Prime Cudgen farming land not a ‘healthy’ hospital site

THE proposed Tweed Hospital site is planned to be double the size of the current hospital with additional cancer and cardiac services and staff.

Yet it has been plonked, without any consultation, on to State Significant Agricultural Land of Cudgen within the tourist town of Kingscliff.

Food security for Aussies is a priority.

Foreign countries are buying up our farmlands. The World Health Organisation states that death, disease and disability (and thus hospital admissions) are significantly decreased by eating farm food, not processed junk.

The WHO concludes that cooperation between community and government in ensuring people access such a healthy diet has radical, evidence-based success.

Of all MPs, a National Party MP, Tweed MP Geoff Provest, and our Health Minister Brad Hazzard should support farming and health concerns about this proposed site.

Of course there would be much wider encroachment on to State Significant super-soil Cudgen farmlands by the inevitable spread of a massive medical precinct around the hospital to service the Northern NSW region.

What NSW and Queensland tourists may not realise is that this farm site sits on Kingscliff, a narrow beach strip. What has not been declared in any “gateway” information, required for informed community consent, are all the “site-specific” impacts on Kingscliff.

Mr Provest and the project planner at the community meeting requested by residents on April 26 (which I attended) sheepishly admitted there are no major road upgrades funded in this project other than tinkering with traffic lights.

Rather, there appears to be a piggy-backing on the promise by the future Kings Forest Estate developer to upgrade a road passing the proposed hospital.

They also spoke about sediment run-off in a nod to environmental impact yet nothing about multiple negative consequences for Kingscliff.

No reassurance given about traffic to the beaches. The streets are narrow and already pot-holed from local traffic. The proposed site has been plonked a pokey 500m from Kingscliff Beach, an iconic surf-tourism beach.

Yet hospitals of lesser size have terrible traffic and approach parking for equal or greater distance.

Here, parking at the beach is at capacity and is already banking up little streets 500m towards the proposed hospital location during many surfing, triathlon and lifesaving contests.

Rehab clinics for violent addicts is already a vexatious issue at the current Tweed Hospital.

Would the current Tweed area still assist these clients or would needle clinics and needle-sweeps on Kingscliff Beach become the norm?

Kings Forest already has the necessary development paperwork and access approved for a hospital site just minutes down the road and it’s neither on farmland nor smack in the middle of a tiny surf-tourism township. ANN MAY, KINGSCLIFF