Latest report from the Stop the Hale Street Bridge Coalition:

BACKGROUND BRIEFING - distributed in response to Lord Mayor's statements (19 August)

Read about how Newman has been caught out fudging the facts again...

The Lord Mayor's spin on the Ombudsman's investigation into WECA's complaint about BCC's handling of the notoriously shonky HSL consultation process conveniently omits some key facts:

1. The investigation is still officially open and WECA awaits final advice from the Ombudsman.

2. The Ombudsman's office has expressed serious concerns about the BCC's handling of WECA's complaint.

3. The Ombudsman's office does not accept BCC's contention that WECA had not made a complaint and had no standing to make a complaint.

4. The Ombudsman has recommended that BCC review its complaints management process to ensure that complaints by community organisations are not able to be unreasonably excluded in future.

5. BCC has refused to comply with that recommendation, and the matter has been referred to the Local Government Minister with a view to amending necessary legislation.

BCC's handling of the issue raises some serious questions:

1. Why did it take 4 months for the Ombudsman's report to BCC to be distributed to councillors as required by legislation, and why were parts of it REALLY omitted?

2. Why are the Lord Mayor and his staffers so keen to hose down this issue?

3. Why all this effort over more than 18 months to stonewall what began as a simple and reasonable request for Council to provide its reasons for approving the project?

4. Why has BCC persisted with the fiction that WECA has no legal standing to make a complaint, when WECA has members living right on the HSL route?

5. And why are we still waiting for the revised business case and traffic studies to be made public by a Lord Mayor who trumpets transparency but seems to be a master of the coverup?

6. Could it just be (as even the original project IAS and business case clearly show) that the project doesn't stack up?

7. Whatever happened to public scrutiny of public expenditure (and massive expenditure at that)?

For other queries please send emails to campaign@stopthehalestreetbridge.org