Put political point-scoring aside for the sake of a long-term plan

Forum –

I find Debra O’Neill’s comments (CCN September 4) with regard to development puzzling and presume she was searching for anything to criticise the Federal Member Lucy Wicks.

Neither of the federal parties have much to be proud of when it comes to the Central Coast.

The only time anything is done here is at election time.

In times of recession there has always been high unemployment.

Simply pushing development at these times has no long term benefit whatsoever.

I have lived and worked on the Coast for nearly fifty years now and cannot ever remember a time when the population did not have to look elsewhere for work.

Given that will be the case for many years to come then the solution is to provide the workforce an efficient and reliable means of getting to those jobs.

Yet neither governments both state and federal have ever been prepared to put serious money into these areas.

Making a railway station look more attractive is not going to make the trains more efficient.

One of the interesting things that has happened is an increase in the number of people in the morning who come into the Coast for work.

We should be looking to see why this is happening and attempting to change this.

Fast tracking developments does not provide long term employment, nor does building more factory bays or more restaurants mean an increase in employment as these would need an increase in population to service them and at the moment the road systems will not handle it.

I also find that on page 27 (of the same issue) is an article bemoaning the fall off in apprenticeships, another problem that could be addressed.

In short it would be productive if all politicians simply acknowledged that point scoring was a waste of time and realise the Coast needs a long term plan as to its direction and then put the infrastructure in place to accomplish this.

Email, Sep 6
G. Mitchell, Kariong