There are some matters deserving consideration that are rarely raised and which I hope all potential candidates will take into account.

One of those is that Wagga is rapidly becoming a metropolitan city.

Much is changing, the city is spreading in all directions with most suburbs having a small to medium shopping centre.

These centres are purpose built for current needs, they do not fulfil all residents' needs though and a large percentage of them shop in the main street, as do a lot of country people and those from outlying towns.

Wagga's main street is very long with some major malls capturing the majority of trade. They have also been purpose built.

A large percentage of the rest of Fitzmaurice and Baylis streets shops were built years ago, in many cases as a shed with a shopfront facade added. Most are one storey.

As the main street is largely the face of Wagga real estate it should be the most valuable and desirable, yet many of these shops are vacant or have a high turnover of tenants simply because passing trade is inadequate, parking is difficult and the premises don't always suit the job.

At the risk of offending a lot of people, I believe many existing buildings on the main street should be demolished to make way for modern multi-storey buildings accommodating basement or other onsite parking, ground floor retail malls, commercial offices and permanent accommodation on the higher levels.

Of necessity such modern buildings need plenty of room to build something worthwhile, and so it needs to be possible to extend the building say from Baylis Street all the way to Peter Street or Fitzhardinge Street, either eliminating the back lanes or building over them to allow vehicles to pass through the building.

This will cause a significant growth of residents in the CBD, enhancing shopping and entertainment.

There is no practical reason not to build multi-storey as there are no real views to be impaired.

At present owners of buildings in the main street are shackled by draconian heritage regulations, a legacy of an ill-considered blanket ban of past zealously enforced by regulators.

Wagga's main streets have some nice old buildings worth protecting (eg old council chambers, Romano's, court house) but if this city is to be all that it can be, these laws have to be challenged to allow development.

We do not need vaccination passports, we already have them.

If the staff of hair salons must have full vaccinations to work and their clientele likewise, then the result is this: All well coiffured people will obviously be vaccinated. All long haired people will not.

So everybody wears their vaccination passport on their head!

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