Editorial - Gosford Challenge Gets Legs

Last month, as we were going to press, the NSW Minister for Planning, Tony Kelly, made two significant announcements:

The first was that the Festival Development Corporation (which controls the land at Mt. Penang) would be renamed Central Coast Development Corporation and given an expanded role. Among other things that role would be to broker the development of the Gosford waterfront as part of the Gosford Challenge.

This issue of CCBR shows the area involved.

The second announcement was that the Central Coast had been declared a region under the state environmental planning legislation.

And then a week later he made an even more significant announcement that the waterfront land had been declared potentially State Significant, effectively taking it out of the hands of Gosford Council.

And it didn’t stop there because at the same time the Land Planning and Management Authority, which these days is responsible for all of this, placed advertisements in the Australian Financial Review and in other media calling for expressions of interest for the development of the Gosford waterfront (see Pages 9 and 21)

At last things are on the move and this Minister appears fair dinkum about making it happen.

This is the first major contribution the Government has made in respect to the Central Coast since it came to office fifteen years ago. But it is happening and we must get right behind the whole Gosford Challenge project and the Minister.

There is one other person in this Government who has had a lot of input into this and that is the Member for Wyong and Parliamentary Secretary for the Central Coast, David Harris. He is doing a great job for the Central Coast.

On the subject of the NBN Councillors Greg Best and Doug Eaton must be congratulated for getting Wyong Council to support a move to have the Central Coast made a priority area.

The broadband service we currently have on the Coast is dreadful and does nothing to encourage business growth.

The dilemma for businesspeople on the Central Coast is that while the current Federal Government is not a small business friendly government the Coalition has a narrow view of telecommunications.

Edgar Adams
Editor

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