Thank you, Councillors Lyon, Pugh and Coorey for explaining what went wrong with the Wallum development application (DA) process on Facebook.
The community f*cked up because they failed to object to Clarence’s revised DA when it was advertised in The Echo in June 2021 during Covid isolation. It’s the community’s job to remain ever vigilant.
According to Mayor Lyon: ‘We never had a reason as councillors to be proactive regarding the site as we were not the consent authority, nor was there any serious effort or campaign to stop the development at the time there needed to be, despite it being very much on the public record’.
The Bayside development was a very live issue as Codlea’s subdivision (DA 10:2020.24.1) was on exhibition just after the bushfires in February 2020, the month before Covid kicked in.
You didn’t listen
The Foreshore Protection Group sent a ten-page submission to Byron Councillors as did the Brunswick Heads Progress Association (BHPA) covering bulk earthworks (up to 2m of fill required), drainage (running into Simpsons Creek and efficacy of bioretention ponds especially during flooding), road works (only one access road), fire protection (50m buffer zones were recommended by RFA), and the Vegetation Management Plan (we supported the extensive submissions supplied by environmental experts).
We concluded by recommending: ‘Council refuse the DA and request the site and land to the south be acquired as state compensatory wildlife habitat and added to the adjoining Tyagarah Nature Reserve’.
In November 2020 the Foreshore Protection Group put out a community alert about three new DAs on exhibition in Brunswick Heads including the 39-room boarding house in Torakina Road, Bayside adjacent to Codlea’s site, which the community also loudly and vehemently opposed to no avail. Council endorsed the projects in 2020/21.
Mayor Lyon now claims: ‘If councillors had been lobbied, and had the values of the site been brought to our attention at this time, we could have addressed the planning panel, helped others to do so and attempted to prevent the development in line with community expectations’.
Byron Shire Council (BSC) didn’t reject Codlea’s project in 2020, just sought conditions to protect the frogs and improve the drainage. Rehabilitating the site was never recommended in staff reports. It remains uncertain whether Council made any submissions to Northern Regional Planning Panel (NRPP) or was aware of Clarence’s revised DA prior to consent.
Council dedicated parts of the Wallum site for conservation and public reserves in February 2023 and the mayor quotes Cr Dey who supported the staff recommendation saying, ‘it’s mostly cleared land… and the bushland surrounding the site… will add to the joy of living there’.
The NRPP approved Clarence’s new plan in May 2023 so it’s a done deal. Council’s only official role is to ensure the developers comply with the consent conditions which they signed off on, after four hours of debate at the last Council meeting.
Simon Richardson out to lunch?
Ex-mayor, Simon Richardson is a member of NRPP and is well aware of the community’s passion and energy and determined efforts to save and protect this high value, irreplaceable ecosystem. He didn’t notice the lack of response to the Bayside proposal? He didn’t give the community, the old comrades, the heads up?
Councillor Pugh claims Council has no power to change, improve or reject the consent conditions but had deferred the decision in December to give objectors time to lodge an expensive appeal in the Land and Environment Court which they failed to do. Mayor Lyon agrees the ‘real reason (for the deferral) was to give objectors time to lodge an appeal’.
Cr Balson sat on the fence, declaring she had a conflict of interest because she was friends with the objectors! Cr Sarah Ndiaye was commended for her strong defence of Wallum. Any ‘ad hominen attack on Mayor Lyon was unreasonable’, claims Cr Coorey, though the mayor broke the four-all deadlock with his casting vote.
Councillors failed in their role
At every level the system, the process, has failed the community. Consultation and transparency fell off BSC’s agenda over the last decade and we’re left in the dark. Councillors don’t respond to letters or submissions and don’t appear to read them. Documents provided in 2020 are not recalled in 2021. A major development can slip through and be approved before anyone notices – and Council meekly whines that they can’t do anything, saying it’s your fault for not telling us!
The backlash has been impressive with a factual, convincing ongoing campaign by the Save Wallum crew. Appeals to state and federal environment and planning ministers or the court are the last recourse. Cr Pugh’s motion for Council (and ministers) to negotiate a better outcome from the developer to save the ecosystem is the preferred and most likely outcome. A rich benefactor could buy up the site.
We can look forward to more tears and mayhem with the bulldozers at the gates. Maybe we need to tie those yellow ribbons around the squiggly gums, the koala and black cockatoo food trees, and all those precious plants we want to save.
I ended my alert in 2020 with: ‘Council’s decision to not advertise DAs in The Echo is a travesty. No longer are we informed about what’s happening in the neighbourhood, we have to find out for ourselves’. The BSC DA-tracker is a poor substitute. Only a DA number is provided, without the address or a basic description, it is incredibly difficult and time-consuming to find or view plans when you have to open each document individually. DAs need to be accessible and properly advertised in our local paper and available at Council’s office so the plans get the required scrutiny.
Community consultation has been reduced to a box-ticking exercise and backroom deals remain dodgy. It’s not cutting red tape, it’s destroying our environment.
♦ Michele Grant is a member of the Foreshore Protection Group.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
