Temple could boost China relations

The director of the Shaolin Temple Foundation of Australia Patrick Pang is in WA this week to generate support for the proposed $200 million Shaolin temple development to be built south of Dalyellup.

Mr Pang said he was confident it would be easier to get West Australian planning approval and to move the project quickly in comparison to the bureaucracy it had encountered in New South Wales.

“The planning process is difficult in Australia and we don’t want to have to go through the same grief, ” he said.

“In New South Wales we have survived four or five planning ministers and we are still around — I hope that coming here we can have a good talk with politicians and people at the community level.

“They have to realise for anything to happen it has to have community support — not just one, two or five per cent of the community and it is time the Australian majority weighs in. We’re not building a coal mine.”

In 2011 South West MLCs Nigel Hallett and Barry House sent letters to the project proponents, including planning company TPG in support of the proposal.

In the letter Mr House sent on November 8, 2011 he said:

“The concept appears to have considerable merit and seems to fit in well with future development options for this region.

“The development would provide suitable facilities to benefit tourism, commercial and residential options in the long term period.”

In his ‘in principle’ letter of support, Mr Hallett said:

“The proposed development, in Minninup Road, Stratham, has potential as a tourist attraction and residential development and may assist to strengthen cultural ties between China and Australia.”

Capel shire president Murray Scott said he had not received much feedback from the community since the South Western Times broke the news of the proposal last week.