Sydney Government releases draft Mid North Coast strategy

Photo: South West Rocks, tourist destination, Mid North Coast

The Sydney Government has released its 25 year strategy for the Mid North Coast. The Sydney Morning Herald story on the strategy can be found here, the strategy itself here.

In a series of earlier posts dealing with the Government's ten year plan (here 1, here 2, here 3) I set out the needs that the Plan needed to meet, concluding that it did not meet those needs. On the surface, and I still have to do the detailed analysis, this strategy suffers from similar weaknesses.

The strategy postulates that the population of the Mid North Coast will rise by 91,000 new residents to be accommodated in 58,400 new dwellings. Lack of jobs is already a core problem on the Mid North Coast. So you would expect that job creation would be a key element in the strategy. It is not.

The strategy assumes that a certain proportion of jobs will come from extra employment required to service the increased population. That leaves a significant gap that the strategy does not address in any way other than some comments on the need to increase industrial land. Hardly a solution.

Another gripe. When did Grafton become part of the Mid North Coast? It is and always has been part of the Northern Rivers. I do wish that the Sydney Government would stop fiddling with regional boundaries for its own administrative convenience.