Surfers can spend hours arguing about the merits of a board. On Friday, they can hear from three men who have spent decades making them.

The NSW Environment Awards, hosted by the state’s leading environmental advocacy organisation, Nature Conservation Council NSW, was recently held at Customs House in Sydney.

The arts are an essential industry. We need artists as much as we need accountants. We need dancers as much as we need doctors. We need comedians as much as we need civil engineers. We need filmmakers as much as we need financial planners. We need musicians as much as we need ministers.

The NSW Government will spend $3 million on a sewer link for the Saddle Road housing precinct near Brunswick Heads, a connection it says could service up to 600 residential lots.

It is the age-old story – the lack of public transport across the Northern Rivers that leads to high car ownership and a failure of local and regional public transport infrastructure and use.