The extraordinary meeting of Council on Thursday May 12 was aimed at getting the draft Coastal Zone Management Plan out on public exhibition for just over the minimum three weeks required under the Coastal Protection Act of 1979. Most of Council’s strategic documents get exhibited for a couple of months, not three weeks. The public have not yet seen the draft, which proposes building rock walls along the beach at Belongil (stronger than the current private ones).
The draft plan ignores the long-term effects of walls, like sacrificing the sandy beach in front of the walls and damaging the shorebird nesting area north-west of them. Unbelievably, it sets examining such issues as something for the future. The 2016 draft is a Bjelke-Petersen ‘don’t you worry about that’ plan.
It also ignores the fact that future generations will pay forever to keep the wall intact after storms until a smarter generation wakes up to the fact that fighting nature is unsustainable. Most modern countries are currently buying back privatised water frontage. Here in the colony, this dinosaurian plan proposes the opposite.
Four of your nine councillors believe the draft plan should get maximum exposure and that the public need to understand what is to be sent to NSW planning minister Rob Stokes on their behalf for him to certify into ‘law’. After the meeting on Thursday, three of us lodged a rescission motion against the exhibition process. This was announced at the end of the meeting.
A majority councillor with a legal background then lodged with the general manager a complaint under Section 440F(1)(e) of the Local Government Act. He says that our act of lodging a rescission motion ‘is intended to prevent the proper and effective functioning of the council’. He asks the GM to advise us to withdraw the motion. The GM has responded by advising that while the rescission motion is valid, there may be a case to answer under s440F.
That’s how desperate the majority councillors are to get their CZMP past you, the public, with as little scrutiny as can be arranged. When exhibition does start, please consider making a submission against it.
Byron Shire Cr Duncan Dey, Main Arm
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