16 Aug Mayor Pam and Council staffer shank it badly, while Aidan’s video drives the message home

One of the many absurdities in Lane Cove Council’s plans to totally stuff up Lane Cove Golf Course, the Club itself and its blessed natural surroundings, is the irreconcilable role that Mayor Pam Palmer plays as the Patron of the Golf Club. What a grim example of two totally antithetical positions held by the one person (i.e. sort of like Hagar the Horrible in charge of the Historic Houses Trust).

Just last week Patron Pam told a prominent club member the public numbers were in favour of the ‘driving range’ option. This is the opposite of what the Club and its many supporters know to be the truth.

All those present at both recent ‘information’ meetings she presided over were 100 per cent against Council’s development options, and told her and her council officers just that, with professionally prepared documentation, strongly persuasive research and a rising anger.

Mayor Pam introduced a Mr David Stevens to speak at one of the meetings. As the Mayor described: “He is our Manager of Commercial Operations, so he…operates our commercial…operations side of things”.

Whatever his council job description is, at this meeting David Stevens at least proved what a rudely dismissive council representative he can be, choosing to be selectively deaf to those with whom he disagreed.

Just minutes after two speakers with substantial backgrounds in music and the arts had spoken with some passion about the hugely important role the Club plays in Lane Cove entertainment and social life, Stevens blurted out that while he had heard opposition to Plan One (i.e. buggering up the course, inserting a driving range right down the middle of Lane Cove’s finest bush, water and nature reserve and going all ‘Gold Coast’ with a mini putt putt etc), he had heard no objections to Plan Two (i.e. mowing down the Club itself and replacing a small part of it with a multi-purpose space – like a junior school gym/assembly hall).

The Mayor and this Commercial Operations Manager and even perhaps the majority of Council and senior staff have already made up their minds on the Golf Course plans. That much is obvious. Just as obvious is that these pre-determined options/outcomes and the commercial relationships and budgets behind them require thorough investigation and disclosure.

The concept of ‘doublethink’ is rearing its totalitarian head if applied to the current Council, its Mayor Pam Palmer and now some of the executive staff.

Doublethink of course ‘is the process of indoctrination whereby the subject is expected to accept as true that which is clearly false, or to simultaneously accept two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in contravention to one’s own memories or sense of reality’. (George Orwell did pointedly originate the phrase in reference to  menacing and fateful government pronouncements) .

To counter this deeply flawed ’doublethink’  mentality that permeates Lane Cove Council,  many hundreds of club members, local residents and walkers. golf course and leisure/sport experts,  local professionals including lawyers, town planners, media and journalists, music lovers, state and federal politicians,  sporting families, tennis players and  sporting personalities are now actively opposing the plans to desecrate our beautiful space and its highly valued golf course and social club. (The accompanying video features young Lane Cove star golfer Aidan Powter who summmarises the issues so smartly).

As well as the permanent damage to the Golf course its ‘playability’ and its reputation, the battle against this mess Council has created will now focus in detail on issues including:

• the huge lights and lighting spillage over neighbours and wildlife
• the noise of the driving range, its participants, the vehicles and the extra facilities
• the dangers inherent in a driving range on this site, right on busy River Rd
• the extra traffic at the extended premises and up and down River Rd into the late evening
• the enormous loss of active green space
• the certain effect on threatened species, birdlife and rare organisms
• the destruction of hundreds of nearby property values
• the role of the nearby property developer in the ruination of the course
• the flawed assumptions in the report by Montemare, the consultancy commissioned by Lane Cove Council
• explaining to Greg Norman as franchisor what his franchisees are up to
• the loss of one of Lane Cove’s few (and historic) music and dance venues with its popular function and event capacity.