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| Grafton Chamber of Commerce president Jeremy Challacombe at a rally to save Grafton jail ( - ABC North Coast) |
Chamber of Commerce head says Grafton needs
to plan for the future and look at resurrecting farming as a major industry The
president of Grafton's Chamber of Commerce is calling for a massive rethink
about the city's future and what industries it needs to preserve or resurrect.
Jeremy Challacombe said the closure of a
Telstra call centre and an abattoir in recent years had hurt Grafton enough,
and it could not cope with a proposed restructure of the local jail.
"We can't take much more," he said.
"We have got to get together as a
community and say 'where are we going?'
"It's not about politics anymore, it's
about our community and I would expect people from across the board to sit down
and say 'where are we going to go, how can we rebuild this?'
"Led by council, led by the chamber,
irrespective of political persuasions let's find out what the problems and see
how we can counteract it, not only in this town, it's a model for other country
towns too."
Mr Challacombe believes agriculture could
play a major role in saving Grafton.
"We were a really strong agricultural
centre, we've got a stack of water, a magnificent river, we've got a
magnificent coverage of forest here," he said.
"We don't want to get into a debate as
to wisely or not wisely using our natural resources, but we have the natural
resources there to manage wisely.
"We can value-add. We've seen
agriculture cut down and cut down and cut down - let's actually go the other
way.
"I grow strawberries for example, I
would love another dozen strawberry growers here then we can put in a
strawberry factory, then we can start to move forward.
"Let's get some incentives to process
and value-add to what we produce in this valley."
Original Article Here
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