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Byron Shire
July 13, 2026

Can MP Don Page stop the ‘stealing’ of public lands?

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Privatised foreshore. Cabins illegally erected on the foreshore at the Terrace caravan park in Brunswick Heads for some permanent residents. Bruns locals say the cabins and unauthorised works such as paving prevent access along the foreshore and contribute to erosion of the creek bank.
Privatised foreshore. Cabins illegally erected on the foreshore at the Terrace caravan park in Brunswick Heads for some permanent residents. Bruns locals say the cabins and unauthorised works such as paving prevent access along the foreshore and contribute to erosion of the creek bank.

David Lovejoy

We should stop pussyfooting around and name North Coast Holiday Parks for what it is: a vehicle designed to steal public land and lock it up for the benefit of a cabal of bureaucrats.

The instructions may not read ‘steal’, they may say ‘maximise profits’, but the intention is clear.

At least in English feudal times when the barons told their henchmen to fence the commons off from the people they used plain language.

Taking away the foreshore in Brunswick Heads is arguably unlawful and unarguably immoral, and the more one looks at this shoddy mess the more the questions multiply.

Whose idea was it to create an entity to deprive local councils of caravan parks and divert their income to the state?

It began to happen when Tony Kelly was lands minister, that same Tony Kelly who was sacked after ICAC in another matter found him to have acted corruptly.

How did Jim Bolger, a relatively junior council worker, get pushed up through the corporate ranks to front the operation?

How can regulations relating to the foreshore be so airily dismissed, and their very existence denied?

What legal sleight of hand has taken a complex, interlocking mesh of government bodies that are supposed to protect Crown land for the common good, and produced a policy of greed and indifference that is directly opposed to the protection of the land and the interests of the people?

What Bolger relies on, and what Byron Shire Council evidently fears, is that no matter how much local residents complain the state government will push his plan through.

The only man who can act effectively is local MP and minister Don Page.

If he remains true to his oath of office and the people who voted for him he can stop this injustice proceeding further.

Well, Don, are you on the side of the liars or the people?

vans
Campers in the Terrace caravan park are put at risk at being so close to a public road, one of the results of creeping encroachment by the caravan park on road reserve.

• Submissions can be sent to: NSW Crown Holiday Parks Trust, PO Box 647, Ballina, NSW 2478 or by email to: [email protected]

 

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