NSW planning minister says golf courses should be tweaked, not removed

“We don’t need to remove golf courses, we just need to tweak them to provide more benefit to a greater number of people.”

This was an unexpected surprise.

As I scrolled through the news headlines this morning, another headline concerning population growth and golf courses flashed across the screen. My blood pressure rose immediately.

Here we go…

But to my surprise the piece from Matt Bungard at the Sydney Morning Herald is a measured article and quotes Planning Minister Rob Stokes campaigning for a better use of golf courses – and keeping them as golf courses – rather then reducing the number of holes or closing them altogether.

“We don’t need to remove golf courses, we just need to tweak them to provide more benefit to a greater number of people,” Mr Stokes says. He gives the example of having bike paths and running tracks on the edges of golf courses as “having your cake and eating it too”.

“We need to think of ways to include the community, rather than exclude, while at the same time meeting the needs of the golfing community,” Mr Stokes says, adding golf courses are ideal for the government’s plan to plant 5 million trees throughout greater Sydney by 2030.

There are of course plenty of caveats to this conversation including safety, course redesign and of course disgruntled members.

But I’ll leave that for you guys to duke it out in the comments section for the moment.

The full piece is here: The ‘tweak’ coming to Sydney’s vast golf courses