Does Bega know what Constance does?
It’s not so unusual for a politician to be accused of hypocrisy, but the member for Bega really takes the biscuit. Exactly what does Andrew Constance stand for?
Many locals on the far south coast are asking what Andrew Constance, the member for Bega, stands for. He has been accused of sometimes saying one thing but doing another.
The examples have been rolling in.
When he’s in Bega he makes out he supports local workers, but then in the NSW parliament he voted with the Labor government to weaken worker’s compensation laws. He also backed the Howard government’s WorkChoices.
When in Sydney he complains about the lack of support local enterprises receive from the Labor government. But he fails to oppose the public subsidy of native forest logging that underpins the Nippon owned woodchip mill and that should go towards the development of local sustainable forestry industries.
It seems that Mr Constance wants it both ways. Like when he says that political parties should not run candidates in local government elections. He complains that Councillor Keith Hughes represents the Greens on Bega Valley Council, but then Mr Constance himself stood on a Liberal Party ticket in the 1999 South Sydney Council election. Is it one set of rules for Andrew Constance and another set for everybody else? The Greens believe that candidates should not hide their party affiliation.
After a publicly funded European tour Mr Constance became a strong backer of the proposed biomass plant at Eden Chipmill, back-flipping from his opposition to a local biomass plant in 2002.
He condemned the Part 3A planning powers when a 300 dwelling development was proposed for Tathra. But he forgot to tell the locals that he, along with all his Coalition colleagues, voted to pass the Part 3A amendment, that denies the community any say on local developments.
And why do donations that benefit Mr Constance's election campaigns go through the Sydney office of the Liberal Party with no apparent link to his Bega campaign?
Whatever the reasons for the member for Bega’s behaviour, those who suffer from it are the people of Bega. The electorate has pressing local issues such as a need for affordable public housing, support for local clean energy projects, and bringing rail to the far south coast. So it’s a shame that while Mr Constance sometimes talks the talk his actions conform to the Coalition party line.
I recently tried to raise questions like these in parliament, and even though Mr Constance's Upper House colleagues tried to stop me with interjections and points of order, I managed to get some key points about the member for Bega’s inconsistencies onto the public record.
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