On Thursday 4 April 2019 the local Knitting Nannas held a protest knit-in outside the electoral office of NSW Nationals MP for Clarence, Chris Gulaptis.
Below is the text of their letter to Mr. Gulaptis dated the same day.
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Knitting Nannas Against
Gas
Grafton Loop
c/- PO Box 763
Grafton 2460
knaggrafton@gmail.com
4th April 2019
C O P Y
Mr C Gulaptis MP
Member for Clarence
11 Prince Street
GRAFTON NSW 2460
Dear Mr Gulaptis
Dissolving of Office of Environment and
Heritage
The Grafton Nannas are very concerned about
your Government’s recently announced intention of doing away with the Office of
Environment and Heritage as an independent entity.
We have long been worried about the
Government’s lack of concern about protecting the natural environment for
current and future generations of humans as well as for other life forms.
Government policies over recent years have
been seen by many in our community and elsewhere as being a de facto war on the
natural environment.
For example:
- Changes to vegetation laws which
have led to a large increase in clearing of habitat which is important to the
survival of native flora and fauna. This
weakening of the former laws is also likely to lead to increased topsoil loss
and general land degradation.
- Changes to logging regulations
which threaten the sustainability of native forests which belong to the people
of NSW – and not to logging interests. These changes include limiting
pre-logging fauna surveys, an inevitable increase in clear-felling, and
reduction in the width of buffer zones along streams.
- Failure to protect the health of
rivers, particularly those in the Murray-Darling Basin. For years the NSW Government, as well as the
Federal Government, has been pandering to the irrigation industry while
ignoring the need to protect river health by ensuring that flows are adequate
for river health. The drought is not an
excuse for this folly.
- Other examples include the cutting
of funding to the National Parks & Wildlife Service and penny-pinching
changes to its structure as well as the failure to ensure that the existing
weak environment laws are enforced and appropriate penalties imposed on those
who breach them.
We are aware that the Premier recently stated that her Government
would make the environment a priority.
Since hearing that OEH was to lose any of
the limited independence it currently has and is to be pushed into a
mega-Planning Department, we are left wondering about what the premier actually
meant about “priority”. Did she mean
that she intended to make it a priority to finish off effective protection of
the natural environment – something started years ago under the Coalition State
Government? It looks very much like that
to the Nannas.
Yours sincerely
Leonie Blain
On behalf of the Grafton
Nannas
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