Sad for day Ainslie with Indara tower drilling underway

Running rough-shod over community views and years of grasslands regeneration work, the care-less Indara company has begun work on its telco tower.

The company began construction of a 25-metre Optus and Vodafone telco tower on the valued Ainslie Parks Restoration Project site on the corner Limestone Avenue and Quick Street on Monday.

Security screening is up so the lack of transparency on this project can continue, round the clock security guards are in place and heavy machinery is working. The company is also intimidating protestors by confiscating signage from public land surrounding the site and calling in police with vexatious complaints.

The start of work this week marks a massive own goal for the ACT Labor-Barr Government who have waived the Sydney-based Indara company through all stages of the planning process without due diligence or proper checking of the company’s claims.

Indara has, for example, presented images to our Territory Planning Authority (TPA) and the National Capital Authority showing the 25-metre tower almost invisible behind a single tree and has claimed the tower would blend in with existing streetlights.

The Ainslie Residents Association, North Canberra Community Council and Friends of Ainslie Volcanics Grasslands are lodging an Integrity Commission complaint over the ACT Government’s handling of the Indara development application to build this tower.

We say the Territory Planning Authority has failed to properly investigate Indara’s case for construction of a new tower on this particular site.

There are as many as four other viable sites for this tower close to the current site, that are better screened and less disruptive to our long-running local grasslands regeneration project and that have not been properly examined by the TPA.

We also want the Integrity Commission to examine whether the TPA showed due diligence in accepting the Indara company’s minimal community consultation on the project. The company undertook no face-to-face community consultation at all on this project and refused to communicate at any stage with local community groups and the Friends of Ainslie Volcanics Grasslands who were so closely involved with the site.

Please contact the Ainslie Residents association at info@ainslie.org .au if you would like to comment on this development or get involved in actions to scrutinise the ACT Government’s actions in regard to it.