New action group tees off against Federal Golf Club development proposal

It appeared as if the proposed retirement village on the Federal Golf Club course in Red Hill was a done deal after years of sometimes tense negotiations with the community and government but a new action group won’t let the issue die.

The Friends of Federal Fairways (FOFF) have renewed the fight against the Mbark proposal for 77 detached single-storey three-bedroom homes, 48 apartments across six three-storey buildings and a residents’ health and wellbeing facility.

It will take up 5 ha of land, removing the 6th and 7th holes and necessitating a reconfiguration of the course, which the club had hoped to begin in the first half of the year.

Three development applications were submitted in October but have not been publicly notified.

FOFF, a mix of Federal Golf Club members and local residents, see this and a new club board as an opportunity to restate the arguments against what it says is an unnecessary development and to remind people what is at stake.

Spokesperson Jane Seaborn said FOFF had written to the Conservator of Flora and Fauna, Environment Minister and the federal Department of Environment seeking meetings, would letterbox residents, and had secured a meeting with the club in February.

“The fact that they’re prepared to meet with us is at least an indication of their openmindedness of what we have to say,” she said.

Ms Seaborn said the group was optimistic about getting a fair hearing from the new club board, which might be wavering about pressing ahead with the development.

She said the primary issue was the loss of the endangered gang gang cockatoo habitat, but also the loss of public access through the development site and the disruption to a perfectly good golf course, which would also require protective netting and fencing to be erected.

The location was also a major issue.

“If you plonk it in the middle of green open space, it’s completely isolated from services, everybody is going to need a car, there’ll be deliveries and lots of traffic,” she said.

Ms Seaborn said the development was predicated on longstanding arguments that without it, the club could not be financially sustainable, due mainly to the increasing cost of water for the course.

But an analysis of the 2022-23 financial year statements from FOFF club member Ross McLeod, a retired ANU economics professor, showed the position of the club and the cost of water was not as dire as presented.

Professor McLeod’s analysis found the club’s losses in six of the last seven financial years were only a small percentage of total revenues and could easily be turned around.

“We only face ongoing operating losses if we continue to make poor business decisions,” he says.

Water accounted for only about 8 per cent of total expenses in a drought year, averages just 3 per cent, and in high rainfall years the cost is almost negligible, he says, arguing that the club failed to look at the main expenditure areas of wages and salaries and the loss-making catering business.

Ms Seaborn said environmental groups and the government had accepted the club’s claims without enough scrutiny, with the former accepting the trade-off of 12 ha of high-value land being incorporated into the Red Hill nature reserve as part of Territory Plan Variation 384, which rezoned the course land to allow development.

But now that TPV 384 had passed, she said that 12 ha could not be taken back so the community had nothing to lose by opposing the development.

The club and the developer would be the only ones to gain.

“There is no net community benefit in this development,” Ms Seaborn said.

She said the last time club members actually had a say in the matter was in 2016 when they gave the board the OK to negotiate with Mbark about a different, smaller development at the site of the clubhouse.

“The board kept saying members voted on this and agreed to this, well they didn’t,” Ms Seaborn said. “That will certainly be one of the things we’ll discuss with the club.”

The development will also require changing the Crown lease from its concessional status.

Ms Seaborn said attempts to link FOFF with a 2020 alternative smaller proposal from Nikias Diamond and the Canberra Southern Cross Club was designed to smear the group.

Ms Seaborn said FOFF was solely focused on stopping the development.