Opinion: Duncan MacPhail’s claim is hollow

MELVILLE Councillor Duncan MacPhail should remember that someone pointing a finger at others for hypocrisy has three fingers pointing back at him.

In last week’s Melville Times, he trumpeted that he had found correspondence from Alfred Cove residents showing them to be hypocritical for opposing the proposed wave park on environmental grounds.

It was a hollow claim as the letters he tabled at last month’s Council meeting were penned more than 15 years ago and the writers are probably not involved in opposition to the proposed wave park nor even live there any more.

Among the documents he also tabled was a set of City of Melville ‘Priority Conservation Actions’ advocating preservation of the ecological linkage between Wireless Hill and the Alfred Cove nature reserve.

The proposed artificial wave park on Tompkins Park, which Cr MacPhail has supported, would totally block this significant environmental linkage.

It not only breaks the linkage from Wireless Hill to the Alfred Cove reserve, it also cuts off the eastern end of the Bush Forever Site 331 from its western part.

So Cr MacPhail is hoisted with his own petard and his feeble attempt to smear wave park opponents instead demonstrates his own folly in voting for the wave park in contradiction of the Council’s environmental objectives.

It is yet another example of the hypocrisy and double standards displayed by the City of Melville and some of its Councillors in their promotion of the Wave Park project.

Ratepayers deserve better.