Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts
Sunday 10 June 2018
The political endorsements of extinction by Turnbull, Berejiklian and Palaszczuk governments continue
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
5 June 2018:
Wild fish stocks in
Australian waters shrank by about a third in the decade to 2015, declining in
all regions except strictly protected marine zones, according to data collected
by scientists and public divers.
The research, based on
underwater reef monitoring at 533 sites around the nation and published in
the Aquatic Conservation journal, claims to be the first
large-scale independent survey of fisheries. It found declining numbers tracked
the drop in total reported catch for 213 Australian fisheries for the 1992-2014
period.
The biomass of larger
fish fell 36 per cent on fished reefs during 2005-15 and dropped 18 per cent in
marine park zones allowing limited fishing, the researchers said. There was a
small increase in targeted fish species in zones that barred fishing
altogether.
"Most of the
numbers are pretty shocking," said David Booth, a marine ecologist at the
University of Technology Sydney. “This paper really nails down the fact that
fishing or the removal of large fish is one of the causes” of their decline.
Over-fished stocks
include the eastern jackass morwong, eastern gemfish, greenlip abalone, school
shark, warehou and the grey nurse shark. The morwong catch, once as common as
flathead in the trawl fishery, dived about 95 per cent from the 1960s to 109
tonnes in the 2015-16 year to become basically a bycatch species……
…Peter Whish-Wilson, the
Greens ocean spokesman, said the new research was largely based on actual
underwater identification – including the Reef Life Survey using citizen
scientists. It suggests fishing stocks "are not as rosy as the industry or
government would like us all to think".
"This study also
shows that marine parks can be successful fisheries management tools but we
simply don’t have enough of them or enough protection within them to deliver
widespread benefits," he said.
"The new
Commonwealth Marine Reserves are woefully inadequate and won’t do anything to
stop the continuing decline in the health of our oceans."
Environmental Defender's Office NSW, July 2017:
Humane Society
International Australia (HSI), represented by EDO NSW, is seeking independent
review of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority’s (GBRMPA) decision to
approve a lethal shark control program in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
HSI has lodged an appeal
in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) which will require a full
reconsideration of the approval of the shark control program. The 10 year
lethal control program targets 26 shark species in the Marine Park, including
threatened and protected species. The appeal is based on the public interest in
protecting the biodiversity of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.....
As apex predators,
sharks play a vital role in maintaining the health of the Great Barrier Reef.
HSI is concerned about the ongoing impacts caused by the use of lethal
drumlines which are known to impact not only on shark species but also
dolphins, turtles and rays. HSI is calling for non-lethal alternatives for
bather protection.
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
27 May 2018:
Forest covering an area
more than 50 times the size of the combined central business districts of
Sydney and Melbourne is set to be bulldozed near the Great Barrier Reef,
official data shows, triggering claims the Turnbull government is thwarting its
$500 million reef survival package.
Figures provided to
Fairfax Media by Queensland’s Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy
show that 36,600 hectares of land in Great Barrier Reef water catchments has
been approved for tree clearing and is awaiting destruction.
The office of
Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg did not say if his government was
comfortable with the extent of land clearing approved in Queensland, or if it
would use its powers to cancel permits.
The approvals were
granted by the Queensland government over the past five years. About 9000
hectares under those approvals has already been cleared.
Despite the dire
consequences of land clearing for the Great Barrier Reef – and billions of
dollars of public money spent over the years to tackle the problem – neither
Labor nor the government would commit to intervening to stop the mass
deforestation.
Environmental Defender's Office NSW, 25 May 2018:
Freedom of information
laws are an important mechanism for making government decisions transparent and
accountable. But the existence of such laws doesn’t mean access to information
is easy.
It took a three-year legal
process for the Humane Society International (HSI), represented by EDO NSW,
to access
documents about how the Australian Government came to accredit a NSW
biodiversity offsets policy for major projects.
The NSW policy in question
allowed significant biodiversity trade-offs (that is, permitting developers to
clear habitat in return for compensatory actions elsewhere) seemingly
inconsistent with national biodiversity offset standards. HSI wanted to know how
the national government could accredit a policy that didn’t meet its own
standards.
Despite Australia being
a signatory to important international environmental agreements and accepting
international obligations to protect biodiversity, in recent years it has been
proposed that the national government should delegate its environmental
assessment and approval powers to the states, creating a ‘one stop shop’ for
developers.
The original FOI request
in this case was submitted in early 2015, during a time when Federal and State
and Territory Governments were actively in consultation on handing over federal
approval powers under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity
Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act). This was to be done in the name of
efficiency, with the assurance that national standards would be upheld by the
states.
Over 60 documents
finally accessed by HSI show this was a false promise. The documents reveal
that federal bureaucrats in the environment department identified key areas of
the NSW policy that differed from federal standards.
Despite this, the policy
was accredited.
Accreditation meant that
the NSW policy could be used when approving developments with impacts on
nationally threatened species found in NSW, instead of applying the more
rigorous national offsets policy.
In the time it took to
argue for access to the documents, NSW developed a new biodiversity offsets
policy as part of broader legislative reforms for biodiversity and land
clearing. Unfortunately, the new NSW biodiversity offsets policy continues to
entrench many of the weaker standards. For example, mine site rehabilitation
decades in the future can count as an offset now; offset requirements may be
discounted if other socio-economic factors are considered; and supplementary
measures - such as research or paying cash - are an alternative to finding a
direct offset (that is, protecting the actual plant or animal that has been
impacted by a development).
While there have been
some tweaks to the new policy for nationally listed threatened species, there
is still a clear divergence in standards. The new policy, and the new NSW
biodiversity laws, are now awaiting accreditation by the Australian Government.
How our unique and
irreplaceable biodiversity is managed (and traded off) is clearly a matter of
public interest. And on the eve of a hearing at the Administrative Appeals
Tribunal, the federal environment department agreed and released over 60
documents. While it was a heartening win for transparency and the value of FOI
laws, it was a depressing read when these documents revealed the political
endorsement of extinction.
Thursday 7 June 2018
CONSERVATION GROUP FOUNDED TO COMBAT PULP MILL CELEBRATES ITS HISTORY
"No Pump Mill" memorabilia - image supplied |
The Clarence Valley Conservation Coalition celebrated its “almost” thirty years of activity at a Re-Weavers’ Awards Dinner in Grafton on 1st June.
The
Re-Weavers Awards,
which are held annually on the Friday nearest to World Environment Day,
recognise the valuable contribution individuals and groups have made to
environmental protection over many years.
The
Clarence Valley Conservation Coalition was founded almost thirty years ago because
of a proposal for a chemical pulp mill in the Clarence Valley.
On
30th August 1988 The Daily Examiner’s front page headline
shouted: “$450m valley mill planned by Japanese”. Daishowa International had made an
in-principle decision to build a chemical pulp mill on the Clarence River near
Grafton. This, it was claimed, would create about 1200 direct and indirect jobs
in the region.
This fired up the
local community. Some community members welcomed the announcement,
claiming the mill would provide an enormous boost to the local economy.
But not everyone welcomed
it. Many feared the impact such a large
industrial development would have on the local environment – not just of the
Clarence Valley but of the whole North Coast because it was obvious that such a
large mill would be drawing its feedstock from across the region. Concerns included the amount of water this
mill would use, the decimation of the forests, the likelihood of poisonous
effluent being released into either the river or the ocean and air pollution.
On 19 September 1988 concerned people met in Grafton to discuss the
proposal and consider what action should be taken. This meeting resulted in the formation of the
Clarence Valley Conservation Coalition (CVCC).
Rosie
Richards became its President. She was
an ideal person for the job in many ways.
In the conservative Clarence community she was not publicly associated with
any of the recent or on-going conservation issues. While she was concerned
about environmental impacts, both short and long-term, and made no secret of
the fact, she did not look like a greenie – or the conservative view of what a
greenie looked like. Rosie was 56 years old.
She was a grandmother. Her background was not that of a stereotype greenie
either. She grew up in Pymble and in the early fifties was a member of the
Liberal Party Younger Set. Her other
life experiences included years as a farmer’s wife and the wife of a
professional fisherman. (Her husband
Geoff had been both.)
Rosie’s personality
also qualified her for this leadership role in the pulp mill campaign. She ran both the CVCC committee and general
meetings efficiently. She was calm,
sincere, friendly, articulate and very much “a lady” in old-fashioned
terms. But she was also determined and
possessed a “steel backbone”. This
“steel backbone” and her courage were very necessary in the campaign to obtain
information and disseminate it to the North Coast community.
Courage was
necessary to the campaigners because those promoting the benefits of Daishowa’s
plans attacked the CVCC, referring to its spokespersons as scaremongers and “a
benighted group who distort the facts.” Those in power locally and at the state
level weren’t in any hurry to provide
facts but they decried the efforts of community members who were trying to find
information on pulp mill operations.
However, this did not deter the CVCC.
It sought information on pulp mills and pulping processes from around
the world, asked questions of those in power and disseminated information to
the community.
Other
important campaigners included media spokesperson Martin Frohlich and Bruce
Tucker whose time in Gippsland had shown him what it was like to live near the
Maryvale Pulp Mill. Others who played vital roles were John Kelemec, Rob Lans,
Geoff Richards and Bill Noonan as well as core members of the Clarence Valley
Branch of the National Parks Association. These included Peter Morgan, Stan
Mussared, Celia Smith and Greg Clancy.
Public meetings were held in Grafton, Iluka, Maclean and Minnie Water as
well as in other North Coast towns. In
addition the group produced information sheets, issued many media releases,
participated in media interviews, distributed bumper stickers, circulated a
petition, met with politicians both in the local area and beyond, and wrote
letters to politicians and The Daily Examiner.
And there were many others who wrote letters of concern to the paper as
well as some who wrote supporting the proposal.
It was an amazing time as there was a deluge of letters to the Examiner.
There has been nothing like it since!!
One of my
memories is taking part in a Jacaranda procession, probably in 1989. We used Geoff Welham’s truck which was
decorated with eucalypt branches, and driven by Rob Lans with Bill Noonan
beside him. Others of us, wearing koala masks, were on the back. As we drove down Prince Street, Bill had his
ghetto blaster on full volume blaring out John Williamson singing “Rip, rip
woodchip.” I think we drowned out music of the marching bands.
Following
Daishowa’s announcement that it would not be proceeding with its pulp mill
proposal, CVCC President Rosie wrote to the Examiner (4 April 1990)
praising the efforts of the community in defeating the proposal:
“It has been an interesting nineteen months; a period
that has seen the resolve of north coast people come to the fore; we have seen
People Power used in a democratic way to say ‘No’ to something that we knew would harm our
existing industries and our air and water.
If it had not been for the people of the Clarence Valley and their
attendance at public meetings, their letters to politicians, to newspapers in
Tokyo and our own Daily Examiner, and their strong support of the Clarence
Valley Conservation Coalition, we may have had a huge polluting industrial
complex set down in our midst, without a whimper.”
People Power
did do the job – but Rosie Richards and the others on the Coalition Committee
played a very important part in organizing and channelling that people power.
The lessons
of history never seem to be learned. Those
campaigning to protect the environment from the greed of pillagers face the
same problem today.
What Rosie
wrote in a letter to The Daily Examiner in November 1990 still applies
today:
“It seems that every time we stop for breath another
issue crops up that summons us to speak up for common sense and common
interest. Most of us would much rather
be doing other things besides acting as watchdogs for what we see as poor
bureaucratic decisions and flawed advice to governments.”
In the same
letter she answered a criticism that conservationists were “greedy”:
“We speak out as we do because we believe that the
people of today’s and tomorrow’s Australia will not be well served by a country
whose finite resources have been exhausted by sectional interests that have
until now not had to make long term plans for the sustainability of their
industries.”
The pulp
mill campaign was significant both in the Clarence and further afield. It reinforced the message of the other earlier
environmental victory – the success of the Clarence Valley Branch of the
National Parks Association in campaigning to save the Washpool Rainforest. Both of these campaigns showed the state
government and local councils as well as the North Coast community in general
that there were people who were prepared to campaign strongly for effective
protection of the natural environment.
Tuesday 5 June 2018
Where the Trump Regime goes the far-right in Australia's Turnbull Government are sure to follow
Emboldened by the Heartland Institute's capture of the US Trump Government, I suspect that Australia will see a renewed push by one of the compatriots of this American lobby group - the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) - to further wind back federal and state environmental protections.
The IPA already has an uncomfortably close relationship with the Turnbull Government as a number of its members are within its ranks.
This is the current state of play in the United States.
DeSmog
Blog, 29 May
2018:
A lawsuit filed in March by the Southern Environmental Law
Center and Environmental Defense Fund has revealed new levels of coordination
between Scott
Pruitt's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the climate
science-denying think tank the
Heartland Institute.
The EPA had
repeatedly failed to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests by the two
groups, which resulted in the lawsuit and subsequent release of the
email communications.
However, both the EPA and
the Heartland Institute have strongly defended their actions revealed by
the newly released emails. EPA spokesperson Lincoln
Ferguson told the Associated Press that communications with the
Heartland Institute helped “to ensure the public is informed” and that this
relationship “… demonstrates the agency’s dedication to advancing
President Trump’s agenda of environmental stewardship and regulatory certainty.”
The current head of the
Heartland Institute is former Congressman Tim Huelskamp who
also was quick to defend the relationship.
“Of course The Heartland
Institute has been working with EPA on policy and personnel
decisions,” Tim Huelskamp said in a statement to AP. “They recognized us
as the pre-eminent organization opposing the radical climate alarmism agenda
and instead promoting sound science and policy.”
In March Huelskamp wrote
a piece in The Hill titled “Scott Pruitt is leading the EPA toward greatness,”
in which he made it quite clear that the reason for this greatness was that
“Trump and Pruitt share an understanding that climate change is not a
significant threat to the prosperity and health of Americans.”
While in Congress,
Huelskamp’s top donor was Koch
Industries, the massive petrochemical empire owned by the conservative
billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David.
However, this latest
revelation is unlikely to derail Pruitt’s career at the EPA. Pruitt is
currently the subject of at least ten investigations. At a scathing hearing in April, he was told by one Congressman that “you
are unfit to hold public office and undeserving of the public trust.”
Still, Pruitt remains
the embattled chief of the nation's top environmental agency under Trump, and,
perhaps not surprisingly, President Donald Trump has
been supportive of Pruitt……
Like his boss, Pruitt is
quick to blame the media for his problems.
“Much of what has been
targeted towards me and my team, has been half-truths, or at best stories that
have been so twisted they do not resemble reality,” Pruitt said in his opening
remarks to Congress during the April hearing. “I'm here and I welcome the
chance to be here to set the record straight in these areas. But let's have no
illusions about what's really going on here.”….
Supported by funding
from the Koch network, Heartland has been actively spreading disinformation about climate
science for years.
What
the latest EPA emails reveal is the extent which these Koch-funded
climate deniers are now in direct communication with the EPA and
helping influence policy.
One email from John Konkus, EPA’s deputy associate
administrator for public affairs, assures Heartland's then-president Joseph Bast that
“If you send a list, we will make sure an invitation is sent.”
The list refers
to Heartland’s recommendations for economists and scientists that
the EPA would invite to a public hearing on science standards. Under
Trump and Pruitt, climate science deniers are now hand-picking who advises
the EPA on climate change science….
Read the full
blog post here.
BACKGROUND
May 16 - 18, 2010
The Institute of Public
Affairs was a cosponsor (PDF) of the Heartland Institute's Fourth
International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC4). [28]
DeSmogBlog
concluded 19 of the 65 sponsors (including Heartland itself) had
received a total of over $40 million in funding since 1985 from ExxonMobil (who
funded 13 of the organizations), and/or Koch Industries family foundations
(funded 10 organizations) and/or the Scaife family foundations (funded 10
organizations). [29]
October 1, 2010
Together, the Heartland Institute, Americans for Tax Reform,
the Property Rights Alliance, and the Institute of Public Affairs sponsored the Heartland Institute's Fifth International
Conference on Climate Change (ICCC5) in Sydney, Australia. [30]
The
Conversation,
6 June 2016:
A group of prominent
Melbourne businessmen founded the IPA in 1943 in the wake of the United
Australia Party-Country Party coalition’s devastating election
loss.
Inaugural chairman G.J.
Coles (founder of the Coles supermarket chain) outlined the IPA’s approach.
He said
it:
… did not wish to be
directly involved in politics, but it wanted to help create a modern political
faith, which would be constructive and progressive and which would receive a
large measure of public support.
Concerned the Labor
Party was leading Australia down a path of central planning and socialism, the
IPA set out to develop and promote an alternative vision. To that end it
published a 70-page pamphlet titled Looking Forward: “a
post-war policy for Australian industry”.
One person paying close
attention was Robert Menzies, who in 1944 described
the pamphlet as:
… the finest statement
of basic political and economic problems made in Australia for many years.
Many of the policies
outlined in Looking Forward were incorporated into the platform of the Liberal
Party, founded the following year.
Though the IPA and the
Liberal Party were characterised in their early decades by a mildly Keynesian,
interventionist approach to the economy, since the 1980s both have switched to
a more hardline neoliberal philosophy – embracing free markets, lower taxes and
trickle-down economics.
Shared personnel
David and Rod Kemp, sons
of the IPA’s founder and driving force C.D. “Ref” Kemp, became key figures in
both the IPA and the Liberal Party.
David wrote his honours
thesis on the founding of the IPA, then combined an academic career with stints
advising Malcolm Fraser before entering parliament in 1990. Rod took over and
revitalised the IPA in 1982 before he was elected to the Senate, also in 1990.
Both were ministers in the Howard government.
Former Liberal MP and
leading economic “dry” John
Hyde ran the IPA from 1991 to 1995, before being replaced by Mike Nahan, who is
now treasurer in the Western Australian Liberal government....
When Herald Sun
columnist Andrew Bolt was found to have breached Section
18C of the Racial Discrimination Act in 2011, the IPA was outraged and
immediately launched a campaign to repeal the offending section.
A full-page advertisement was
taken out in The Australian. It included the names of senior Liberals such as
Jamie Briggs, Michaelia Cash, Mathias Cormann, Mitch Fifield, Nick Minchin and
Andrew Robb.
Monday 28 May 2018
Noble Caledonia Limited changes its mind about Port of Yamba-Clarence River?
noble-caledonia.co.uk, 27 May 2017 |
Noble
Caledonia Limited’s “Australian
Coastal Odyssey” twenty-two day cruise from 9-31 October 2018 -
flying from London to Cairns to Port Moresby, then sailing through the Torres
Strait and down the east coast of Australia to berth in Melbourne before
returning home on 31 October - is still being advertised online and it just got
a lot cheaper.
In an apparent effort
to fill cabins aboard the vessel MV Caledonian Sky, the UK-based cruise line is now offering across-the-board
discounts of £1,000 per two-person cabin.
There has
also been a change in the ship’s itinerary for Day 16 - 24 October this year.
All mention
of entry into Port of Yamba-Clarence River was removed from the cruise line's website sometime between 21 and
27 May and, Trial Bay, South West Rocks inserted instead for both its October
2018 “Australian Coastal Odyssey” and October 2019 “Australian Coastal
Discovery” east coast cruises.
Caledonian Sky has already booked port berths/moorings
in Queensland and Victoria as well as for two of the six official ports along the NSW leg of the 2018 cruise – Port of Newcastle (7am
25 October) and Port of Eden (7am
27 October). There is no published booking for Port of Yamba which requires piloted entry for sea-going ships.
Which has set
Lower Clarence residents to wondering about the reasons for this welcome change of
plan.
Some think it
may be a public relations feint by Noble Caledonia to dampen expression of local concerns and it may yet decide to slip into the Clarence River estuary on
or about 24 October this year.
Others point
to the level of risk always associated with bringing ships like the 5-deck
high, 91 metre long, est. 4,200 gross tonne Caledonian
Sky across the entrance bar while avoiding collision with the culturally
important Native Title reef “Dirrangun” and, the possibility that the cruise line’s
insurance company might not be impressed if that risk were to be realised and
it was faced with a second reef maritime incident in less than nineteen months
involving the same ship.
Given the
protracted negotiations between Noble Caledonia, its insurer and the Indonesian
Government over a reported £350 million ‘fine’ incurred when the
Caledonian Sky damaged over 18,000
sq. metres of pristine coral reef in the Raja Ampat island chain in March 2017, it is understandable that Noble Caledonia Limited may have reassessed the
original “Australian Coastal Odyssey” itinerary and decided it preferred a less
problematic short-stay mooring for Day 16.
Monday 14 May 2018
Here we are on the NSW North Coast living amid remnants of the splendor that was Australia in 1788.....
....and it is fading and dying before our very eyes, while the Turnbull Coalition Government follows in the footsteps of the Abbott Coalition Government by turning its back on us and our concerns.
North Coast Environment Council, media
release, 7 May 2018:
… SCIENTISTS ARE
THE NEXT CASUALTIES …
Malcolm Turnbull's
Government has launched yet another offensive on the environment, with the
announcement it was sacking dozens of scientists.
“The rivers of cash that
the government has to splash around don't extend to environmental protection,”
said Susie Russell, North Coast Environment Council Vice-President.
“This will have a
significant impact on north coast forests. We have been relying on the Recovery
Planning process to guarantee some protection for nationally endangered
species. Only last month, NCEC was a signatory (with NEFA, the National Parks
Association and the South East Region Conservation Alliance) to a letter to
federal Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg. We pleaded for Canberra to take
its environmental responsibilities seriously. We pointed out that the NSW
Government was not abiding by Federal Recovery Plans for threatened species.
The Greater Glider is one of the species where a Recovery Plan is required,
but nothing gets produced.
Photo by Jasmine Zeleny.
Wednesday 9 May 2018
Lock The Gate back in court asking questions about "secretive deals" between NSW Coalition Government and Shenhua mining group
NSW Environmental Defender’s Office
(EDO):
Our client Lock the Gate
is seeking access to information held by the NSW Government about secretive
deals relating to the “buy-back” of the coal exploration licence
for Shenhua Watermark Coal Pty Limited’s (Shenhua) controversial Shenhua
Watermark Coal Mine in the Liverpool Plains in north central NSW, one of the
nation’s most productive agricultural regions.
Lock the Gate argues
that the public has a right to know about deals made behind closed doors in
relation to the exploration and development of the proposed Watermark coal
mine. Lock the Gate argues that accountability and transparency in this case
are essential given the significant predicted impacts of the Watermark mine on
the Liverpool Plains, the nation’s agricultural industry, local communities and
the environment.
On behalf of Lock the
Gate, we are asking the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal to decide that
the release of this information is in the public interest.
Farmland on the
Liverpool Plains. Photo: Lock the Gate Alliance.
Background
In July and September
2017, respectively, Lock the Gate made applications to the NSW Department of
Planning and Environment and the NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet for
information about Shenhua’s application to renew its exploration licence for
the Watermark mine. That information encompasses secretive dealings between
Shenhua and the NSW Government that resulted in the buy-back of around 51% of
the exploration licence, which covered the highly fertile “black soils” of the
Liverpool Plains, at the cost of $262 million to the public.
Whilst the NSW
Government claims that the buy-back was necessary to protect the black soils
from mining, and thereby the agricultural industry of the Liverpool Plains,
Lock the Gate contends that the buy-back will do nothing to lessen the expected
impacts of the mine. Furthermore, Lock the Gate argues that the buy-back was
completely unnecessary. The NSW Government could have used its powers under the
Mining Act to reduce the size of the exploration licence by 50% upon its renewal
without the payment of any compensation to Shenhua.The NSW Government could
also have cancelled the exploration licence outright given that Shenhua had
allegedly failed to comply with a condition of the licence that required
substantial development of the Watermark mine to have commenced by October
2016, eight years after the initial grant of the licence in 2008.
The information sought
by Lock the Gate includes Shenhua’s submissions on the licence renewal
application, its request for the abovementioned licence condition to be
suspended, Ministerial briefings and draft deeds of agreement about coal
exploration and mining titles. The NSW Government has withheld this information
on the basis that, amongst other things, it contains Cabinet information, was
provided in confidence, or that its release may be prejudicial to Shenhua’s
business interests – and therefore that there is an overriding public interest
against its disclosure.
On the contrary, Lock
the Gate argues that the overwhelming public interest in the release of the
information is clear.
Access to this
information will increase the accountability and transparency of the NSW
Government in relation to the exploration and development of coal in the
Liverpool Plains. This is particularly important in these circumstances where
the Government has done deals with a private, foreign-owned, coal mining
company behind closed doors and these have resulted in the expenditure of vast
amounts of public funds without clear justification.
Access to this information
is also vital for the public to have confidence in the decision-making
processes of the NSW Government in relation to dealings about coal mining and
exploration projects. This is essential where these dealings involve projects
that are likely to have significant economic, social and environmental impacts
and in which a number of stakeholders have expressed competing views.
The more
transparency around those deliberative processes, the more likely it is that
they will be of high quality and will serve the public interest.
The matter is listed for
hearing on 9 May 2018.
Brendan Dobbie,
solicitor for EDO NSW, has carriage of this matter for Lock the Gate and our
Principal Solicitor, Elaine Johnson, is the solicitor on record.
We are grateful to
barrister Scott Nash for his assistance in this matter.
Help defend the environment
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Sunday 6 May 2018
Problems with the Murray-Darling Basin plan just keep mounting and the NSW Northern Rivers needs to make sure these problems don't become ours
When it comes to the Murray-Darling Basin river systems there is never any really good news - we go from reports of town water shortages, pictures of permanently dry river beds and allegations of widespread water theft to the possibility of a fundamental legal
error in the master plan circa 2012.
The
Guardian, 2
May 2018:
One of Australia’s
foremost lawyers has issued an extraordinary warning that the Murray-Darling
basin plan is likely to be unlawful because the authority overseeing it made a
fundamental legal error when it set the original 2,750-gigalitre water recovery
target in 2012.
Bret Walker QC, who
chairs the South Australian royal
commission into the Murray-Darling basin plan, issued the warning
in a
second issues paper. He also spelled out the far-reaching implications of
the plan being unlawful.
Not only does it mean
that the original water recovery target of 2,750GL was likely to have been set
too low to deliver the environmental goal of the Water Act and
could be challenged in court, but it also means that amendments to the plan now
being debated by the Senate are likely to be invalid as well.
These include a
plan to trim 70GL from the northern basin water recovery targets and a suite
of projects, known as the sustainable
diversion limit adjustment projects, which would be funded in lieu of recovering
605GL in the southern basin.
Both are being strongly
criticised by scientists and environmentalists because they believe that they
further undercut the environmental outcomes of the plan.
The Murray-Darling
Basin Authority (MDBA) says it has relied on the best available
science in recommending the changes.
The new uncertainty over
the validity of the amendments will make it difficult for crossbenchers to
support them as the Coalition government has urged.
Walker has provided a
roadmap for environmental groups or an individual affected to challenge the
plan in court.
At the heart of his
advice is his view that the Water Act directs the MDBA to ensure environmental
outcomes are achieved when it set the environmentally sustainable level of take
(ESLT) from the river system. This is the flipside of setting the water
recovery target.
But instead of
considering the environmental outcomes only, the MDBA applied a triple bottom
line approach, giving equal weight to social and economic impacts of water
recovery.
“The MDBA also appears
to have approached the word ‘compromise’ in the definition of ESLT in a manner
involving compromise between environmental, social and economic outcomes rather
than in relation to the concept of ‘endangering’ or ‘putting in danger’
environmental criteria such as key environmental assets, and key ecosystem
functions,” the SA royal commission said.
“The commissioner is inclined to take the view
that this approach to the word ‘compromise’ in s4 of the Water Act is not
maintainable, or alternatively that he is presently unable to see how it is
maintainable,” the paper says.
“There is also evidence
that recovering an amount of water for the environment of 2,750GL does not, as
a matter of fact, represent an ESLT in accordance with the definition of that
term under the Water Act.”
Walker pointed to
numerous reports, including a 2011 CSIRO report which said modelling based on a
2,800GL recovery target “does not meet several of the specified hydrological
and ecological targets”.
There is also evidence
that the MDBA received legal advice on more than one occasion, consistent with
the commissioner’s concerns.
The issue of
water sustainability in the Murray-Darling Basin affects not just those living
in the basin and the economies of the four states this large river system runs
through – it also affects the bottom line of the national economy and those
east coast regions which will be pressured to dam and divert water to the Basin
if its rivers continue to collapse.
One such
region is the Northern Rivers of New South Wales and in particular the Clarence
River catchment area and the Clarence Valley Local Government Area.
Almost every
year for the past two decades there have been calls to dam and divert the
Clarence River – either north into south-east Queensland or west over the
ranges into the NSW section of the Murray Darling Basin.
The latest
call came last month on 18 April from Toowoomba Regional Council in south-east Queensland:
The response came on 24 April via NBN News and it was a firm NO:
NO TO CLARENCE WATER DIVERSION via @nbnnews https://t.co/w6DcTaIt4M— no_filter_Yamba (@no_filter_Yamba) May 1, 2018
However, because
communities in the Murray-Darling Basin have for generations refused to face
the fact that they are living beyond the limits of long-term water
sustainability and successive federal governments have mismanaged water policy
and policy implementation, such calls will continue.
These calls for water from other catchments to be piped into the Basin or into SE Queensland are not based on scientific evidence or sound economic principles.
They are based on an emotional response to fact that politicians and local communities looking at environmental degradation and water shortages on a daily basis are still afraid to admit that they no longer have the amount of river and groundwater needed to maintain their way of life and, are wanting some form of primitive magic to occur.
These calls for water from other catchments to be piped into the Basin or into SE Queensland are not based on scientific evidence or sound economic principles.
They are based on an emotional response to fact that politicians and local communities looking at environmental degradation and water shortages on a daily basis are still afraid to admit that they no longer have the amount of river and groundwater needed to maintain their way of life and, are wanting some form of primitive magic to occur.
The Clarence
River system is the most attractive first option for those would-be water
raiders, but experience has shown the Northern Rivers region that once a formal
investigation is announced all our major rivers on the NSW North Coast become
vulnerable as the terms of reference are wide.
The next National General Assembly of Local
Government (NGA) runs from 7-20
June 2018.
If Toowoombah
Regional Council’s motion is placed on the assembly agenda it is highly likely
that a number of councils in the Murray-Darling Basin will announce their support of the proposal.
Northern Rivers
communities need to watch this NGA closely.
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