Smiths Beach: How the CCC and Silverstone were manipulated. Part 3

The Players: Bob McKay - a Damascene Conversion? The Links between Smiths Beach Action Group and competing developers.

The third spokesperson and founding member of the Smiths Beach Action Group, along with multi-millionaire developers Bill Mitchell and Kevin Merrifield, is Bob McKay, a former Busselton Shire Councillor.

The Desert Rat doesn't know a lot about his business activities but is aware that Bob McKay is a significant commercial property owner in Dunsborough and has subdivided coastal land south of Smiths Beach.

The track record of former Councillor Bob McKay is erratic indeed. In respect of the Smiths Beach development - he must have had a Damescene conversion when he co-founded the Smiths Beach Action Group with Bill Mitchell and Kevin Merrifield!

Bob McKay spearheaded a motion in the Busselton Shire Council rejecting the draft Leeuwin Naturaliste Ridge Statement of Policy Planning. The Busselton Shire Council submission was moved by Bob McKay. It read, under the heading:

11. Table 5 Hierarchy

• It is considered that Table 5 needs to be reviewed in a number of areas to provide for an increased and a more realistic target population for the coastal nodes given the existing resident population numbers to match the servicing requirements, in a number of cases.

• The notes in respect of tourist nodes also need to be modified to reflect that the agreed position at Smiths Beach is that 1/3 of the accommodation maybe (sic) developed for permanent residential purposes.

Here Bob McKay argued for more permanent residential development on the Smith Beach node, when 230 dwellings had already been recommended for permanent residents!

Bob McKay also supported the extension of the Development Investigation Areas at Smiths Beach at the Steering Committee meeting of the Leeuwin Naturaliste Ridge Planning Review on 10 December 1997.

ABC TV's Four Corners gullible ideologue Liz Jackson displayed her ignorance of Bob McKay's duplicity in this excerpt from her unrestrained dump on the lobbying work of Brian Burke and Julian Grill. In the excerpt that follows, McKay complains about the size of a development - of which he earlier had unsuccessfully tried to increase! Jackson's grubby juxtaposition of these two excerpts makes Bob McKay look real good, when she should have exposed his hypocrisy - not to mention the comments of multimillionaire developer Bill Mitchell's she slotted in between.

BOB MCKAY, SMITHS BEACH ACTION GROUP: The first glimpse the public got a look at it was in the year 2000 and everybody was horrified. There was spontaneous public meetings. When it was put out for advertising, over 3,000 people wrote in written submissions against it, the State record.

BILL MITCHELL, SMITHS BEACH ACTION GROUP: I couldn't imagine a property development that would be more profitable than this one anywhere in the State, so what's at stake - massive profits, the bigger the development, the bigger the profits.

LIZ JACKSON: The Canal Rocks proposal was for 230 houses, 360 tourist units and over 100 hotel rooms, clustered here on the southern headland of the beach. The then Opposition leader, Geoff Gallop, pledged that if the Labor won the upcoming election, they would amend the regional planning scheme to restrict the development's size.

The Leeuwin Naturaliste Ridge Statement Policy Planning Report (LNRSPP) stipulated the Smith Beach Tourist node development and it remained as before.

It is an irony that the LNRSPP decided there was to be less development than that proposed by the Busselton Shire Council and moved by Bob McKay who also attended the Steering Committee meeting on behalf of the Busselton Shire Council.

It was Bob McKay who moved the Busselton Shire Council submission that was unsuccessful in locking in more area for permanent residents.

What or who influenced Bob McKay and made him change his mind? Why the change of opinion to total opposition of the Smiths Beach development, which is much less than originally proposed and less than McKay wanted to expand the development?

Mike Children Overboard Silverstone and the CCC must have walked into the Smiths Beach development with closed eyes or maybe they only wanted to know half the story. Then again the CCC have been very selective and impartial in most of what they have done while investigating the Smiths Beach development.