Category: Politics

A PLAN to fast track a year-round safe swimming spot in Port Douglas will leave the blocks next week.

Douglas Shire Council will test the waters with a short survey to gauge how much the community wants a splash park and recreational pool in Port Douglas.

DOUGLASNEWS.NETWORK The current Daintree River Crossing Options poll has become a football match where the umpires have changed the goal posts and the rules without…

Two meetings were held in Mossman on Friday October 2, 2020 as part of Douglas Shire Council’s public consultation on the Daintree River Crossing Options Report. DouglasNews.Network summarises the key outcomes and issues arising from the two Mossman meetings.

The Douglas Shire Council is currently conducting a poll on a bridge versus a two-ferry option. The actual consultation is restricted and people have told us that information being presented is insufficient and misleading. Many people do not regard the process as free, fair and transparent, as it looks like a deliberate push for a bridge under the guise of consultation. Push polling is a common tactic used to get people to support one side of a poll over the other.

The Daintree River Crossing Options Report prepared by the Douglas Shire Council is not an economic analysis that governments would use to determine if an option is worth funding. Cost Benefit Analysis reports are used to show if a project generates a net public benefit or cost. The Cost Benefit Analysis shows: Two Ferry Option yields a $6.817 million net benefit while the Bridge Option yields a $40.644 million net cost.

When NSW Nationals leader John Barilaro threatened to move all his members, including ministers, to the crossbench unless the NSW Government backed down on koala protection, Liberal Premier Gladys Berejiklian immediately called his bluff: do that and all National Ministers would be sacked and the Liberals would govern alone. There would be no change to koala protection.

Allegations have been made in several websites and media platforms that DouglasNews.Network was formed because the management does not accept the outcome of the recent Council election.
This is absolutely untrue.

Contrary to the Douglas Shire Council’s claim in its Daintree Crossings Options Paper that “no significant environmental or hydrological studies (are) required to obtain approvals (for a bridge)”, the Qld Department of Environment and Science have informed DouglasNews.Network that any impact on the National Park and World Heritage Area “….would require thorough assessment under the relevant State and Commonwealth legislation”.

Questions about the legality, process and cost of Douglas Shire Council’s decision to suspend the Daintree ferry contract and to explore a bridge remain unanswered… but will naturally surface given that this was the biggest contract ever awarded by the Douglas Shire.

If Trump wins the Presidential election in November, it means only one of two things: that either he has succeeded in cheating at the election by stymying mail voting and undermining the election’s legitimacy, or that the American people have genuinely re-elected him despite his dangerously erratic foreign-policy forays; his destructive trade policies; his employment of toadies and cronies and his supplicancy to autocrats and dictators. Indeed, they would have endorsed those actions. Either way, the US would be neither a worthwhile ally nor a worthy one.