Councils have building codes to ensure that new buildings comply with community standards. They apply to everyone - except the government's whose law enforces them.
The state government is proposing to build a block of fifty eight apartments in Market street, Wollongong, designated for the elderly and those with disabilities. This will be public housing.
This proposed building breaches just about every council regulation on the statute books !
It exceeds the height limit. It exceeds the floor space ratio. It ignores off-sets, and as a result it will be deficient in communal and private space for the area concerned - and most glaring of all - it provides just eleven car parking spaces.
Council requirements for a development of this magnitude require sixty-three residential parking spaces, plus an additional six for visitors. Should this go ahead by government diktat it is obvious that the surrounding streets of the CBD will have to absorb residents forced to seek street parking.
It is the principle involved that really stinks !
We are a country that is supposedly civilized. We live within a system of law and order and there is punishment for those who break the rules.
Along comes a government department that simply thumbs it's nose at those rules, totally ignores them - and gets away with it !
That's enough to bring the citizenry to the barricades - the start of some sort of community jihad.
Maybe it's about time we taught the government that they are a servant of the people - and they are expected to abide by the same rules that apply to us.
And we have the option of delivering them a pink slip - at the ballot box !
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