John Lazarus, Byron Bay
Bentley’s gasfields development was legal, and stopped by direct action protests. As was the Patterson Hill housing development, now an incorporated part of the National Park (stopped by direct action protest, including by Greens Richard Staples, Jan Barham, and Ian Cohen), stopped because of an endangered orchid, and where protesters were arrested (with all charges dismissed after a 10-year legal battle). Is Ian Cohen now just a bloody tree hugger in your view, who blocked construction of Tasmanian dams, blocked a US warship with his surfboard, climbed down mountains to get in and block lawful forest destruction?
There appears broad support from the people of Queensland for the Adani coal mines. Why have you then voted to ban any Council engagement with any associated Adani contractors? Are you now opposed to protests against Adani?
You and the elected Greens councillors, re the Bypass, are on the wrong side of the extinction crisis, the wrong side of the climate crisis, the wrong side of your own Greens party polices on wetlands, and the wrong side of history on this ‘bypass’ development.
You and the other Greens councillors are sabotaging your own party.
The ‘bypass’ area may be only a small section of wetland/rainforest, but we only have remnants left, and this development is not by an ‘our greenhouse pollution doesn’t matter’ federal government, or a ‘rivers of dead fish/give the farmers more rights to demolish forest’ state government, or by a developer utilising some of the legal rights that we should not have given away; it is by you and the other councillors who voted for it. Council is the dominant authority that speaks for the environment in this Shire.
This development that destroys critically endangered and endangered species habitat is 100 per cent under your auspices. Why would anyone who supports action on our climate emergency, and who believes in protecting habitat for a critically endangered species, habitat that is now largely only found on the margins of the wetlands between Bangalow Rd and town, not think that you and the other councillors are culpable in engaging in a dereliction of duty?
It is not too late to change your minds and to vote to cease this bypass. The whole world is watching.
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. 
