The most poignant moment from Thursday’s boisterous and unruly Council meeting was listening to elderly Mullum resident, Peter McGill.
He waited patiently all morning to speak after the noisy Wallum crowd finished.
As some of the Wallum supporters started leaving, he told councillors that his home on New City Road was devastated by floods in 2022, and that ever since, he has found it hard to recover.
He said his mental health had suffered as a result.
Peter said that Council told him their recent plans to develop more houses on his street will result in less flooding, yet he questioned that logic, given his home insurance has increased significantly.
At the end of his moving and humble speech, councillors sat in silence, staring blankly.
Peter asked respectfully, ‘Are there any questions?’ Silence.
Mayor Michael Lyon looked visibly bored and disinterested.
After it was evident that he had to do something, he mechanically responded: ‘Any questions?’
No? Sorry Peter, you are on your own.
If you have just joined the conversation because you are concerned about the fate of Wallum, it’s worth considering that all of this is connected.
The Council chambers, where decisions are made which affect everyone, is a very cold place.
It’s an empathy-free zone, full of entitlement, arrogance and ambition without any meaning.
It feels hollow.
There is soooooo much secrecy, poor communication and no policy reform.
But there’s lots of plans for housing! How much will be ‘affordable’?
Those interested in direct non-violent actions may be interested to learn that the mayor’s secret deals on mass land rezonings will become public in the coming months.
As for Wallum?
What we learned from Wallum is that grassroots community awareness is needed before councillors take notice. The ball was dropped by everyone in the midst of Covid.
Are Council staff given sufficient direction by councillors around community expectations?
Planning staff recommended approval of the DA – On page 34 of their Evaluation Report, they stated there would be no significant impact on the natural environment.
As we now know, there’s a lot of expert opinion to the contrary.
Fun fact: Council once employed a biodiversity officer.
Perhaps reinstating the position might be worth considering to save everyone this pain in future?
It’s well known that Australia has one of the highest rates of species decline in the developed world, as reported in the federal government’s State of the Environment Report.
Thursday’s Wallum vote was a chance to send a strong, unified message to the decision makers in Sydney and Canberra that would be hard to ignore.
Instead, the mayor will try (again) to negotiate with the developer for a compromise that will see some unknown amount of ecological loss.
In case there’s anyone with a spare $48m, the mayor told the Save Wallum FB page that’s the amount the developer would accept for the problem to go away.
Some problems can go away – for example, there is a local government election this September.
Hans Lovejoy, editor
I have to agree with Hans ….The General Manager should BAN ALL MOBILES that councilor’s look at in PUBLIC ACCESS. Put them away. This council is showing its true colors now that the public are allowed to watch what’s happening. They have sat behind closed doors for far too long. They were voted in by THE PEOPLE TO REPRESENT THE PEOPLE. Three councilors are trying their best and we thank them. The rest have gone into election mode. Let’s see what happens as the time draws near the elections many questions will be asked and it is your councilors to see what communities think of you.
The more housing there is, the more affordable it will become. Supply and demand. Of course half the people in Byron Shire can barely afford their car rego but that’s not anyone’s fault, not even those evil developers. Hopefully more houses will be built in the 2br range rather than the 5-6br McMansions that seem to proliferate around here. You can’t whinge about the lack of housing and in the next breath whinge about a housing development because some frogs are on it!
Just so you know Brian, ‘some frogs’ are a small population of two endangered species. There are also numerous other species threatened by this development. What don’t you understand about the threat of extinction?
Also worth noting is the acidic marshland that the builder wants to put suburban housing on. This is an extremely unsuitable medium for concrete, and anyone building on that land will be battling concrete cancer for the duration of the dwellings. Having read most of the reports I could mention about 100 other reasons why not to proceed with this development. I recommend you look at the Save Wallum website and the documentation included within to help you understand more about the site.
NIMBY
Another personal attack on the Mayor.
This is the beginning of a long tedious election campaign by The Echo.
Yes, Hans, there were too many balls dropped during the covid response fiasco – so many that one might be left wondering about the veracity of certain conspiracies at play, not least of which was the attack on small business, the elevation of online behemoths and the rich getting richer while the poor got poorer.
But I am going to make a more interesting connection here as you referred to the ball being dropped re bio diversity – it was, but one of the principle reasons has the same connection – the green movement adopting the trust in science mantra in relation to climate change that was then so blindly and stupidly transposed to the dodgy Pharma science.
The Green movement got lazy and grabbed hold of anthropocentric climate change as the great ‘one wood ‘ for all things green and bio-diversity was left as a side issue, a side effect of the big one.
It should never have been so. On the contrary, bio diversity is the ‘one wood’ that all of existence depends on.
In saying that it is not that I negate the possibility that human activity is contributing to climate change, not at all, but the scientific and political reality is that anthrpocentric climate change can, and should be, debated not obedientky trusted as you can do all the modelling you like but in the end, modelling has to be questioned and dissected – it has been too easy for the fossil fuel industry to orgsnise a pushback against it and, perversely, too easy for other corporate elites to try and exploit it for their own ends.
We must re-instate bio diversity as tge be all and end all of the future of human existence.
Abd yes, in answer to another comment – ban McMansions and allow only small, affordable but aesthetic dwellings.