MEMO TO CURRENT & FUTURE AUSTRALIAN & NSW GOVERNMENTS: The Clarence Valley Was Declared A Nuclear-Free Zone On 23 May 2023

 

It was brief, to the point and supported by Clarence Valley Council’s Climate Change Advisory Committee and Council in the Chamber.

Ordinary Monthly Meeting of Clarence Valley Council held on 23 May 2023, Minutes, p.16:

ITEM 07.23.070 NUCLEAR FREE ZONE

SUMMARY

This report forwards a recommendation of the Clarence Valley Climate Change Advisory Committee

requesting that Council consider declaring the Clarence Valley a nuclear free zone.

OFFICER RECOMMENDATION

That Council support the Climate Change Advisory Committee recommendation and declare the Clarence

Valley local government area as a nuclear free zone.

COUNCIL RESOLUTION - 07.23.070

Pickering/Clancy

That Council support the Climate Change Advisory Committee recommendation and declare the

Clarence Valley local government area as a nuclear free zone.

Voting recorded as follows

For: Clancy, Day, Pickering, Smith, Tiley

Against: Johnstone, Novak, Toms, Whaites

CARRIED

NOTE:

Heartfelt thanks to members of the Climate Change Advisory Committee for mirroring the aesthetic, social, cultural, environmental and economic values of our Valley communities and, for the work put in to achieve this outcome: Cr Greg Clancy (Chair), Judith McNeill, Leonie Blain, Helen Granleese, Stephen Fletcher, Nicholas Reeve, Phillip Hocking, Janet Cavanagh, Geoff Little, Robert Mylchreest, Clair Purvis, Ian Gaillard, Lynette Eggins, Richard Roper (CVC Staff), Ken Wilson (CVC Staff), Scott Lenton (CVC Staff), Ben Ellis (CVC Staff), Suzanne Lynch (CVC Staff), Adam Cameron (Director CVC).

COVID-19 regional lockdown has been removed from the seven local government areas in northeast NSW but lessons learnt need to be included in planning for any future lockdowns

Echo NetDaily, 14 September 2020:

Around 8,000 free meals were given to a dramatically increased number of people needing them in Ballina over the lockdown period starting 9 August.

Organisers at the Rotary branch in Ballina, as well as volunteers for the Ballina Hot Meals service at Ballina’s Masonic Lodge and workers at the Cherry Street Sports Club have all described a rapid spike in people needing help to get by when work and revenue stopped for many in response to the lockdown.

Greens Member for Ballina Tamara Smith raised the alarm early in the lockdown on Bay FM after receiving a letter from the Rotary Club referring to single parents struggling to feed their families, women sleeping in their cars and elderly people needing help.

Many people reportedly lost work in Ballina when retail and hospitality outlets were forced to close or significantly reduce their productivity.

Ballina Hot Meals was offered twice per week, was overwhelmed with demand and in need of extra volunteers.

Ban on church gatherings impacts local homeless service

Ballina Hot Meals has served dinner to the homeless and others in need for more than twenty years but was threatened shortly after the pandemic declaration last year.

A local church had funded the service through money collected during services but ran out of money when in-person events were outlawed under public health orders.

A desperate call for help was issued and that’s where the Cherry Street Sports Club [CSSC] entered the scene.....

Mr Sheehan said the CSSC board last year ‘graciously committed to $25,000 per year for three years’ to get Ballina Hot Meals ‘back up and running and fully funded’.

More recently, Mr Sheehan said the board ‘graciously approved’ to pay club staff through this lockdown.

‘So we ramped up the kitchen again, and started preparing meals,’ he said.

Speaking last week, Mr Sheehan said club workers were ‘just about to hit the 6,000 meal mark’ since the ninth of August, and volunteers still serving dinner twice per week had given away around 2,000, with the food all funded by the club and in-kind donations.

‘So it’s definitely been needed, that’s for sure,’ Mr Sheehan said…..

Read the full story here.

State Member for Lismore Janelle Saffin is encouraging Northern Rivers and Northern Tablelands residents to nominate local champions for the 2021 Community Achievement Awards for Regional NSW and the ACT

 

Office of NSW Labor MLA for Lismore Janelle Saffin, media release,

10 Jun 2021:

Bring out your best Northern Rivers, Northern Tablelands!

STATE Member for Lismore Janelle Saffin is encouraging Northern Rivers and Northern Tablelands residents to nominate local champions for the 2021 Community Achievement Awards for Regional NSW and the ACT.

“Everyone knows of someone who really puts in for their local community but for whatever reason may not have received the public attention or accolades for their volunteer service,” Ms Saffin said.

“This year’s Community Achievement Awards are a chance to recognise, celebrate and thank our unsung heroes as we have faced off challenges such as drought, bushfires, floods and the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Nominations can be made in the following categories:

• Department of Planning, Industry and Environment Individual Excellence in Crown Land Management Award

• Department of Planning, Industry and Environment Crown Land Manager Excellence Award

• Ricoh Australia Customer Service Award

• TransGrid Leadership Award

• Awards Australia Connecting Communities Award

There are prizes for each of the category winners, who will also be presented on stage with a trophy. Every nomination receives a certificate of achievement.

To submit a nomination, simply go online to https://awardsaustralia.com/community-achievement-awards/nsw and select ‘Nominate Now’. Alternatively, make the process that much easier by calling us on 1300 735 445 and passing on their details.

Nominations close Wednesday 11 August, 2021. For assistance, call the Awards Office on 1300 735 445 or email nswactraca@awardsaustralia.com.

"I despair when I see that the new campaign to push the Dunoon Dam shows no interest in values that we all claim to hold dear...."

 

Channon Gorge again under threat by the Dunoon Dam proposal?
IMAGE: David Lowe in Echo NetDaily, 17 December 2020

Echo NetDaily, Letter to the Editor, 5 May 2021.

Nan Nicholson, The Channon

I have been an environmental activist for over 50 years (I started when I was a 15 y/o schoolgirl in Melbourne). Some would call me ‘driven’.

Starting with Terania Creek, I have been involved in many campaigns to defend our rainforests, our old growth forests, and our beautiful rural landscapes from gas mining. Now I am fighting for the life of a rainforest that would be destroyed by a dam.

In all these cases I have been propelled by a powerful love of place, and of natural beauty. I think most Australians are familiar with this feeling, wherever they live. The first Australians certainly knew about it, with depths of connection that the rest of us can probably never understand. When the land is your religion, your history, your food source, your home, your responsibility, your future and your reason for being alive – then its preciousness can’t be described.

These two issues of heritage, natural and human, are central to the Dunoon dam debate. Heritage is something that is given to pass on intact, not to destroy in wilful ignorance.

So much of our heritage has been damaged in our region. Most of our original landscape has been transformed, and only a few original, or semi-original, remnants are left to tell us of what we have lost. Our Aboriginal heritage, now the heritage of all Australians, has been whittled away, over and over, while the traditional custodians are repeatedly ‘consulted’ then comprehensively ignored. How insulting is the Welcome to Country ritual when there is not a shred of willingness to act on their stated wishes?

I despair when I see that the new campaign to push the Dunoon Dam shows no interest in values that we all claim to hold dear – our love for our remarkable natural landscapes, forests, ecosystems and species that are found nowhere else on Earth, and our supposed respect for our First Nations peoples.

The natural places of our region have been maintained and preserved for thousands of years by people whose desire to protect them is now swept aside by uninformed claims that ‘the studies are incomplete’.

Detailed ecological and heritage assessments have already established why the Dunoon Dam site is extremely important, both to scientists and to our first people. Surely we can, just once, let the natural environment, and the people who have loved it the longest, prevail.

We know that extremes of drought are coming. Knowledge about droughts from the past can no longer be relied on. One big flood can fill the dam quickly, for sure, but five years of drought and low runoff would give us 253 ha of bare dirt with not a trace of the natural beauty and the millennia of human history that it destroyed with so little need.