FACED with multi-million dollar bills to save Kingscliff beach and its money-making caravan park, Tweed Shire councillors are calling on the state and federal governments to help out.

But at the same time they are being accused of adding to future costly erosion problems by pushing ahead with another beachfront caravan park at Cabarita.

Councillors, acting in their role as trustees of the Tweed Coast Holiday Parks Reserve, went behind closed doors on Tuesday to debate the Kingscliff erosion and vote to increase the amount of work already underway.

In a press release afterwards, they said they were allocating $3 million from borrowed funds and would “greatly appreciate any financial contribution the state or federal governments are able to provide”.

But in an open session of the meeting, they pushed ahead with plans for a huge new caravan park at Cabarita despite fierce opposition from residents who say the council will repeat the mistakes of Kingscliff and the new caravan park will also be subject to erosion.

Cr Katie Milne warned that move could simply be a waste of money.

“You will be spending more good money after bad,” she said.

Yesterday Cabarita Residents’ Association spokesman Ashley Baldry said they were questioning the reserve trust’s competence because its executive manager agreed coastal erosion would eventually threaten the proposed new park.

Yet, he said, the trust had “made no provisioning of funds for future works to combat coastal erosion at the site”.