Gosford landing ... the next Barangaroo?

Many people have heard of the mess the government & Lend Lease are up to at Barangaroo, but little has yet to be made public on a similar development for the Gosford Waterfront Landing.

The General Manager of the Central Coast Regional Development Corporation Brett Phillips says the “CCRDC is indicating high end uses for the site along the lines of commercial office space, high end tourism and business related facilities and performing arts”.

These are the vague details of what is planned for the site, as the plans, to be developed in partnership with Lend Lease, are apparently confidential.

One of the most contentious issues is the sell-off of the local public school, which occupies public land in development area.

The actual details around the contracts to sell the Gosford Public School site, signed off last December by then education minister Verity Firth, also continue to remain “confidential”, fuelling speculation that the waterfront site could have been sold for as little as $6 million. Local real estate agents have suggested its open market value as being close to $20million.

The Department of Education and Training (DET) is currently working to relocate the primary school into the grounds of the local high school. Part of this proposal involves many of the primary school classrooms being relocated onto the second floor of a 1970's science block. It seems like a fair deal, doesn't it! It does get a lot worse, well from a parental and staff point of view anyway.

The proposed site of the primary school will be next door to an Energy Australia sub-station. An independent review coordinated by DET recommended site testing to be conducted over five days for eight hours a day to measure current levels of electromagnetic radiation.

The report submitted was conducted over one hour between 3-30pm and 4-30pm on one day. The hospital precinct next to the school means close proximity to the methadone clinic, drug and alcohol and mental health outpatients units.

The health risks surrounding the proximity of the 132 kilowatt transformer at the electrical sub-station is an issue which divides the community like the climate debate, but the evidence for harm is too substantial to ignore.

Environmental exposures to artificial electromagnetic field’s (EMF) can interact with fundamental biological processes in the human body. This can cause disease including childhood leukaemia, breast cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome and neurological disorders.

The Australian government is long overdue in adopting guidelines to protect the public from long term exposure to low level EMF, conclusively proven to promote existing cancer. The interim guidelines of 1000 milliGuass (mG) is well above 1.5mG limit the Russians have used to protect their people since the 1950’s.



Building any new schools next to electrical sub-stations goes against the Governments own policy of prudent avoidance.

NSW Greens MP John Kaye was on the Central Coast supporting the residents of Empire Bay in their battle to have a new substation built further away from homes. The parents, teachers and children of Henry Kendall High School and Gosford Public School are hopeful that the Green movement will be supportive of their objections and concerns about having the primary school relocated to within 100 metres of a 132 kilowatt substation.

Specifically as the previous education minister cut the requested seven days of testing to one hour of testing on one day. In the tests conducted on the Henry Kendall site there were nine spot levels over what should be a biologically based limit of 1mG for children.

The initial proposal to retain the independent integrity of each school with a dividing fence on site has now without community consultation changed to a plan to amalgamate the primary and high schools to share facilities.

The NSW Teachers Federation is opposed to primary and high school students being located in the same building. The NSW Teachers Federation has also stated that the decision to relocate the primary school has no educational merit.

There is an extensive list of very important concerns that the teachers and parents have raised that have not been addressed concerning occupational health and safety issues, management of shared facilities, mixing of children from kindergarten to year 12, overcrowding on site, traffic, transport, parking and infrastructure surrounding the school.

The students with special needs are being relocated from their purpose built accessible facilities into old workshops in the middle of the school.

It is just incomprehensible that the Department of Education & Communities can proceed with a half thought out proposal that has yet to receive funding approval from the NSW treasury outside of the rush to use the federal BER funds to renovate the top floor of the high school science block to be shared with the primary school in 2014.

The Project Control Group overseeing the planning and implementation of the works to renovate Henry Kendall High School, which will accommodate up to 600 children from 4 – 12 years old, seem to change their plans with each meeting and the future of the schools special education unit is even less clear than the primary school.

Total costs are estimated to exceed $35 million, while to rebuild the school on site to compliment the vision to redevelop Gosford city would cost only $18.179 million including demolition costs.

It defies logic to build a school to the minimum standard when a primary school built to emerging international standards could be built for less.

The current students at Henry Kendall High School face classes in demountable classrooms while the site turns into a construction zone and there lies many qccupational health and safety concerns with the government cutting corners and overlooking many regulations. It seems Henry Kendall High School students are to be fitted into the remaining areas of their own school.

Prior to election Premier Barry O'Farrell and the new local Member for Gosford, Chris Holstein, promised to “review” the decision to relocate Gosford Public School.

The sell-off of NSW public assets is being signed off and development plans are being withheld from the public. The previous government redefined the whole meaning of public consultation and it looks like the current Liberal government will fall into their predecessors footprint.