Planning is moving ahead at an increasing rate for a public meeting in Sydney to determine action to convince the New South Wales Government of the need for a proper stand alone drag strip in Sydney, and the status of the issue is such that every guest who has so far been asked has agreed to attend.

The meeting, to be held at 8 pm on Wednesday, July 12, at Bowman Hall, in the Blacktown Community Centre, has a guest list that's going to shrink anything which has ever been brought to bear on a drag racing issue in Australia.

All New South Wales members of ANDRA will receive a written notice of the meeting in the mail, and the response is expected to be very big. Already south coast racers are organising buses, with those in the Wollongong area able to contact Peter Roil on (02) 4229-1556.

Heading the list of guests will be Federal Minister for Sport and Tourism, Jackie Kelly. As the member for the neighbouring federal seat of Lindsay, she has a direct interest in issues in Sydney's west, and has been kept briefed on the issue since 1998. A briefing paper is currently being prepared for her by the AIS.

She is to be joined by radio broadcaster and television commentator Alan Jones, an enthusiastic supporter of the Western Sydney Motorplex (WSM) proposal, and it is Jones' presence which seems likely to stitch up the attendance of many others.

It has been deemed important to invite NSW Minister for Sport and Recreation, John Watkins, and offer him the option to speak. However, it was considered unlikely that he would accept in the face of what he might see as a hostile environment, but one mention of Jones' presence and his secretary eagerly accepted and asked for details in writing.

As a back-up, and in the expectation that Watkins would not appear, an invitation was issued to NSW Minister for Western Sydney, Kym Yeadon, a strong supporter of WSM. He had an engagement for the evening, but is now in the process of rewriting his schedule and it is expected he will be speaking.

Jim Bosnjak, the head of the powerful and influential Greater Western Sydney Economic Development Board, who has already endorsed the WSM proposal, has also agreed to attend and speak. Bosnjak's semi-government body is a significantly influential organisation in Sydney, with direct links to all levels of decision making and his presence would lend great weight to the WSM cause.

ANDRA CEO Tony Thornton will also be travelling up from Adelaide for the meeting and will also speak upon the need for a fully independent drag strip in Sydney.

Also on the invitation list are the mayors of Blacktown and the neighbouring urban city of Fairfield. The Federal member for Western Sydney, Marise Payne, the local state member, Paul Gibson, Richard Amery, the Minister for Agriculture and Land and Water Management, and the local state member for the ECR/WSM localities, the NSW Minister for Public Works, Morris Iemma, the Minister for the Environment, Bob Debus, the Minister for Small Business and Tourism, Sandra Nori, the Minister for Urban Affairs and Planning, Andrew Refshauge, the Minister for Juvenile Justice, Carmel Tebbutt, the Minister for Community Services, Faye Lo Po', and several back benchers and opposition members.

Also on the list is NSW Premier, Bob Carr, who has been invited, but he has also been offered the option to send a representative.

But, as explained in the last issue of DRAGSTER, it is not intended that this will simply be a talkfest, and it is intended that a plan of immediate action will be formulated on the night as it appears that the longer the drag racing community is quiet on this issue the more those working against them are able to marshal their forces.

The latest wrinkle in this stacking of the issue is the recently discovered plans by the NSW Department of Urban Affairs and Planning (DUAP) to shift a waste recycling plant onto the block of land which has been under discussion for the WSM proposal.

The proposed garbage tip (dump) development would involve the shifting of the Eastern Creek Waste Management Centre from the western side of Eastern Creek, away from it's intended move onto land to the north, to occupy the WSM land, denying it to the drag racing community. The instructions to proceed with this sudden change of plans came in December last year, and the normal processes of community consultation were bypassed to keep it secret.

The issue only became public recently in an open day at the tip, where the engineer in charge of the move indicated he or his staff had never been told by the government of alternative plans for the land, nor of plans for a 100-room hotel at Eastern Creek Raceway, across the road, which seemed to create great alarm. It is believed that few, if any, government bodies outside of DUAP knew anything of these plans, and it appears to be yet another attempt to engineer a result in this matter.

"Frankly, what these people are saying is that drag racing doesn't even rate with garbage," said WSM proponent Jim Read. "We appreciate that waste disposal is an important issue, but it's not as though they don't have somewhere else to move the tip to. This would be an expensive and wasteful way to build a tip, requiring a very large and expensive bridge to span the creek, but apparently no amount of money is too little to bury us. I assume they want a tip to bury the garbage they've been throwing at us for the past two years. I can assure you that we will be letting the government and its representatives know about this at the July 12 meeting."

The WSM proponents' government liaison, Tony Beuk, who is involved with local government planning issues in Sydney's west, said he would be amazed if the Department of Land and Water Management would permit such a development. "Permitting a major tip to span a creek like this would create an environmental nightmare," he said.

"We continue to be amazed at the lengths to which certain people in the NSW Government are prepared to go to stop drag racing in NSW from achieving a venue of its own," stated WSM co-proponent David Cook. "And frankly, the harder they try to bury us, the more we are convinced that there are people here running their own agenda, quite apart from government policy.

"In December and January they were talking about this block of land being used to regenerate the western Sydney's native bushland. Then the Premier's stating that there is no public money to build a drag strip, inside or outside Eastern Creek Raceway, but now, using public money, they will build a golf course on this tip if it's opened. Just what Sydney needs, another golf course, but drag racing can go take a jump. If we lie down and allow these people to walk over us then we are less than we've been telling ourselves we are."