Greens MP Ian Cohen is calling for a halt to clearing of 360 hectares of critically endangered bushlandon a former ADI site in the Cumberland Plain.  The imminent clearing by bulldozers of this bushland - adjacent to sensitive wetlands - flies in the face of the NSW Government’s own advice on the Cumberland Plain.The environmental approval that allows Delfin Lend Lease to clear the area and build homes for 6500 people was granted under now superseded Federal conservation laws. The site should be reconsidered using current Federal law and NSW State guidelines.

“This clearing should be halted immediately. Both Federal scientists and NSW Department of Environment Water and Climate Change (DECCW)
scientists have listed this area, the Cumberland Plain Woodland in the Sydney Basin Bioregion, as a Critically Endangered Ecological Community
and yet it is about to be bulldozed,” says Greens MP Ian Cohen.

“Environment Minister Sartor must talk to his Federal counterpart, Mr Garrett, and act to save the Cumberland Plain from desecration. (more…)

(letter to Braidwood Times, published March 3, 2010)

With deliberations on the new Palerang LEP working draft just begun, it is clear that environmental issues will not receive the support that some may have expected. At last Thursday’s meeting, Clause 26D, Ecologically Sustainable Development (local), was the first to go. It stated: Before granting consent for development, the consent authority must have regard to the principles of ecologically sustainable development as they relate to the proposed development. Not long after that, the fifth objective of the section RU1 Primary Production was debated - to ensure that the development and management of the land has proper regard for the environmental constraints of the land and has a neutral or beneficial impact on environmental assets including waterways, riparian land, wetlands and other surface and groundwater resources, soil fertility, remnant native vegetation, and existing and potential fauna movement corridors. With Cr Turley safely out of the room after it was suggested in no uncertain terms that she had an unexempted pecuniary interest, this clause was successfully deleted also, with the casting vote of the mayor. (more…)

(printed in March 2 edition of the Canberra Times)

Since your January 26 story “Koalas face big logging threat”, nothing much has changed except that, despite numerous representations to Ministers and further attempts to highlight the issue in the media and elsewhere, logging may begin as soon as Monday March 1. The support given by current and past governments to the ongoing, taxpayer-subsidised woodchipping of native forests and these governments’ blatant disregard for the protection of forests for biodiversity, water quality, habitat, climate change mitigation and tourist attraction reasons is hard to comprehend. How does continued logging of native forests in this way, without even value-adding in Australia, contribute to the nation’s financial or environmental well-being? (more…)

Greens MP and mining spokesperson Lee Rhiannon has called on Premier Kristina Kenneally to order all NSW government briefings on the expected damage to infrastructure supplying Sydney’s water to be made public.

Ms Rhiannon was responding to today’s report that senior government representatives ordered the Sydney Catchment Authority, Industry and Investment NSW and the Department of Environment and Climate Change and Water to provide their briefings on the coal mining impacts on Sydney’s water in private hearings. (SMH, page 3,)

“Public confidence takes a knock when government agencies that are critical of the project are heard behind closed doors,” Ms Rhiannon said.

“There is already ample evidence in southern Sydney of the impact mining is having on our water catchment. The Georges and Cataract River beds have cracked as a result of mining.

“Reports from government departments on damage to Sydney’s water infrastructure must be made public. (more…)

Figures released today of jobs allegedly created as a result of approvals under Part 3A of the Planning Act may have been significantly inflated by double counting, according to Greens spokesperson for Planning, Sylvia Hale, MLC.

“The table for the period 8 September 2008 – 31 January 2009 (sic — presumably meant to be to 31 January 2010) states that a total of 36,589 construction jobs have been created, and 41,712 operational jobs, totalling 78,301 in all,” says Ms Hale.

“Of these 78,301 jobs, 13,013 construction jobs and 10,671 operational jobs resulted from approval of concept plans, that is, a total of 23,640 jobs.

“But concept plans in themselves do not result in any jobs for anyone other than those who draw the plans up. Before one brick can be laid or one operational job activated, concepts plans, which provide only a broad overview of a project, are translated into project applications, which, if approved, may then lead to the creation of construction and operational jobs. (more…)

The Greens have criticised the narrow scope of the ICAC investigation into the circumstances surrounding the allegations contained in the McGurk tape.

“The inquiry has been a narrow exercise that examines a recorded conversation between a dead lender of last resort and a property developer,” said Sylvia Hale MLC, Greens Spokesperson for Planning.

“What it has failed to examine is the corrupting potential of political donations and access to senior government figures by developers and their lobbyists. (more…)

Australia Day. What does it mean?

For the First Australians, it represents the take-over of their land with the arrival of the first governor and the subsequent events which led to dispossession, disease, genocide and prejudice, not to mention mismanagement and destruction of the land and water systems that had provided for them for so long.

It re-emphasises the failure to acknowledge that Indigenous people were here for tens of thousands of years before the British flag was planted on the soil of what was conveniently called “Terra Nullius” - land belonging to no-one.

This in turn is further emphasised by the flying, draping, parading and wearing of the Australian flag, featuring the colonisers’ Union Jack in the left hand corner. And if that wasn’t enough, the notion of Terra Nullius is rammed home even more by the singing of the National Anthem with its first lines - “Australians all let us rejoice, for we are young and free.”

What’s to celebrate? (more…)

Greens spokesperson for Planning, Sylvia Hale MLC, today expressed her disappointment at the ICAC’s refusal to investigate the murky dealings
surrounding the sale of the Unions NSW Pittwater retreat at Currawong.

“In September 2005 the Minister for Lands, Tony Kelly, made an unconditional offer of $12.5 million to Unions NSW to buy the Currawong site and add it to the adjoining Ku-ring-gai National Park,” said Ms Hale.

“The then Minister for Planning, Frank Sartor, and Minister Kelly, were reported to favour the purchase but it was strongly opposed by Michael Costa, the Treasurer at the time. In November 2005 the government’s offer was withdrawn. (more…)

The Keneally government’s failure to guarantee cash payments under the Solar Bonus Scheme is a blow to households and a get-rich-quick racket for electricity retailers, according to Greens NSW MP John Kaye.

Commenting on a story in today’s Sydney Morning Herald (‘Retailers ‘must pay’ for solar power feed’, page 5), Dr Kaye said: “NSW households were told they would get a generous feed-in tariff to help them make the transition to clean energy generation. What was delivered was a public relations sham for a struggling state government

“Energy Minister John Robertson left open a giant loophole in the Solar Bonus Scheme allowing retailers to withhold cash payments as so-called ‘credits’.

“Without the cash in hand, many households will find it hard to pay off their investment in solar panels and will shy away from the scheme. (more…)

(The Braidwood Times asked councillors to provide approximately 150 words on their hopes and wishes for Palerang for the coming year. Seven out of nine councillors responded.)

My priority would have to be the finalisation of our new LEP, which I hope will be a forward-thinking planning instrument based on Council’s recognition that water is precious and drought is not an unusual event but something that we will have to accept as the norm.

I hope we can get away from the idea that unending growth is the solution to all our financial and social problems.  Ideally, all new sub-division proposals need to be formulated to go gently on the land and be acceptable to the communities they affect.

It would be good to see better communication and consistency amongst State Government departments, especially those involved with planning, industry/engineering and the environment. Situations like we have at the moment with the RTA pumping large amounts of water out of the Shoalhaven for roadwork need to be reassessed so that not only river health but water supplies to the settlements that rely on them are guaranteed.

Happy New LEP Year to everyone in Palerang.

Catherine Moore