We recently sent the six candidates for the seat of Bathurst a series of questions submitted by you, the voters of Blayney Shire.
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Every day up until the election we'll bring you their responses.
Each candidate was allowed 200 words for each question.
The answers are unedited unless they exceed the 200 word rule and then they are truncated back to the nearest full stop.
The order of answering will rotate with each question.
Here is their response to the third question.
3. How will you help smaller regional areas gain funding for projects that will help attract tourism and new commercial ventures to their areas.
Beau Riley (CLP) - Currently Labor has a policy of decentralisation. Labor has met with local councils and are proposing to listen to local communities and provide 'ground up' policies rather then imposing policy from Sydney. This will help each community with its own specific needs.
David Harvey (Greens) - I have had in interest regional development for over 20 years. I support farmers markets and other events to bring more tourists to the region.
Michael Begg (Sustainable Australia) - Reopen Newbridge Railway station as a priority. The next government has a chance of being a minority government. Independents and minor parties will be able to to deals with party in power. The Nationals may well win the Bathurst electorate but not have power. This will mean funding may become even less generous in our electorate.
Tim Hansen (KSO) -
There are two kinds of tourism - generalised, year-round tourism and specific, event-related tourism, such as the annual Ironfest festival in Lithgow. It's the latter form of tourism that would be right for Blayney; as great as they are, big influxes of tourists can be disruptive to small communities. In order to mitigate the negative effects and reap the economic rewards of tourists we need to manage when they come, so I'd suggest a festival would be the way to go.
The first step is community consultation - what kind of festival do we want? Would it be a big regional football competition? A music festival? Or something a bit more left-field like the Elvis festival in Parkes? Whatever the answer, it must be community driven, matching the values of the community and at a time that the community agrees would be easiest to manage.
It would start small, with a grant from Create NSW (and I am a grant-writing fiend so I'd be very happy to help with that). The first time there would be mistakes that we would learn from, but each year it would grow a little bigger. (Truncated response)
Brenden May (SFF) - I will Work closely with councils. But more importantly help small tourist organisations, dig through red tape and direct them to present their venture for funding and work towards a prosperous outcome.
Paul Toole (Nats) - We want to see the continued growth of tourism and new ventures in our region.
We're continuing to invest in big projects and small projects that boost tourism and visitation right across the electorate with the building of projects here in the local community of Blayney and its surrounding villages.
We are building a new state of the art Equestrian and Livestock Centre at the Blayney Showground at a cost of $1.8 million making this a showpiece for horse and equestrian events across NSW.
We've invested in projects like the Millthorpe School of Arts Hall, the Carcoar Museum and the Golden Memories Museum in Millthorpe making them attractive places for locals and visitors to visit and helping to boost the local economy.
We have our Regional Flagship funding which supports events in regional NSW. Here locally we have seen investment into events such as the popular Blayney to Bathurst bike ride and the Carcoar Running Festival.
We have recently spent $1 million to re-open the platform at Millthorpe allowing for train services to be reinstated after 33 years driving the visitor economy and providing greater connectivity to other towns.