MP should be working with council on greyhounds facility, not criticising | Letter

It is absolutely fascinating to watch the Member for Bathurst trying to throw his weight around and order the current Bathurst Regional Council administration into lobbying and advocating for the greyhound club here in Bathurst.

Let's not forget that Paul Toole was the mayor of this city and failed, in my opinion, to really make any headway to support the greyhound club here in Bathurst.

I remember the stories in this newspaper when Paul Toole was the Racing Minister here in NSW and, in my opinion, did not openly advocate as the minister to support the Bathurst Greyhound Club while he was on the treasury benches.

Yet, what we have here is a local member who has suddenly found himself in opposition, unable to lobby the current government for traditional funding.

Instead, he is placing the blame on the current and only Labor mayor of Bathurst.

The local member should be working with the council to advocate for funding for the greyhound club.

In my opinion, Paul Toole has not been a friend of the greyhound industry.

Let's not forget he was part of the NSW Government that tried to ban greyhound racing in this state before spectacularly capitulating to the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party so that the National Party could save face in 2017 when they lost the seat of Orange at a by-election.

If we reach back further into the history of the Member for Bathurst's ministerial career, let's not forget he was the Minister for Local Government where he tried to force unwanted and, in some cases, unnecessary council amalgamations on communities, which also spectacularly blew up in his face when the public rebelled against him.

The Member for Bathurst was, in my opinion, one of the state's weakest police ministers during the last couple of years of the state Coalition government, with massive spending blowouts and more police going out on leave and leaving the force due to injury and lack of resources to protect them.

When the Member for Bathurst was the Minister for Regional Transport and Roads, he promised the Bells Line of Road project. What happened to that?

He promised a tunnel while the Nats were throwing cash around the west. Where is the tunnel?

And finally, if any of this paper's readers, like me, were watching this past week of his lacklustre performance as the opposition spokesperson for police in parliament, they would agree with me that the Member for Bathurst is grossly out of touch with his brief and, I would argue, his constituents.