy of the proposed response to that population growth.

Having set the scene, let me go to my concerns.

To begin with, is this population growth in fact likely?

Last financial year the NSW population increased by 59,000. This means that the projected population growth in the coastal strip of 68,000 requires a significant increase in the current total state population growth. It also seems to imply a very low, even negative, population growth in the rest of the state.

Leaving aside the rest of the current state for the moment, NSW as an entity is presently losing people especially to Queensland through internal migration. These losses are offset by new overseas arrivals.

Taking 2005-2006 as an example, NSW gained 40,492 from natural increase (births minus deaths) , lost 23,970 through internal migration, but gained 42,231 from overseas migration for a net gain of 58,753.

On this simple maths, achievement of an average annual 68,000 population growth requires an extra 9,000 per annum to come from some combination of increased natural growth, increased overseas migration or reduced internal migration. This is possible but far from certain.

There is, however, another way the coastal strip population projections might be achieved in statistical terms, and that is through internal migration from inland NSW to the coastal strip. This appears to be implied in some of the wording in the strategy documents. There is no way of checking this because the Sydney Government does not have an equivalent strategy document for the rest of the state.

I think that this apparent implicit assumption is a real problem.

Despite discussions generated by the drought, inland NSW already has the infrastructure required for a larger population. As a simple example, Armidale's current water supply could support an urban population of 75,000, three times the city's current population. Yet we have nothing that looks seriously at inland development.

This links to a broader problem with the planning process, one that that I have already referred to in the context of the Mid-North Coast Strategy, the absence of any real focus in the strategies on economic development itself. There is no certainty that required jobs will be created in required areas as assumed.

This links to another issue, the way in which a strategy or planning process carried out in isolation from other critical variables can actually lead to distorted outcomes.

None of the planning documentation that I have seen actually discusses the various demographic drivers likely to affect population outcomes, nor are there any discussions of alternative scenarios. None of the documentation looks at issues associated with changing population composition that might flow from different combinations of outcomes from the demographic variables. There is little discussion about the flow on effects of the various planning assumptions.

The difficulty in all this is that specific investment decisions based on flawed planning then create new self-fulfilling but sub-optimal outcomes.

Sydney Government releases draft Mid North Coast strategy

Photo: South West Rocks, tourist destination, Mid North Coast

The Sydney Government has released its 25 year strategy for the Mid North Coast. The Sydney Morning Herald story on the strategy can be found here, the strategy itself here.

In a series of earlier posts dealing with the Government's ten year plan (here 1, here 2, here 3) I set out the needs that the Plan needed to meet, concluding that it did not meet those needs. On the surface, and I still have to do the detailed analysis, this strategy suffers from similar weaknesses.

The strategy postulates that the population of the Mid North Coast will rise by 91,000 new residents to be accommodated in 58,400 new dwellings. Lack of jobs is already a core problem on the Mid North Coast. So you would expect that job creation would be a key element in the strategy. It is not.

The strategy assumes that a certain proportion of jobs will come from extra employment required to service the increased population. That leaves a significant gap that the strategy does not address in any way other than some comments on the need to increase industrial land. Hardly a solution.

Another gripe. When did Grafton become part of the Mid North Coast? It is and always has been part of the Northern Rivers. I do wish that the Sydney Government would stop fiddling with regional boundaries for its own administrative convenience.

New England's Aborigines - Moree Success Story

Photo: Message from Moree, ABC TV

Earlier this week ABC TV had an inspirational short piece on the work of Dick Estens. This followed an earlier ABC documentary, Message from Moree.

The western New England town of Moree is the centre of a rich agricultural district. At least 17 per cent of the population of Moree Plains Shire is Aborginal.

There have been strong past divides between Europeans and Aborigines in Moree, with high Aboriginal unemployment (up to 65 per cent) and limited opportunities creating a viscious cycle of social deprivation.

Dick Estens, a local cotton grower, believed that the only way to overcome racial divides and Aboriginal social deprivation was by finding Aboriginal people jobs. Seven years ago he launched Aboriginal Employment Services in the face of great scepticism from both sides of the racial divide. Both the documentary and the later follow up story trace the outstanding success of Esten's work.