Not the full story
Wednesday January 29, 2009
A number of local residents are less than impressed with an article about Cobar being in recession that appeared in last Saturday’s edition of The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH).
The SMH ‘From boom town to bust’ article said “Cobar is in a recession”, and that “Every other business has laid off staff”.
The article quoted the Great Western Hotel as having “full occupancy two years ago, now five per cent”.
GW Hotel’s licensee Gerard Francisco said he was interviewed by the SMH reporter.
“What he didn’t say in the article was that many of those rooms were let to fly-in fly-out contractors at the mine who did not actually spend their money in town,” Mr Francisco told The Cobar Weekly.
He said the article also failed to report the GW’s upstairs rooms were vacant due to conditions associated with the hotel’s entertainment licence.
“He also didn’t want to know that my income was higher in January this year than last year.
“I told him we had two other mines that are running well but he wasn’t interested in that fact either,” Mr Francisco said.
The reporter also asked Mr Francisco about the vacant premises in the main street.
“I told him they were vacant before the retrenchments!”
Red Earth Real Estate’s Tracey Kings said her sales and rental figures did not agree with the comments made in the article about Cobar’s housing market.
“We have about only one tenth of our rental roll now vacant,” Mrs Kings said on Tuesday.
“Today we are processing two house and land package sales as well as dealing with four inspections for sales of properties.
“While rental prices have definitely dropped, most by 30 per cent, but we are still a long way from doom and gloom,” she said.
Grant Bollington, franchisee manager of the Harvey Norman Cobar store, has also taken exception to the article.
“I’ve maintained the staff I’ve got and don’t have any intentions of reducing the staff in the near future,” Mr Bollington said.
“Cobar people continue to support us and we’ll continue to support them.”
Mayor Lilliane Brady said she spent an hour being interviewed by the SMH reporter last week.
“He didn’t use anything I said,” she said.
“Yes it’s a nervous time and it’s important that we continue to shop locally and council needs to support as many local jobs as we can.”
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