Yesterday the media gathered at the proposed Wallum development at Brunswick Heads as Tamara Smith, Member for Ballina, held a conference to urge the NSW planning minister to refer the development the federal environment minister.
Ms Smith wants the Planning Minister, Paul Scully, to seek advice at the Federal level on their requirements to protect threatened species under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.
A path to extinction
Ms Smith said she would be raising this issue next week on the floor of Parliament.
‘There are two ways that this path to extinction for threatened species and an extraordinary ecosystem can be halted.
‘One is for either the State planning minister or the federal environment minister to call the development in and ensure that species are protected, or, for the developer to refer it to the federal environment minister.
‘There is no social license for this development and that is why over 6,000 local people are protesting and dozens are camping in the trees to halt the path of destruction. Once the bulldozers are in it’s over.’
Woody likes to make noise
During the media call a security guard known as Wallum Woody, spent several minutes ‘drilling’ the poles of the fence in the vicinity of the cameras and when he was asked to hold the noise down, he parked his car with the stereo blaring, next to the fence line.
The Wallum ecosystem is home to multiple threatened species, including the Wallum froglet, glossy black cockatoo and a small, rare population of coastal koalas.
Unique ecology and cultural values
Ecologist, Save Wallum campaigner and spokesperson for many of the community protesting the development, James Barrie, said that Wallum is irreplaceable. ‘The unique ecology, the cultural values. Even the story, the way it was hidden from the community, presented as a degraded land that the development will ‘ecologically enhance’ with artificial frog ponds that are known to fail for the threatened species they are meant to manage.’
‘We have to stand up to this kind of destruction that gets made permissible under loopholes in planning legislation. It’s actually illegal activity that the loopholes permit and not even the Forestry Commission could log these trees,’ said Mr Barrie.
Quit passing the buck
Ms Smith says she has written to the State and federal ministers asking them to quit buck-passing. ‘I want them to take the action available to them under the law to protect this precious place.’
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