I ask that all of Tallaganda electors vote below the line and preference Tallaganda candidates. This would mean that one of our candidates would go forth with say 1,000 votes. It would be a very big start. It may well probably be our only chance of representation that we will surely need.

The line-up for this year's Queanbeyan-Palerang amalgamated council is large, and most voters will have no idea what many of these candidates stand for. People who love the area would do well to clarify exactly what the priorities are of each of these candidates, and what their position is, specifically when it comes to development. If experience in other LGAs is anything to go by, the developer lobby is doing everything it can to ensure it is well represented on councils and will be standing either openly as developer candidates or more insidiously, as preference feeders for other, lower profile candidates, or both. The priorities of some candidates for QPRC are obvious – they are either known developers themselves, or they have shown their pro-development colours during their previous terms on council. Some have even received donations from developers, before legislation was passed in NSW parliament to prevent this.

There are two sorts of development. One is based on sensible planning which takes into account a myriad of factors, such as worsening climate change and its associated water and fire problems; the need to retain areas of vegetation for soil, air and water quality as well as for biodiversity; the importance of keeping farming areas away from rural residential areas so that stock is safe from marauding dogs etc; and the pressure put on roads like the Kings Highway when people move to a regional area. The other sort of development is one which is all too familiar – it is ad hoc development which springs out of bad planning and inappropriate planning laws with the simple goal of making money. This approach often ends up producing unsympathetic housing developments we have seen spring up in various regional areas over the years, and which compromise or destroy the qualities that brought people.

It is important to remember in all this that simply increasing the number of properties and therefore the amount of rates being paid goes nowhere near to realising the funds needed to run a local government area, and now that this shire is no longer “local” but “regional” the problem is even greater. With land being bought up around parts of the old Palerang coinciding with a continuing campaign by some to weaken the Local Environmental Plan, you can guarantee that there are people waiting in the wings for sympathetic councillors to be installed so rules can be changed, opening the way for rampant development. We all need to go into this election with our eyes open.

My uncle was a sapper in PNG in WW2. A shiny bum Colonel back at the head shed ordered the company to build a road in a bottomless swamp. They objected but the order was firm. Al and the boys laid a thousand palm tree trunks, tons of Marsden Matting and as much fill as they could shift. Within a month the road had sunk from sight.

The spirit of that Colonel lives on at the Majors Creek ‘Fire Trail’  except now they are sinking colossal amounts of rock and $188,000 of public money. Thank goodness for better high command. John Barilaro has ordered a halt to the works. A meeting will be organised between the perpetrators and residents, date to be advised.