The legislation that gave Splendour consent has been revoked. Splendour’s consent should also now be revoked.
Originally Byron Council gave Splendour consent, but the residents took that to the Land and Environment Court and had Byron’s consent overturned (on two successful points of claim:
1) That the site’s Wildlife Habitat zoning prohibited an event site, and
2) That Byron Council’s consent had not demonstrated that no environmental harm would take place.
The Splendour developers then took the event to the Qld Woodford site, but didn’t sell out tickets there, (it didn’t have the hippy vibe they were marketing), so they took it to the NSW Government, which invented new legislation to enable the state government to overturn the Land and Environment Court judgment (you can’t let legislation, or the environment, or the state government’s own farmland protection zoning of the site, get in the way of GST revenue, and anyway we can all eat cake).
The state’s new invented legislation (called Part 3A) was associated with corruption on other developments, and ended up being so reviled that the state government revoked and removed the Part 3A legislation. The enabling legislation is gone, and with it gone, so should be the Splendour consent.
The recent Splendour debacle should be a real wakeup call, as this recent debacle is a warning that raises the extremely serious concerns at what would be an even more serious situation of a bushfire. A bushfire would race across this site faster than people could run. An intense bushire originating in the adjacent nature reserve could send burning embers kilometres in front of the fire front, setting intense fires in the forest, carparks and camping sites on site. Thousands on site, and thousands packed in waiting for buses, would be the trapped victims unable to escape.
Original submissions against [the Splendour DA) clearly illustrated the risk of site flooding with photos provided of the site as a lake. A local RFS member drove back from Sydney to raise his strong concerns at the capacity of an evacuation in case of a bushfire.
The originally stated risks from a heavy rainfall event have now been demonstrated. Who’s assessing the risks now? Or will GST revenue and the US corporation majority Splendour (and Falls) owners’ income mean that we wait until the originally stated risk of a bushfire engulfing the site is also demonstrated?
John Lazarus
Byron Bay
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