Is NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian intending "to make it a priority to finish off effective protection of the natural environment – something started years ago under the Coalition State Government"?

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.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 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

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When local people power has a win

The rejection of a $25 million development at Byron Bay’s Ewingsdale Rd for a 282-lot subdivision was met with thunderous applause.

Villa World’s plan for a controversial development was unanimously rejected by members of the Northern Joint Regional Planning Panel at a meeting on Monday.

It was the second DA for the West Byron site to be refused by the panel, as a $40 million development put forward by West Byron Landowners Group was rejected earlier this year.

Numerous speakers pleaded with the NRPP on many grounds, including that they “did not want a Gold Coast” in Byron Bay.

The proposal was refused on 10 grounds including: adverse impacts to surrounding properties; a significant visual impact and undesirable impact on the street scape inconsistent with the northern entrance to Byron Bay; the development was likely to have had adverse impacts on threatened species and ecosystems; no adequate discharge of storm water and was not considered in the public’s interest.

Echo NetDaily, 9 April 2019:

No social or environmental license

Newly reelected MP Tamara Smith said this another great win for our community and people power. ‘The thousands of community submissions and actions highlighting the fundamental flaws in developing this land have successfully culminated in the NRPP rejecting both subdivision plans – against the odds,’ she said.

‘With the rejection of both the West Byron subdivision applications by the NRPP the developers should immediately approach the State government and request that they buy the land and restore it to the Cumbebin Swamp Reserve.

Ms Smith said there is no social or environmental license for a subdivision of the swamp land known as West Byron. ‘So why waste more money on legal battles when the community is utterly opposed.

‘Restitution is on offer for the landowners and they should jump at the chance to be made whole and walk away. They need only look to Condon Hill at Lennox to see decades of iconic land ownership that has never passed muster to see development on it. Get out now is my advice.

‘I strongly advise Byron Shire Council to shelve any idea of a reduced sub-division and instead respectfully ask them to help me actually deliver what the community wants – No West Byron Mega-development.”

Justifiable opposition

Former Byron Shire Mayor Jan Barham also spoke to the panel. She said she wanted to acknowledge the amazing efforts of the community in their justifiable opposition to the inappropriate proposals for the West Byron lands.

‘This development fails on every point,’ she said. ‘From the destruction of biodiversity and the threat to the local koala population and wallum froglet, the filling of a flood prone area, likely negative impact on the Belongil Creek and the Cape Byron Marine Park and further traffic chaos on Ewingsdale Road, that will not be alleviated by the bypass.

‘I’m confident these points have been raised in sufficient detail in the submissions to inform a refusal.’

Ms Barham summed up the general feeling on the day. ‘The refusal of Villa World by the Planning Panel alongside the previous West Byron refusal, justifies years of commitment by our community to protect and preserve our special place, with evidence, passion and genuine concern for the future,’ she said after the decision was announced.

‘It makes me feel so proud to be a member of an activist community who knows the value of standing up for what we believe in and thankfully, this time, the independence of the process delivered the right outcome.

‘Well done to everyone who took the time to be involved, no doubt there will be more challenges to come but the refusals vindicates us and our role as protectors.’

NSW Office of Environment and Heritage is being dissolved. More truthful version – the regions are being scr$wed over to allow Berejiklian Government’s mates a freer hand to develop coastal NSW to death

The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 April2019:

A government spokeswoman said the restructuring would enable the administration "to better serve the people of NSW".

"For the first time, we have a combined Energy and Environment portfolio and this new structure will ensure the government can take a holistic approach to this issue," she told the Herald. "The functions currently performed by OEH will continue.”

Among staff, though, the worry was that the oversight separately developed and funded for years would now be subsumed in the expanded Planning cluster, with job losses one consequence.

Rob Stokes, a former environment minister, returns as Planning Minister as part of the government's post-election reshuffle. Matt Kean will be the new Energy and Environment minister….

One senior staffer told the Herald OEH had often provided a dissenting view to Planning, such as when new housing projects in the Sydney Basin threatened the dwindling natural reserves. Remaining koala corridors, for instance, were among the habitats at risk.

Work that had previously been conducted by inhouse OEH experts was already being diverted to external consultants - a process staff worry will accelerate with the bureaucratic overhaul now under way.

"There has already been a strong shift away from the environment having its own voice already," the staffer said.

Penny Sharpe, acting Labor leader and environment spokeswoman, said NSW had now become the only state in Australia without an environment department.

"One of the first acts of the Premer - after talking a lot about the environment during the election - is to abolish the Office of Environment," Ms Sharpe said.

"This is a terrible outcome for the environment of NSW and it's a betrayal for [voters]," she said.  "We know it was a very important, top-order issue for many, many people."

The environmental problems facing the state include more than 1000 plant and animal species threatened with extinction, an 800 per cent increase in land-clearing during the past three years, and waterways "that are in crisis", Ms Sharpe said.

In which Clarence Valley Council fails to take due consideration of biodiversity & only pays lip service to potential cultural landscape when voting on an inadequately researched council master plan

Wooded area above the dirt road seen in the bottom right-hand corner of this snapshot was that section of land covered by the Clarence Valley Regional Airport Master Plan which figured prominately in councillors' debate.

When the regular monthly meeting of predominately white, middle-aged male, elected councillors in a NSW local government area again deliberately choose to have the meeting opened with a prayer* by yet another 'ordained' representative of one of the Protestant religious institutions named in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, it can only go downhill from there - and it did.

Predictably Cr. Williamson sought to close down debate at the earliest opportunity with regard to any alternative approach to planning issues surrounding adoption of a master plan on council-owned operational land.

Just as predictably Cr. Baker displayed a level of ignorance concerning everything from how far a 10 km radius surrounding airport land actually stretched (seems he believed it went as far as est. 25kms southeast to Wooli beach) through to the professional conduct of accredited ecologists and motives behind their reports ( a subject on which he sounded more than a little paranoid).

However, the incident that would have had regular council watchers sitting up in their seats occurred when the council general manager rather aggressively inserted himself into the debate uninvited and without permission, by directing a question to an elected councillor. 

Which immediately raised the question - has he caught a bad case of the dreaded Greensill-itis and if so can it be cured?

The Daily Examiner, 28 May 2019, p.1:

Clarence Valley Mayor Jim Simmons has apologised for a procedural error which led to a councillor walking out of the chamber during a heated debate.

At Tuesday’s Clarence Valley Council meeting Cr Greg Clancy accused the council of gagging debate on a proposed Master Plan for the Grafton Regional Airport, before departing from the chamber without seeking leave.

Cr Clancy had moved a motion calling for environmental reports and information about Aboriginal heritage in the area to be included in the plan, which sparked a fierce argument among the councillors.

After about an hour of questions and debate Cr Richie Williamson, moved the motion be put, but this sparked an outbreak of interjections.

“What, are we being gagged right down the line?” interjected Cr Peter Ellem.

Mayor Jim Simmons adjourned the meeting for 10 minutes to seek advice on the matter.

“When the meeting resumed Cr Clancy came in to gather some things and I did apologise to him at the time, but he didn’t stay.”

Cr Simmons said he didn’t think council would act on some strong language Cr Clancy used at the time.

“Greg is a very strong advocate for the environment and I can understand he was disappointed how things were going,” he said.

“I’m very disappointed how things panned out and other than some language about gagging debate, I can’t really recall what was said.”

Cr Simmons blamed himself for the mistaken ruling, which inflamed the situation.

“What I said didn’t help the situation and I take full responsibility for that,” he said.

He said the council code of meeting practice required councillors to seek permission to leave the chamber early, which Cr Clancy did not do, but he did not think councillors would seek to take this further.

“In my view it would have been better for Greg to stay in the chamber,” he said.

“Councillors voted against his motion, 5-3 I think from memory, so it was a close thing.”

Cr Simmons said the meeting did approve the plan on a motion from Cr Ellem, which called for involvement of the Ngerrie Local Aboriginal Land Council in any development planning for the site.

Clarence Valley Council posted the 26 March 2019 podcast of this meeting on its website where it will remain for twelve months and, at approx. 2hrs 4 mins into the podcast the debate of Item 15.031/19 can be heard - but don't expect to hear the entire debate.

Because it appears that at a vital moment in his response to being improperly gagged by the mayor Cr. Clancy did not have his microphone turned on.

I have been given to understand that one of his observations was words to the effect that democracy is dead in the Clarence Valley.

An observation that in my opinion is frequently applicable to both local and state governments.

* It should be noted that Cr. Clancy did not agree with a 2017 change to Clarence Valley Council's Code of Meeting Practice which formally established an opening prayer as well as a rota of ordained Protestant ministers praying over the elected councillors and members of the vistors' gallery at the start of each ordinary monthly meeting.

Knitting Nannas from across NSW took their protest to Sydney on International Women's Day

United to Protect Our Water

101 Knitting Nannas from around NSW converged on Parliament House in Sydney on International Women’s Day (March 8) to protest about water mismanagement and the lack of effective government action to protect river and groundwater health. The theme of the protest was “No Water no Life”.

The Nannas came from Loops (local Nanna groups) in the Northern Rivers, Grafton, Coonabarabran, Dubbo, Midcoast, New England-North West, Central Coast, Gloucester, Hunter Valley, Illawarra, and Sydney.

The Nannas have long been very concerned about unwanted water impacts around NSW – issues which have been raised with elected representatives over a number of years.

· These include impacts on urban water catchments from coal mines - the Wallarah 2 mine on the Central Coast and the Hume mine in the Southern Highlands as well as the long-wall mining in the Illawarra which leads to massive water loss into mines.

· The North West of the state is also impacted by coal mines which use vast amounts of water – Whitehaven’s Maules Creek mine and the proposed Vickery mine.

· Then there’s the threat to groundwater from Santos’ gasfield in the Pilliga State Forest. This project is slated to extract 35 billion litres of groundwater – most of it in the first five years.

· But the most dramatic impact is the most recent – the Darling fish kills - the result of years of mismanagement and favouring of irrigators over the health of the river system.

The Nannas assembled in Martin Place where they donned their specially made t-shirts bearing a picture of a Nanna declaring “The Water Needs You” (in the spirit of the Lord Kitchener First World War recruiting poster) and their yellow, red and black suffragette-style sashes emblazoned with “No Water No Life”. 

After a group photo under the big banner (“United to Protect Our Water”), the Nannas walked to Parliament House and ranged themselves along the fenceline.  There they used their sashes to tie on to the iron railing of the fence in the manner of the suffragettes.

The brightly-dressed Nannas with their banners and their singing and chanting attracted a great deal of attention from pedestrians and those driving along busy Macquarie Street. A highlight of the street performance was the powerful rendition by Nanna Purl Stockinstitch of her poem about the death of farmer George Bender who was hounded by a CSG company in Queensland.  The Nannas hoped that the pollies in our parliament heard and took note of the effect the unconventional gas industry has had - and continues to have - on the lives of communities in gasfields.

Various politicians met with the Nannas on the footpath and were presented with their “knagging list” - the Nannas’ demands for action.

While the theme of the protest focused on the major problems with rivers and water, the Nannas demands were much broader. They included a call for immediate climate action, transition to 100% renewables, a state-wide ban on gas extraction (including in the Pilliga), proper protection of Aboriginal sacred sites and revocation of the draconian anti-protest laws brought in by the current NSW Government. 

The Knitting Nannas Against Gas and Greed are hopeful that all of the state political parties will accept their calls for effective action on these important matters. It should be noted that the Nannas, who are very concerned about the protection of the land and water for future generations, are non-party political and have a policy of annoying all politicians equally – something we aim to continue doing!

            - Leonie Blain

               Grafton Loop of the Knitting Nannas Against Gas & Greed

Clarence Valley 2019: keeping the Clarence River Estuary healthy for future generations

“like other heavy fabricating sectors shipbuilding involves the use of materials and manufacturing practices that can impact on the environment, can contribute to climate change” [OECD Council Working Party on Shipbuilding (WP6), November 2010]

“Shipyards are dangerous construction zones with many worker hazards. Shipbuilding, repair, cleaning, and coating use toxic chemicals and hazardous or flammable materials. These activities also can pollute water directly or through runoff. Repairs may require emptying dirty water from a ship’s ballast and bilge tanks into the surrounding waters….. Shipbuilding and ship repair use toxic chemicals that include chromium, copper, lead, and nickel. Ship cleaning activities use chemicals that include copper, hazardous or flammable materials, heavy metals, and solvents. They release lead, particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, zinc, and other air pollutants.” [NIH U.S. National Library of Medicine, Boats & Ships, retrieved 18 February 2019]

If it wasn’t bad enough that barely two years ago Lower Clarence communities still had a flimflam man and then a set of dodgy companies (mentioned in a NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption investigation in 2018) trying to push for large scale industrialisation of Clarence River estuary – now Clarence Valley Council apparently attracted by the lure of vacant crown land up for grabs appears to be joining the push to industrialise-and-be-damned if these little gems in its “Clarence Valley Regional Economic Development Strategy 2018 -2022” are any indication.

These are excerpts from that document:

Clarence Valley’s key endowments lie in its coastal, riverine and hinterland amenity; arable soils and favourable climate; access to Sydney and Brisbane via the Pacific Highway; and the ability to bring new industrial land to market cost effectively…..

Industrial Land -The Clarence Valley has seven industrial estates open for business and far more potential development sites compared with neighbouring councils…..

Sustaining a ready supply of zoned and serviced industrial land is a strategic priority for supporting growth in these specialisations, with marine precinct proposals……

•Meet emerging industrial land use opportunities in a timely way •Develop a marine precinct proposal •Develop a project portfolio of enabling infrastructure for industrial sites, including the marine precinct proposal…..•Develop a Port of Yamba Strategy…….

Develop a marine precinct proposal

•Develop a project portfolio of enabling infrastructure for industrial sites, including the marine precinct proposal

•Build on the Transport Precinct Feasibility Final Report to develop road investment priorities

•Review and complete land use planning through collaboration with neighbouring councils

•Partner with local industries and training providers to align training courses to industry’s needs

•Advocate for a marine manufacturing SkillsPoint

•Identify and cost options for better Pacific Highway connections

•Advocate for progress on strategic priorities for the Port of Yamba and Summerland Way

•Develop a Port of Yamba Strategy

•Develop Yamba Road & Harwood Road business cases…..

The Clarence River estuary covers an 800 sq. kilometres floodplain and key environmental indicators for this estuary’s health include water quality, riverbank vegetation, the number and distribution of fish species, as well as the presence of macroinvertebrates and plankton.

The estuary is already beginning to struggle under the weight of human activity, including marine activity. A fact it would seem that Clarence Valley Council ignores in its development strategy.

It is a fact that estuary communities cannot afford to ignore if they wish to preserve the aesthetic, cultural, social and environmental amenity which supports both community life and the local economy.

In 2016-2017 a study of six NSW ports was undertaken and published in PLoS One and online in December 2017 as “Water quality assessment of Australian ports using water quality evaluation indices”.

With regard to the Port of Yamba in the lower Clarence estuary the study recommended regular monitoring and management of port activities accounting for both biological and chemical toxicological profiles of the discharging activities.

It did so for the following reasons:

* The Port of Yamba has standard levels of Dissolved Oxygen according to ANZECC guidelines. However. the amount of fecal coliforms was significantly higher in the water of the port area than the corresponding background samples, which clearly indicates the impact of the fishing fleet and recreational boating on the port environment.

* Very high concentrations of iron were found in the port water, the maximum concentration of lead in the water exceeded the ANZECC (0.0022) guidelines with all the background samples had much lower concentration of lead compared to the port area and, the maximum concentration of copper in the water was much higher than ANZECC guidelines and exceeded other international guidelines at (0.04 mg/l) in Port of Yamba.

* The mean concentration of copper also exceeded the ANZECC guidelines. When it came to zinc levels were low except in the port area which contained very high concentrations of zinc, which exceeded the guidelines. Concentration of cadmium and cobalt were within the ANZECC guidelines.

* Overall the Port of Yamba portrayed high contamination for all standard guidelines when it came to water quality – the port area has water quality of medium contamination and one site has high contamination.

Clarence Valley Council itself admits that the entire estuary is already under stress in its Report Card 2013:

“Water quality was poor in the estuary throughout the study, with the region around the tidal limit with consistently the worst water quality of the Clarence River 

reflecting the freshwater and tidal inputs at these sites. Estuary tributaries, particularly Swan and Sportsmans Creeks and the Coldstream River were in very

poor overall condition receiving a grade of F. These systems had consistently poor water quality that contributed nutrient rich, low oxygen and acid water

to the Clarence River following flooding.

Concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus consistently exceeded the guideline values throughout the study at all sites. Very high nitrogen concentrations were

recorded in estuarine reaches following flooding. There were no algal blooms recorded during the study. However, algal concentrations were consistently

above the guideline value in estuarine reaches.

The Broadwater and Wooloweyah coastal lagoons both had very poor water quality, with high algal and nutrient concentrations and turbidity, and low dissolved oxygen values consistently exceeding a number of water quality guidelines. The Broadwater had better riparian condition relative to Wooloweyah that improved its overall grade.

Riparian condition was generally low from a poor diversity of native vegetation, reduced vegetation structure and small isolated pockets that were poorly connected to other native vegetation. Reaches showed evidence of eroding river banks and sediment deposited in the channel. Estuarine reaches were often dominated by riverbanks with little or no vegetation present, leading to very poor condition grades.”

The tidal water exchange will not protect the lower estuary from a spreading loss of water quality and increased levels of pollution once industry begins to expand along its foreshores and clusters of marine businesses such as shipbuilding and repair are further developed. 

There will be a tipping point that once reached will be hard, perhaps even impossible, to reverse.

This is something that Lower Clarence communities need to consider before council goes too far down this path which leads away from a healthy estuary for future generations.

Loggers still breaching their environmental obligations in Northern NSW state forests

North East Forest Alliance, media release, 1 February 2019:

EPA ENCOURAGES ILLEGAL LOGGING BY REPEATEDLY LETTING FORESTRY OFF

The North East Forest Alliance is claiming there is no justice for forests after the EPA on Wednesday confirmed numerous breaches of the Forestry Corporation's Threatened Species Licence in Gibberagee State Forest (east of Whiporie) but yet again issued useless cautions and warnings rather than fines and prosecutions for these serial offenders.

"Over the past decade NEFA have exposed the Forestry Corporation committing thousands of legal breaches of their environmental obligations, with the EPA confirming hundreds more breaches in the last few months from NEFA's audits of Gibberagee and Sugarloaf State Forest", said NEFA Spokesperson Dailan Pugh.

"Yet the EPA have never taken the Forest Corporation to court, despite commitments to do so, and in January 2016 they made the political decision not to issue fines.

"With no consequences for their blatant breaches of environmental laws, is it surprising that the Forestry Corporation repeat them time and time again?

"If you or I went around illegally cutting down oldgrowth trees (hundreds of year old), clearing rainforest, and bulldozing roads through exclusions around threatened plants time and time again we would be put in jail, but the Forestry Corporation don't even get a fine.

"The EPA's regulation of the Forestry Corporation is farcical, though the biggest problem is that by their refusal to take meaningful regulatory action the EPA are fostering what Justice Pepper described in 2011 as "a reckless attitude towards compliance with its environmental obligations" Mr. Pugh said.

"On Wednesday, in response to a NEFA complaint made 2 years ago the EPA confirmed that the Forestry Corporation failed to adequately mark the boundaries of 50m logging exclusion zones around numerous individuals of Endangered heath Narrow-leaved Melichrus, and undertook logging operations and roading within their exclusion zones.

"The EPA also confirmed NEFA's complaints of reckless damage to hollow-bearing trees and recruitment trees, while also confirming that the Forestry Corporation was not following the requirements for selection of appropriate recruitment trees.

"Though we can't be sure the EPA found all the breaches we identified because the EPA won't tell us how many they found, and when the EPA invited us into Gibberagee to be show them in March 2017, the Forestry Corporation wouldn't let us show the EPA and ordered us out of the forest.

"When NEFA made its first complaint over Gibberagee in March 2017 we hoped the EPA would take action to stop the breaches, yet when NEFA did another assessment 7 months later we found the same sort of breaches were continuing unabated. We are still waiting for the EPA to respond to the last complaints.

"In October last year the EPA confirmed over 86 breaches of the logging rules identified by the North East Forest Alliance in Sugarloaf State Forest, south of Tabulam, at that time the EPA issued the Forestry Corporation with a Warning Letter for 72 and an Official Caution for 1 offence.

"The confirmed breaches included roading through a wildlife corridor, nine cases of roading in exclusion areas along streams, failure to retain the required numbers of habitat trees, and over 70 cases of serious damage to, and inappropriate selection of, marked habitat trees.

"While failure to retain the required number of habitat trees is called one offence, in practice the EPA found that they had retained 200 less hollow-bearing trees than were legally required.

"There were numerous other breaches that the Forestry got off scot free for, for example the EPA confirmed clearing within the marked boundary of the Endangered Ecological Community Lowland Rainforest but refused to take action on the grounds that because the "forest structure and species present at this location have either been totally removed or severely altered/damaged" it precluded identifying what it had been like before logging.

"The EPA chose to ignore that they and the Forestry Corporation had jointly mapped it as Lowland Rainforest some 6 months before it had been logged and cleared.

"These offences are a repeat of similar offences we reported a year earlier in the nearby Cherry Tree State Forest. Despite the EPA's assurances they were going to take legal action there for logging and roading 4.5ha of mapped Lowland Rainforest and recklessly damaging hundreds of habitat trees, they let the Forestry Corporation off scot-free.

"NEFA estimated in that operation around 1,000 habitat trees were likely to have been damaged or had excessive debris left around their bases, though the EPA justified their refusal to take any regulatory action on the grounds that while it was "likely" the damages "were as a result of harvesting operations", they were not able to prove "beyond reasonable doubt ... that the damage was [not] caused by some other means".

"There is no justice. The EPA's sham regulation is encouraging the Forestry Corporation to repeatedly break logging laws with impunity" Mr. Pugh said.

Hard right ideology has so blinded the Morrison & Berejiklian Coalition Governments that water sustainability is at risk in yet another part of New South Wales in 2019

This particular coal mining project below has a long history and each step of the way Liberal and National politicians at state and federal level have supported the interests of foreign-owned mining corporations over those of local communities and ignored the need for intergenerational equity.

The O'Farrell & Baird Coalition Governments went to bat for the coal mining industry in New South Wales in 2014 after Wyong Coal Pty Ltd neglected to gain consent from a landowner, the Darkinjung traditional owners:

Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council v  Wyong Coal  Pty Ltd [2014] NSWLEC 3, 4 April 2014:

Wyong Coal  are not, however, the owners of the land the subject of the DA. Rather, the DA partially covers land owned by the applicant, the Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council ("Darkinjung"). Moreover, the DA partially covers land over which a land rights claim has been made by Darkinjung under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983…..

The proposed development is State Significant Development under Section 89C of the Environmental Planning & Assessment Act 1979 (EP&A Act) as it is 'development for the purposes of coal mining', as specified in the State Environmental Planning Policy (State and Regional Development) 2011. The Minister for Planning and Infrastructure is the consent authority for the project. However, the Planning Assessment Commission (PAC) will determine the application under delegation. In addition to approval under NSW legislation, the project is also a controlled action requiring assessment and approval under the Commonwealth's Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. The Commonwealth will undertake a separate assessment and determination under its legislation.

The Berejilian Coalition Government in 2018 carried the flag for an amended Wyong Coal development application which bypassed the need for Darkinjung LALC consent:

Environmental Defender’s Office NSW, November 2018:

Wyong Coal Pty Ltd, which trades as Wyong Areas Joint Coal Venture, and Kores Australia Pty Limited, are co respondents. KORES Australia Pty Ltd, a fully-owned subsidiary of Korea Resource Corporation, is the majority shareholder of Wyong Coal Pty Ltd.

The case is being fought on four main grounds: climate change, flooding impacts, compensatory water and risks to water supply for farmers in the region.

Wallarah 2 involves construction and operation of an underground coal mine over the next 28 years, until 2046. It would extract five million tonnes of thermal coal a year. The total greenhouse gas emissions over the life of the mine will be 264+ million tonnes of CO2.

In approving the Project, the PAC chose not to take into account emissions which come from the burning of coal mined at Wallarah 2. Our client argues that the law wasn’t followed with respect to climate change impacts. The key ground with respect to greenhouse gas emissions is that the PAC failed to consider an assessment of downstream emissions from the project. Under the EP&A Act, the PAC was required to consider the public interest. ACA argues that in 2018, considering the public interest for projects such as coal mines mandates the consideration of principles of ecologically sustainable development, particularly intergenerational equity and the precautionary principle.

In addition, our client argues that the PAC unlawfully failed to consider the risks of the flood impacts and the potential loss of water occasioned by the mining project.  

The Project, located within the Central Coast water catchment, would have significant impacts on the Central Coast water supply and residents in the surrounding areas. 

It would permanently alter the landscape, causing flooding events that will only increase over time as the impacts of climate change are realised. The PAC approval proposes dealing with these devastating flooding events by first requiring the mine to try mitigation measures like putting people’s houses on stilts, relocating homes or building levees. If those measures don’t work, then the mine would be required to pay the owners of the properties for the harm. Our client says this simply is not a lawful way to mitigate harm from flooding. There is no evidence that the mitigation measures will work or that compensation is an effective way to remedy harm caused by flooding.

The mine is also likely to impact upon the Central Coast water supply and access to water for farmers in the surrounding region.  The mine proposes to construct a pipeline to deliver compensatory water to the Central Coast Council and provide emergency and long-term compensatory water supplies to farmers if they lose access to water on their properties. If compensatory water cannot be provided, the mine can agree to buy those farmers out. The approval does not cover how the pipeline and the compensatory water is to be provided. ACA argues that the mitigation measures proposed by the PAC in the conditions of approval are not lawful, primarily because they go beyond the power of the PAC to deal with environmental impacts of the Project.

The Morrison Coalition Government by the hand of Minister for the Environment, Liberal MP for Durack and former mining industry lawyer Melissa Price, gave the stamp of approval on 18 January 2018:

This is the second time in the space of days NSW residents have learned that Liberal-Nationals politicians have allowed a new coal mine to progress towards operational capability in New South Wales.

Both of these new coal mines Shenhua Watermark and Wallarah 2 represent threats to regional water security.