Of Development Applications – They’re Not Secrets, You Know

I made a terrible mistake today.  I read the Newcastle Herald again. And, once again, I can’t help but notice some pretty ordinary journalism in one of their stories.

This time, they’re tackling development applications; with particular regard to ones involving liquor licensing, but it can really be extended to relate to any development application you can think of.

The article in question, “Calls for liquor licence scrutiny” written by Stephen Ryan, features many comments from Newcastle councillor Tim Crakanthorp who believes that having development applications approved by council officers, rather than the councillors themselves, is resulting in people not being made aware of potentially controversial developments.

There are also comments from former liquor, gaming and racing minister Richard Face, who coordinates the Lake Macquarie Liquor Accord, who shares these concerns.

Between them, it reads like some sort of conspiracy between the council officers and developers to ensure that every single street corner has a bottle shop on it and that they’re attempting to hide it all from the population.

Here’s the thing though: Every single development application lodged with council (both in Newcastle and Lake Macquarie) is put on public display for a number of weeks, during which time submissions from the public are taken, before a determination is made by the council officers.

If there are a number of submissions made against the proposal, the application will be sent to the council itself for determination.

It’s not exactly a secret process.  All it requires is that those who have an interest in what’s going on around them to be a little bit alert and a little proactive, rather than just sitting back and waiting for someone else to tell them what to get outraged over.

If you live in Lake Macquarie you don’t have to do a lot at all.  Due to the way the council operates, all documentation, plans and reports related to a particular development application are listed on their website.  You can find it by visiting Lake Macquarie City Council’s Application Tracking page.

Hell, if you’re really lazy, you can just sign up for the Planning Alerts service which will automatically send you an email telling you that a development application has been lodged for a property near your address.

If you live within the realm of Newcastle City Council you will need to go to a little more effort, but it is still not exactly hard.

Council publishes a list of all current development applications on public exhibition on their website.  You can find it, oddly enough, in the planning section.  Once you’ve found the development you’re interested in, you pop into the council building (the offices, not town hall) ask to see the plans.

Sure, it might require leaving your house, but surely you can find some time during the three to four week exhibition period to wander down and have a look.

Perhaps if someone had done that, the first time people knew about a proposed bottle shop wouldn’t have been when they came to build it?

Maybe one day Newcastle City Council will put stuff online to take out this clearly restrictive practice of having to go outside, but I doubt it.

So there you have it.  This process isn’t about developers and councils being sneaky and trying to pull the wool over eyes of the community, it’s about the community not being bothered to be interested in their…well…community.

It would have also been nice if the Herald had bothered to point this out to their readers in the interests of balance and providing quality journalism. But I don’t expect that to happen any time soon either.

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The Herald’s At It Again With the Rail Line and Other Stupidness

I get the feeling that my getting angry at the Newcastle Herald’s agenda pushing when it comes to the heavy rail line is going to become an ongoing series.

Just this morning they’ve dropped another completely factless assertion that the rail line is going to be removed.

In a report by (recent graduate from the Ben Smee School of Journalistic Integrety) Matthew Kelly entitled “Hunter’s love affair with our cars” we get the lovely line that “[t]he state government is widely tipped to announce that the Newcastle rail line will be cut at either Hamilton or Wickham in the new year”

Are they? According to who?  Do you have a source?  Do you have some facts to corroborate that statement?

Or, more likely, are you just publishing complete bullshit because you’ve decided that you want to editorialise on this issue at every given opportunity?

Their assertion is followed immediate by the note that “Newcastle MP Tim Owen did not comment about speculation on the rail line’s future”.

Do you know why he didn’t comment, Mr Kelly? My money is on it being because there is currently no plan to decide the future of the heavy rail line and what you’re reporting on is speculation.  Speculation that is being driven by people who have an agenda to push on the issue.

But the spectacular amount of derp in Mr Kelly’s article doesn’t end there.  The crux of the piece is that public transport is lacking in Newcastle and its surrounding areas.

To prove his point, Mr Kelly cites the example of the Hilkmann family of Thornton.

And wow, he couldn’t have found a more useless example to demonstrate his point.

Running through the family we see that:

-                “Peter Hilkmann is a service technician who travels between the Central Coast, Taree and Mudgee”, so he’s unlikely to ever use public transport, as his work requires him to carry tools and such from one location to another.  Public transport has never been designed to function in this capacity so this isn’t really anything surprising.

-                “His eldest son, Matthew, works at Beresfield industrial estate”. Doing what? Does he have tools and such that he needs to transport to and from work?  If not, has he looked at possibly riding a bicycle?  It’s not that far from Thornton to Beresfield and it’s (relatively) flat.  Hell, does he drive a company car?  Did we bother asking that question?

-                “[Y]oungest son Cameron works in Sydney and travels home on weekends”.  So he’s completely irrelevant in this discussion.  Moving on.

-                “Mr Hilkmann’s wife, Maureen, commutes to Newcastle on the train daily”. Oh, she does?  FUNNY THAT!

Isn’t it amazing that the only person in the example given by Mr Kelly and the Newcastle Herald who is most likely be catching public transport actually does? AMAZING!

Oh, and it gets better as well, Mr Hilkmann offers this stunning insight into public transport internationally:

‘‘In Europe and Hong Kong the public transport system is fantastic because you can catch a train or a bus every five minutes whereas over here it takes longer and we are more spread out.”

I can only assume, judging off his comments, that Mr Hilkmann either (i) hasn’t been overseas ever or (ii) didn’t leave London or any other European capital cities.

Sure within the capitals public transport in Europe is pretty awesome.  It has to be; you’re looking at a population size approaching that of our entirely country at a density that’s unheard of on our little island.

But once you get outside that, into the English countryside, you soon find that public transport is comparable to what we have here.

But, of course, that doesn’t help your line of argument, so we won’t mention that.

Finally, we have the last paragraph in the article.

“The findings of the Hunter Independent Public Transport Inquiry, which the Herald has sponsored, are due in February.”

Now maybe I’m being a bit cynical here, but I think that anything the Newcastle Herald is sponsoring is unlikely to ever be independent.  They’ve already demonstrated that they’ve taken an editorial line on this issue and it’s well within the realm of possibility that it’s their belief that “independent” actually means “returning a result that we agree with”.

So more stunning work from the local rag in Newcastle.  This is why we can’t have nice things.

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Digital Newcastle

Yes. I know the headline is terrible. It’s something I really struggle with on occasion. Shut up.

This piece was written as an assessment for a subject named CMNS1280 (Introduction to Journalism), part of the Bachelor of Communication which I’m currently undertaking.

The premise was to write a story about your “community” where community meant pretty much whatever the hell you decided – the assessment criteria was quite broad. I decided I was going to discuss the emerging digital communities in Newcastle, focussing on education and business.

We were also required to interview at least two different people who weren’t family, fellow students or employees of the university.

Although I have received comments from my lecturer about it (mostly fixing grammar related things and a few sections where I strayed from the prescribed style guide), I’ve decided to publish it as I submitted it.  I’d also tell you the mark I got, but it seems the University of Newcastle has upgraded their version of Blackboard to one that, amazingly, is less user friendly than the previous version.

If, for some reason, you’re interested in seeing a couple of truly terrible websites I had to make for another subject (CMNS1000 – Introduction to Digital Communication) you can see them HERE and HERE.  But be warned, I am not a web designer or a visual arts-type person in the least.

Meh.  Anyway, enjoy.

“Has digital technology fundamentally changed the way we approach education?”

“In a word, no.”

Wait. What? I was not expecting to hear that. Honestly.

Because when you think about how digital technology has changed the way that we, as consumers and ordinary people, go about our lives then the changes afforded to us by this new age are really quite fundamental.

Instead of waiting for our favourite TV show to appear on our airwaves we can acquire it within an hour or so of it airing in the United States.  Instead of filling our house with piles of CDs we now store more music that we could ever listen do on a device roughly the size of a stack of playing cards.  Instead of writing heart-felt, lengthy prose to family overseas that took weeks to arrive we now tweet them with 140 characters of truly horrible, borderline illiterate, bastardised English.

Even now, as I sit here and write this, I am doing it on a computer.  I recorded the interviews with my smart phone and everything to do with this piece is saved onto the Internet so I can access it anywhere in the world on pretty much any device that has an Internet connection,

So you would be forgiven for thinking that when you applied the same level of thinking to the education and business communities you would get more of the same; something completely world changing and revolutionary.

So, I was surprised to find out that was not really the case.

It turns out that the changes brought about by digital technology and much more evolutionary than the revolution than what we have seen in the consumer space.

But that does not mean that no one is angling to see that same level of change brought to the business community.  In Newcastle, the Lunaticks Society has sought to create a community forum the conversations that need to be started in order for businesses, especially local ones, to take advantage of what digital technologies and the Internet are making possible.

When it comes to education, a lot of the drive to adopt digital technology within the learning environment is driven by the attitudes of parents and teachers within each school, according to Roger Pryor from the NSW Department of Education and Training when I sat down with him at his office in Adamstown to discuss the digital age and the effect it has had on the education community.

From his perspective, the shift towards digital technology is not so much about throwing away everything about education that we know and starting over, but instead looking at ways we can merge these new technologies into existing practices.

“Schools are still basically a rite of passage from being a young person to being an adult person in the minds of lots of people in the community,” he explains.

“They are still also the place that, in the minds of a lot of the community, that deliver the content and skills that little people to get jobs in the way that people always knew them.”

It would seem that the purpose and expectations of the education system have no changed, to spite the massive changes happening in the world in which it resides.

So what has changed, in anything?

Well, digital technology has essentially changed the tools in which schools go about meeting those expectations.

In New South Wales, that saw the introduction of the Digital Education Revolution program, which gave all Year 9 school children with a government provided laptop and some assorted software to enable this new technology to be incorporated into the teaching environment.

The money allocated to this program (around $2300 per laptop issued) not only allowed the purchase of the technology, but also an investment in infrastructure and training in order to give students a nurturing environment in which to use it.

“That could be put toward a whole range of support services, employing a Technology Support Officer in every high school, but also to be able to put some money into professional learning and look at how we can actually encourage people to use it differently,” Roger says.

But as with any change, the roll out has received a mixed response from school communities.

“There have been early adopters, as there always are,” he tells me. “There are people that have got on board begrudgingly and there have been some rocks that aren’t worth watering.  That’s just how it is.”

Even for teachers, there are opportunities to embrace digital technology within their classrooms and how they manage their students learning.  Teachers now have the ability to explore different pieces of software to learn and expand their own understanding of this new technology.

There is one particular technology called Moodle (similar to the Blackboard software that is used by many universities already) that is getting used by many teachers in Newcastle and the Hunter.

“For the last few years, where there’s been a teacher who’s said ‘I’d like to have a go at using Moodle as a learning management system at my school to support what we’re doing’. They just send me an email and I set them up a site and off they go.”

The teachers are then free to use the software in whatever way they choose. Free to explore what it is capable of and then apply anything that they think may be useful to what they do in the classroom.

It really is quite the departure from what I remember when the curriculum was set out, you worked through it and the chances to properly explore what other things were available were very limited.

Unsurprisingly, I guess, things have progressed a little further in the business community when you compared to education.  But still, perhaps, not has far as we have seen from a consumer’s standpoint.

“The main thing for businesses is that the global market has just opened up,” notes Gordon Whitehead, a marketer from Newcastle based digital agency Sticky.

“Global connectivity means basically I can do business from anywhere, with anyone in the world.”

But this embracement of the fantastic possibilities for expansion and development afforded by the advancements of technology have not been completely jumped upon in Newcastle.

“It’s a mix,” Gordon reckons, “we see, in some respects, people are doing things here that are amazing and should be recognised and rewarded.  But we still see that there is a resistance to technology; the opportunities and the basic risks associated with that.”

The biggest resistance, and hindrance, is coming from the cities main stakeholders and institutions.

“The business chambers, [Newcastle City] Council, the politicians, government agencies. They’re slow; their knowledge is not fully there.  For example, they want the NBN (National Broadband Network) but they wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

But there is a plan to change this attitude.

The Lunaticks Society of Newcastle, founded in 2010 by Gordon and a number of other digital savvy people and named after a society formed by a group of industrialists in Birmingham, England during the Industrial Revolution, has the mission of creating “fresh thinking, new ideas and conversation”.

It aims to create a forum in Newcastle where ideas about the digital age can be discussed and ideas thrown around.

“We created the Lunaticks to talk about the changes that are happening in the digital age. What does it mean? To look at ideas, throw new ideas into the pot and generally discuss them.”

Their plan is to hopefully sow the seeds of good ideas that can be achieved through the creation of a nurturing community and then help to provide a platform to showcase their creations to the world.

So it would seem that for Newcastle, in spite of the myriad of problems we have in other areas, we seem to be slowly, but steadily, getting on board with all the advancements in technology and making sure that we are in a position where we will be best place to take advantage of them.

The future, it would seem, in our little community here, is looking good.

Posted in General, Something Completely Different Tagged , , , ,

There’s Something Dirty About Tinkler’s Coal Terminal Plans

I think we’re all pretty much aware that Newcastle’s seemingly benevolent (but sometimes not quite liquid) overlord, Nathan Tinkler, has plans to build a new coal loader on the former BHP Steel site.

On the face of it, it seems like a great plan.  More jobs, larger capacity at what is already the world’s largest coal exporting port, things to make the whole process a lot more environmentally friendly and so on.

But the more I’m reading up about what exactly Tinkler’s Hunter Ports Group wants to do, the more questions I have regarding its feasibility and whether or not they’re telling us the whole truth.

There are a few things here that don’t quite add up.

The plan (available here as a PDF) shows a new rail corridor being built from the existing line that runs out towards the Kooragang Island terminal.  The new corridor will run along the shore of the Hunter River, through the recently developed Steel River industrial park, across the One Steel site and into the BHP land where the proposed coal loader will be located.

Proposed Rail Corridor (from Hunter Ports proposal)

Proposed Rail Corridor (from Hunter Ports proposal- click for full size)

The problem here is pretty obvious: there are existing businesses and buildings that are privately owned in the way.

Existing Development on the Steel River site (from NearMap.com - click for full size)

Existing Development on the Steel River site (from NearMap.com - click for full size)

There is nothing I can find that explains how, if it’s even possible, that the Hunter Ports Group plans to acquire this land in order to build their new rail corridor.  At my estimate, there are around 8 existing buildings in the way, not to mention a number of undeveloped sites within the Steel River precinct that may or may not have already been sold by the developer (which is Mirvac).

This map, taken from the Steel River website, shows just what is currently planned.  The beige lots are described as being “under offer” (naturally it doesn’t list who has made the offer), the yellow lots are still for sale and the green lots have been purchased already.

Sales Plan for Steel River site (from steelriver.com.au - click for full size)

Sales Plan for Steel River site (from steelriver.com.au - click for full size)

It would appear that the lots still for sale will not be impacted by Tinkler’s proposal.  But without better data (which I, sadly, don’t have any more since leaving the <FormerEmployer>Smilie: ;) it’s hard to tell for certain.  From what I can tell, Tinkler’s rail line will be located entirely on the northern side of Riverside Drive.

There’s also the question of where the funding for this massive piece of infrastructure is going to come from.  Surely, Hunter Ports aren’t going to just foot the entire bill themselves.  I’d be amazed if they didn’t approach one of the many regional and infrastructure development funds that are around to get some sort of grant out of them.

So there’s that.

Then there’s the question of Hunter Ports’ proposed Community Fund, under which 20 cents from the sale of every tonne of coal through the port will go to supporting the “local community” (which the cynic in my thinks will be mostly used to deliver funding to the Newcastle Knights NRL club and the Newcastle Jets football club).

Hunter Ports claims that “[o]nce the terminal is at full capacity, this will provide up to $20 million a year for community projects in Newcastle and the Hunter”.

OK. Let’s deploy a bit of basic maths. To get $20 million at 20 cents per tonne, you need to be exporting 100 million tonnes of coal per year.

100 million tonnes.  That’s quite a lot. Especially when you consider that Port Waratah Coal Service (who currently operates the three existing coal loaders in Newcastle, with plans currently in progress to build a fourth), according to their data [PDF], are currently on track to export about 96 million tonnes this year, with projects that they will hit 145 million tonnes within the next few years.

So, Hunter Ports plan to build a coal load that on its own will process an amount of coal currently processed by the entire Port Waratah Coal Services operation?

Finally, there’s the question of the number of jobs that will be created should Tinkler’s coal loader be built.  He claims that the number of jobs will be in the order of 1600.  However, a resident’s group created to consult with Hunter Ports over the proposal has their doubts.

It was reported in the Newcastle Herald on 3 December:

“On the other hand, Hayes questioned the Tinkler claim that the terminal would create 1600 jobs – a figure Hayes said ‘‘cannot be genuine’’ given employment numbers at other Newcastle terminals.”

Now, I don’t have access to data showing just how many people are employed by Port Waratah Coal Services, so I really have nothing to back this claim up.  However, I’m assuming that the group does have some idea which is why they’ve raised the question in the first place.

So while on the face of it, Tinkler and Hunter Ports Group have a grand vision to help change and improve Newcastle and its coal infrastructure, their plan isn’t perfect and really needs to be questioned as to whether or not it’s possible and that they’re telling us the full truth about it.

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The Newcastle Herald: No Longer Just Useless, They’re Now Bringing the Editorial Bias to Town

I’ve never been a fan of the Newcastle Herald.  I’ve always thought that when the Internet really starts to make hardcopy news unviable, they’re going to be one of the first to go.

Ordinarily, the quality of their reporting is pretty low, their choice of stories to cover is more often than not bamboozling and, well, it’s just not worth the effort to read.

But what’s been written up over the last few days regarding the future of the heavy rail line between Hamilton and Newcastle is just completely pathetic and runs counter to every idea about independent media there is.

It started on Saturday with an article by Neil Goffet that was headlined “Government poised to rip up Newcastle inner-city rail”.  Makes it sound like a decision has been made, doesn’t it?

Well, no.  The opening two paragraphs read

“THE state government is poised to make one of the biggest political statements in the Hunter’s history by ripping up the inner-city rail line between Hamilton and Newcastle.

At least that’s been the talk of the town all week.”

Yes. That’s right. They’re definitely going to do it because its “been the talk of the town”.  No sources.  No documents.  No facts.  Nothing.  They’ve just made it up, or decided to report on the ramblings of the meth heads on the 100 bus.

There is nothing in what follows that can even remotely demonstrate that anything is likely to happen with regards to the rail line in the future.

All the Newcastle Herald can tell us is that “Premier Barry O’Farrell and Minister for the Hunter Mike Gallacher will not make an announcement until next year” and that Tim Owen (state member for Newcastle) has said that “We are having ongoing discussions with stakeholders to examine the options for transport in Newcastle and the Hunter”.

Yes. That makes it sound absolutely certain that we are right on the cusp of having a decision and a transport structure plan for the Newcastle CBD delivered to us any moment now.

Or, more likely, this is a complete fucking beat-up.

This would normally be bad enough as it is.  But the Newcastle Herald continued today with an article by Matthew Kelly which announced “Leaders, businesses welcome rail news”.

Wait. What news?  You mean the rumours/fiction you reported on Saturday?  That’s now “news”?

Here are the opening two paragraphs from Mr Kelly’s report:

“CIVIC leaders and business groups have welcomed news of an imminent decision on the Newcastle rail line.

It follows a report in Saturday’s Newcastle Herald that business sources believe the state government will announce early in the new year the creation of a terminus at Woodville Junction.”

Business groups are welcoming news that business “sources” (read: the same people) have said is coming that helps suit their agenda?

No. Fucking. Way.

Reading on through that piece there are, again, no actual facts that show how the Newcastle Herald has come to the conclusion that any decision is imminent.  This is a perfect example of a media outlet reporting rumour as fact.

They continue “the Hamilton to Newcastle link would become a green corridor, which could be used for a future light rail service”.

Really?  Can you show me a link to the final, approved plan that converts the corridor into a green space? No. They can’t.  Mostly because a final plan doesn’t exist.  There have been plenty of proposals over the years, but nothing has ever been set in stone.  So to suggest what the corridor – if it were removed – would become is just reporting complete and utter fiction as fact.

For a trusted source of local news, this is just not on.

It’s all pretty terrible and as Wayne Mullen, on blog “View from King Street”, points out that this sort of reporting “begins to look like editorial bias, and the Herald seeking to determine the outcome of the debate in line with its own editorial preference”.

He’s spot on.  Arguments about the rail line have been going on for longer than I can remember and there’s nothing that suggests anything is going to happen about it any time soon – so why start talking about it now all of a sudden?

At best, this is just lazy editors looking to stir the controversy pot now that the Laman Street Figs debacle seems to be drawing to a conclusion.  At worst, this is the media deliberately attempting to influence a debate in order to help push one particular agenda (an agenda in line with the political interests of their advertisers, really).

Well, I guess at least it’ll give me something to write about for a while…

 

Posted in Rants Tagged , , ,