Injury, insult and very bad planning

It was a week when the worst ever natural disaster hit our Shire; then came the news that the Commissioner of the Land and Environment Court had approved the subdivision for the remaining half of West Byron – another disaster that, unlike the floods, we should have been able to stop. 

The timing of the announcement was not the landowners’ fault, but the rest of it is. Aided and abetted by a corrupt planning system, the ‘local’ landowners ignored local voices of knowledge and experience, community wishes and Byron Council. Having got their land rezoned by the State government in a spurious process, they continued down the path of the bully developer, using the courts to get for them what the legitimate processes wouldn’t. The Northern Regional Planning Panel gave 20 reasons why they refused this subdivision. Apparently these reasons are now ‘resolved’ by the Court – without any substantial changes. 

Gross overdevelopment

The landowners put forward their proposal to rezone the site and the Department of Planning gave them all that they asked for. I had been inclined to think that these local people, seeing the opposition from their community, might opt for something that was not destructive at West Byron. But any hope that a ‘locals’ concern for their own town and its residents, human and otherwise, might prevail was dashed when the subdivision development application (DA) appeared. It was a gross overdevelopment of the site – pitched for maximum profit and minimum care for the community and wildlife.

It is interesting that these landowners bought their patch of land decades ago for what would be a verse, not even a song. Given the increase of values here of late, their return on investment will be similarly exponential. It’s ironic that Terry Agnew, who paid $10 million for his half of West Byron, did listen to the local community and halved his development and is now selling his 149 lots for around $1.5 million each.

We have all had a difficult time these past weeks – we have cried and hugged each other, donated time, money or essential items and mucked in to help our friends, neighbours and complete strangers who have suffered. The majority of our community shows care and love for this place and its people

Unlike in the floods, nobody has lost their home because of the ‘win’ by the West Byron landowners – except the endangered koalas (the court accepted that they don’t exist on the site) and the threatened wallum frogs (whose problematic presence is to be dealt with in biodiversity offsets). Yet again we want to weep and hug each other in disbelief at this outcome. Will the cut-off wildlife corridor, surrounded by homes and dogs, mean that koalas will cease to exist in Byron Bay in our lifetime? Can hundreds of thousands of tonnes of fill on a flood plain actually be allowed? How can the roads, footpaths and concrete slabs of hundreds of dwellings not have a serious negative effect on the way stormwater flows from the site? Water doesn’t disappear – it is just displaced to be someone else’s problem or to overload the Belongil estuary, forcing it to stay open and obliterating the nesting sites of shorebirds at the creek mouth. How can we cope with the massive increase in traffic that will result from the development? 

It is hard to understand how our lawyers were not able to make the case that this development is profoundly unsuitable on that location. It seemed abundantly clear, from expert and community submissions and the brief prepared by Council staff for the NRPP, that there were multiple grounds to argue the case refusal. 

‘Locals’ you can do better

It’s not too late – the ‘locals’ can follow Terry Agnew’s lead and do a better development that doesn’t wreck Byron and threaten the survival of our koalas.

Perhaps they think that the decision of the court legitimises their position; a court deciding in your favour means you won – it doesn’t make you right. Byron deserves better than this. 

♦ Cate Coorey is a Byron Shire Councillor.