I was utterly horrified to hear Cr Mark Swivel touting a ‘community land trust for conservation’ concept as his own in the context of his reelection campaign on BayFM last week. This grassroots initiative has been worked on diligently by First Nations and community members, including myself, for months. It was initiated in the context of ‘Saving Wallum’ but with a regional vision for the protection of cultural and ecological heritage.
Now Cr Swivel, who has offered nothing to the community on this issue and has facilitated the development’s progress while undermining and dismissing the community’s opposition, wants to swoop in and claim the credit for the hard work of the very people he has obstructed, to prop up his joint reelection campaign with Michael Lyon?
While Swivel is correct that the idea of a land trust which maps our region’s essential wetlands and habitats for conservation is a groundbreaking and valuable project, his attempt to co-opt it for the very same statutory bodies which ushered in the pending destruction of a premier candidate for such protection at Wallum is unsound and disingenuous. Byron Shire Council (BSC) would be utterly the wrong institution to lead this proposal, as demonstrated by their systemic failure at every stage of the Wallum decision – and make no mistake, they contributed decisively at several points.
Though councillors, most notably Mayor Lyon, try to hide from responsibility, the proper action for them now is a post-mortem of exactly where they went wrong, both in their pre-approval collusion and their post-approval ineffectiveness, and how to prevent a repeat.
Has either Lyon or Swivel sought meetings with state departments or state or federal representatives to advocate for Wallum and protection of wetlands and biodiversity on the site? Is there a review underway of why Council staff and consultants are not applying due diligence or Council’s own policies on biodiversity and climate in their rubber-stamping of DAs such as Wallum?
Given their lack of engagement on the opportunities mentioned above, can either Mark Swivel or Michael Lyon point to a single genuine action to contribute to a just outcome at Wallum or fix the problems in BSC that led to this situation, beyond publishing the non-consultative amended DA concept? Without any meaningful attendant action like calling public meetings, inviting public comment, or pressing for state, federal, or legal intervention, the amended DA looks like a half-hearted attempt at image rehabilitation, as does this latest piece of opportunistic plagiarism.
Both Lyon and Swivel have demonstrated a breathtaking contempt for the community on this issue, an attitude of ‘we know better’.
Our work as CLAI (Community-Led Acquisition Initiative), a regional, grassroots, First Nations, and community-led land bank or ‘community land trust’ is on the record in multiple forms. Ministers were briefed on the concept by First Nations leaders in successful meetings at state parliament earlier this month We look forward to Cr Swivel getting in touch to ask how he can serve the community’s innovative proposal.
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