The Rabbits Eat Lettuce rave saga continues

The Daily Examiner 16 January 2015:

Organisers of the Rabbits Eat Lettuce rave have accused Coffs Harbour City Council of wasting ratepayers' money to stop a pre-festival launch party that was never going to happen.

The council went to the NSW Land and Environment Court for an injunction to stop this weekend's 24-hour electronic dance music event going ahead at 500 Fridays Creek Rd in Upper Orara.

However, the festival's organisers issued a statement saying that location was never on the cards.

"The event on the weekend has never been advertised as being in Coffs Harbour Shire," it stated.

"The event on the weekend is our launch party for our festival (on the Easter long weekend).

"We notified the lawyers representing Coffs Harbour Shire that the event is not taking place at the Friday Creek venue in Coffs Harbour Shire, however they did not listen and wasted ratepayer money to file an injunction at the Land and Environment Court." 

Background

Rabbits Eat Lettuce won’t be dancing at Upper Orara this weekend

UPDATES

2:11pm 17 January

It would appear that the situation is hotting up Ebor way:

5.30 pm

Everyone trekking back home after NSW Police close the rave.

UPDATE

Echo Netdaily  21 January 2015:

A police raid that closed down a weekend dance party on private land near Coffs Harbour was an over-reaction according to organisers.

The event, at Ebor, was closed down in its early stages on Saturday afternoon when just over 150 people had arrived and were in the process of setting up camp.

It was organised by Rabbits Eat Lettuce and was intended as a launch event for a much larger Easter party in the Richmond Valley.

The Rabbits Eat Lettuce (REL) electronic dance music parties have been running for around six years and are attended by up to 1500 people. Last year’s event ran without incident near Casino.

Police said they were called to the party because, NSW Forestry, which owns land on the Styx River adjoining the event site, expressed concerns there were illegal campsites, cars and portaloos in the forest.

Coffs Harbour Shire Council had attempted to have the party stopped by the Land and Environment Court on Friday afternoon but organisers told them they had the wrong site.

Police said they attempted to speak with the event organisers at the site but were ‘denied entry and shown a handwritten note allegedly granting permission to hold the event from the land owner’.

‘As police and forestry rangers began to clear the forestry land, organisers of the party moved all persons there onto the adjacent private property, telling partygoers that police could not stop them from holding the event,’ a police media spokesperson said.

But police say they managed to persuade the landowner to revoke permission for the event and then went about disbanding it.

‘About 5.30pm, police issued demands to the organisers and patrons to shut down the party. When this did not occur, police cut open locked gates to gain entry and shut down the event without further incident,’ the spokesperson added.

‘Senior police also authorised the use of a roadblock to turn around a large number of people attempting to attend the event.’

Just one person was charged over the raid, for trespass. There were no drug arrests....

Kids & Adults Creative Workshops at Grafton Regional Gallery 22-23 January 2015

So what changes so drastically between the child and the man?

http://youtu.be/b2OcKQ_mbiQ

Last year ABC News reported that in Australia domestic violence is the leading cause of death and injury in women under 45, with more than one woman murdered by her current or former partner every week. There are young victims too, with more than one million children affected by domestic violence. Accounting for 40 per cent of police time, the cost to the economy is $13.6 billion per year.

It further reported that there were at least 1,625 domestic violence related incidents on the NSW North Coast in 2013.

So what changes so dramatically between the attitude of male children to domestic violence and the attitude of so many adult men?

Twitter user flipping through a newspaper

Yeah, I know Yeah, I know Yeah, I know Yeah, I know Yeah, I know…..

(found on Twitter and apologies to the tweeter for not crediting - I've lost your handle)

Telstra/Big Pond at its "very best"

Readers, before proceeding to read  what follows ensure a stiff drink is readily available. If coffee is the preferred beverage, ensure its super duper strength.

At the table of knowledge at the local watering hole this afternoon Jacko, one of the regulars, delivered the report that follows.

During the report some of Jacko's mates had to be given assistance to get up off the tiles at the watering hole. A visiting medico who was on site said they were in a state of shock and recommended a couple of the lads should, as a matter of urgency, obtain counselling to assist them in their recovery.

"As a long term Telstra/Bigpond customer (30 years+) in the Clarence valley I had no/nil/zilch ADSL service from the provider this week and, on occasions, no telephone access. When T/BP finally restored the services I contacted the telco's billing department with the view to having my bill adjusted to reflect my week's "experience".

A T/BP consultant, obviously one with a first class honors degree in pure AND applied mathematics, used a magnifying glass and, it would seem a multitude of other devices, to examine my account and concluded I had been "inconvenienced" by four, maybe five days. Consequently, I was told my account would be credited on a pro rata basis for four days.

"Hold on", I said, "things out here in the real wide world are not based on such thinking."

The T/BP consultant, obviously a quick thinker, said, "OK, I see where you're coming from. We'll give you seven days' credit."

I replied, "HEY, YOU STILL DON'T GET IT!"

"What do you mean?" was the consultant's response.

After an extensive period of explaining logic 101 to the consultant an auction-like procedure was adopted.

Finally, the consultant said I should be compensated for T/BP's stuff-up and given a 50% discount on my monthly T/BP bill.

You'd swear Telstra's bottom line was going to drop so much its share price was destined to go down the gurgler on the basis of this single event!

Rabbits Eat Lettuce won't be dancing at Upper Orara this weekend

Rabbits Eat Lettuce 2014 from SADOWSKI on Vimeo.

A Rabbits Eat Lettuce dance party in 2014

Coffs Harbour City Council v Rabbits Eat Lettuce Pty Ltd [2015] NSWLEC 2, 14 January 2015:

EXTEMPORE JUDGMENT

1. Council seeks an interlocutory injunction to restrain a “dance party” it expects the respondents to hold on Saturday/Sunday 17 – 18 January at 500 Fridays Creek Rd, Upper Orara, or at some other probably remote location within Council’s area.
2. It would be a 24 hour event occupying its site from 12 noon Saturday to 6pm Sunday, and is intended to serve as a “taster” for a three day event over Easter.
3. On Council’s application to me as Duty Judge, at around 3pm yesterday (Tuesday), I agreed to hear the injunction application at 11am today (Wednesday).
4. The respondents are known to Council and to the local police, from their earlier dance party ventures, which generated many problems and complaints, and there have been negotiations over time, which have yielded a range of contact details, but have resulted in no undertakings being given by the respondents.
5. I am satisfied that the dance party promoters, the 1st and 2nd respondents, know of today’s hearing, and that the 3rd respondent, who owns the subject site, but is apparently in hospital, is at least on notice of the application being made to me prior to the scheduled event.
6. As no respondents have chosen to appear or be represented today, I granted leave to Council to proceed ex parte.
7. It is in the interests of all interested persons, including up to 2,000 intended participants, that this decision be given immediately.
8. It is clear on the cases – e.g. Baulkham Hills Shire Council v Horseworld Australia Pty Ltd, BC9707595, (Land and Environment Court (NSW), Lloyd J, 27 June 1997, unrep), Byron Shire Council v The Rising Damp Corporation Pty Ltd [2001] NSWLEC 260, and an earlier decision involving the 2nd respondent, Bellingen Shire Council v Lamir-Pike [2010] NSWLEC 195 – that dance parties of this type are “development” within the meaning of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (“EPA Act”).
9. Also, the Coffs Harbour planning documents, especially the Local Environmental Plans of 2000 and 2013, require a Development Consent or a “temporary use” approval to be in place.
10. It is also clear to the Court that the respondents know of these legalities – indeed one has admitted the absence of compliance – and that no relevant approval is in place.
11. These matters establish that there are serious issues to be tried in the substantive proceedings, and that is a vital consideration on the question of granting interlocutory relief.
12. It is in the public interest to restrain development which is in breach of the EPA Act, but, in addition, all the evidence suggests that the proposed event poses serious threats to public safety and the environment generally. There is also evidence that some aspects of the suggested venue represent breaches of the planning regime in the area, and may themselves pose a safety threat.
13. The relevant principles for the granting of ex parte interlocutory relief are well established – see Beecham Group Ltd v Bristol Laboratories Pty Ltd [1968] HCA 1;118 CLR 618, American Cyanamid Co v Ethicon Ltd [1975] AC 396; [1975] 1 All ER 504,Castlemaine Tooheys Ltd v South Australia [1986] HCA 58; 161 CLR 148, Silktone Pty Ltd v Devreal Capital Pty Ltd (1990) 21 NSWLR 317, Tegra (NSW) Pty Ltd v Gundagai Shire Council [2007] NSWLEC 806; 160 LGERA 1, Shoalhaven City Council v Bridgewater Investments Pty Ltd [2010] NSWLEC 103, Save Our Figs Inc v General Manager Newcastle City Council [2011] NSWLEC 207;186 LGERA 127, and Hume Coal Pty Ltd v Alexander [2012] NSWLEC 267.
14. They have been previously applied to dance party situations, such as occurred in Bellingen Shire Council v Lamir-Pike [2010] NSWLEC 195, and in the other cases to which Council refers in paragraph 20 of its submissions.
15. Some of those particular cases were brought immediately before, or shortly after, the event commenced, but in this case I am satisfied that no exercise of discretion in favour of the event is justified on the grounds of any alleged delay on Council’s part. In this case, the orders I intend to make will or should be served at least 48 hours prior to the advertised starting time of the event.
16. Those orders were articulated in the summons and amended summons, but had been clearly foreshadowed in warning correspondence sent to the respondents by hand, by email, by post of various types, by facsimile, and lately via Facebook.
17. Apart from the large number of likely patrons, huge vehicular traffic is expected (Exhibit C1, tab 1, p20). The relevant senior Council officer, Mr Oliver, deposes to the constraints of the site – flood risk, threat to water quality and koala habitat, fire risk, poor emergency and other access and evacuation arrangements, and likely neighbour impacts.
18. Those concerns are echoed by the two police witnesses (Inspector Jameson and Sergeant Roach), and the Court notes that Council had put the respondents on formal notice of its safety concerns in a letter dated 11 April 2014.
19. The balance of convenience clearly lies in favour of granting Council the relief it seeks.
20. I am satisfied, apart from lack of consent, that inadequate attention will be paid to the State Government’s “Dance Party Guidelines 1998” or Sgt Roach’s “Standard Operation Procedures Manual 2008”.
21. In all the circumstances, especially those regarding time, I accept Council’s submission that, because of public interest considerations, I should apply Rule 4.2(3) of this Court’s Rules, and not require Council to give an undertaking as to damages.
22. I make the following orders:

1.    Pending the final determination of this application or until further order of the Court:

a)    The First and Second Respondents by themselves, their servants, agents or assigns be restrained from the carrying out of a dance party event known as the 'Rabbits Eat Lettuce Launch Party' on 17 and 18 January 2015 as advertised on the website www.rabbitseatlettuce.com.au and the social media site Rabbits Eat Lettuce Facebook Page at premises known as 500 Fridays Creek Road, Upper Orara or on land within the local government area of Coffs Harbour City Council, without the prior development consent of Coffs Harbour City Council.

b)    The Third Respondent by himself, his servants, agents or assigns be restrained from carrying out or permitting, causing or suffering the carrying out of a dance party event known as the 'Rabbits Eat Lettuce Launch Party' on 17 and 18 January 2015 as advertised on the website www.rabbitseatlettuce.com.au and the social media site Rabbits Eat Lettuce Facebook Page at premises known as 500 Fridays Creek Road, Upper Orara, or on land within the local government area of Coffs Harbour City Council without the prior development consent of Coffs Harbour City Council.

2.    The Applicant to have leave to serve the First and Second Respondents by:

a)    delivery of a sealed copy of these orders to premises known as 4 Braithwaite Ave, Bellingen by 1pm Thursday 15 January;

b)    serving the First Respondent by its known email address info@rabbitseatlettuce.com.au by 6:00pm on Wednesday 14 January 2015; and

c)    serving the Second Respondent via his known email address info@rabbitseatlettuce.com.au by 6:00pm on Wednesday 14 January 2015.

3.    The Applicant has leave to serve the Third Respondent by delivery of a sealed copy of these orders to premises known as 500 Fridays Creek Road, Upper Orara.

4.    Direct that the Applicant cause notice of these orders to be posted at a prominent location at the entrance to any property notified as a site for the proposed dance party event.

5.    The Respondents jointly and severally are to pay the Applicant's costs of these proceedings to date.

6.    The parties to have liberty to apply to the Duty Judge on short notice.

7.    The substantive proceedings are stood over to the first Friday List for 2015, Friday 6 February 2015.

Lifting the veil on Yes2Gas

This advertisement has been in the news in 2015:

If examined closely, readers can see that it is authorised by Louise Tout, Narrabri.

There is little information about Ms.Tout on the Internet, other than she is the spokesperson for Yes2Gas.

However, there is one short ABC radio interview with her on 2 December 2014.

In this interview Ms. Tout claims that the Yes2Gas group is one hundred percent local, one hundred percent independent. She also admits to talking to Santos all the time and that the ‘group’ doesn’t have an identifiable membership.

Ms. Tout stated in the radio interview that a few local businesses fund the group. A suspicion that these few may be Santos contractors raises its head.

Despite the lack of members,Yes2Gas does have a Facebook page (which has a subversive clone run by another person/group) and a website.

Website details:

The website was created on 29 September 2014, the registrant is listed as Kate Campbell (a Narrabri-based freelance photographer who is also the tech contact for this website), but its physical address is in the Sydney metropolitan area at 11 Colgate Street, Balmain NSW 2041:

There is a second registered website titled Yes2Gas - a parked site yes2gas.com whose purpose is unknown. This site was registered by Kate Schwager of Wee Waa on 2 October 2014:

____________________

UPDATE:

In an email dated 26 February 2016 Kate Schwager informed North Coast Voices that she no longer owns yes2gas.com and that she initially registered this domain so that it could not be used to promote the gas industry.

                                                     ____________________

So it is possible that the claim that Yes2Gas is a genuine grassroots community group may not hold up under scrutiny; having an unverifiable membership, shadowy funding and an Internet presence created hundreds of miles away from the Narrabri district.

The Yes2Gas quotes Max Davis of Rosewood, Narrabri, who ABC News tells us has a farm which is just a few kilometres from Leewood, a property south of Narrabri that's owned by Santos, and the location of what the company is calling a 'state of the art water treatment facility'. Leewood is a 246 ha property fronting the Newell Highway at Narrabri.

Mr. Davis' address may possible host this business:

Hopefully Max Davis’ cropping property is more than a few kilometres away from Leewood, as Santos proposes up to 850 production wells will be drilled across its Narrabri tenements:

WeeWaa.com

Wells not drawn to scale and positioning potential only

But what of the claims in the advertisement?

Santos is an Australian company

Yes, Santos Ltd was established in Adelaide SA in 1954.

According to its Annual Report 2013 it had 112,397 shareholders and 970,270,108 fully paid ordinary shares listed on the Australian Securities Exchange at 28 February 2014.

However, despite the large number of shareholders, Santos states it is the top 20 shareholders who represented 65.09% of the total voting power in Santos by February 2013 and, these predominately institutional shareholders are not necessarily “Australian”.

Indeed the two largest shareholders, with a combined share percentage of 37.74% of all ordinary shares, are large U.K. and U.S. based investment banks.

HSBC Holdings plc (UK based, located in 75 countries and reportedly Europe’s largest banking group) is the largest shareholder through its subsidiary HSBC Custody Nominees (Australia) Limited (HSBC Bank Australia Limited) and, JP Morgan Chase & Co (US based international investment banking group) is the second largest shareholder through its subsidiary JP Morgan Nominees Australia Limited.

Santos is an excellent neighbour

as professional as Santos

So is Santos an excellent neighbour and professional in its business activities?

This is the area in which the Santos Pilliga/Narrabri gas project operates:

http://sore.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/image1.jpg

http://www.santos.com/library/PEL238_PAL2_and_PPL3_Produced_Water_Management_Plan.pdf

In 2014 the NSW Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) issued Santos NSW (Eastern) Pty Ltd with one clean up notice (29 July 2014) for its Narrabri NSW gas fields and one penalty notice for water pollution at its Bibblewindi Water Transfer Facility.

EPA Media release: 18 February 2014

The NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) has issued a $1,500 fine to Santos NSW (Eastern) Pty Ltd following a pollution incident at their Narrabri Gas Field operations in the Pilliga.

In March 2013 Santos notified the EPA after results from routine ground water sampling around the Bibblewindi Water Treatment Plant showed elevated levels of total dissolved solids and slightly elevated levels of others elements.

EPA Chief Environmental Regulator, Mark Gifford said EPA staff immediately began an investigation into the cause of the elevated readings.

“Our investigation into the matter revealed the installation of the liner within Pond 3 was of poor quality which resulted in the integrity of the liner being questionable.

Pond 3 had historically been used to contain the water and brine generated by the gas field. Water quality testing by Santos of the surrounding aquifers showed elevated levels of total dissolved solids and other elements outside the average readings for the aquifers in the area,” Mr Gifford said.

“Further investigation showed the pond had been installed in 2007 by the site’s previous owner, Eastern Star Gas. A report Santos provided to the EPA showed there was no evidence that contractors, engaged by Eastern Star Gas, had carried out the necessary field testing, quality control or quality assurance during the installation, as is required by current government standards.

Santos has applied to the EPA for an Environment Protection Licence for this site. The EPA is close to finalising this application and has put in place strict conditions to ensure an incident of this nature is not repeated.

The EPL includes a legally binding Pollution Reduction Program requiring Santos to develop and implement a Groundwater Remediation and Monitoring Plan that is aimed at remediating that affected aquifers,” Mr Gifford said.

Contact: Emily Boyle

Further waste water non-compliance issues came to light.

EPA Media release: 28 March 2014

The NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) is investigating a release of about 500 litres of produced water which entered a diversion drain at the Santos Narrabri Gas Field on Tuesday March 25.

The produced water entered the diversion drain during transfer from an assessment well to a holding pond.

Immediately following the release, the diversion drain was blocked to prevent the produced water leaving the site.

The produced water was captured and returned to the pond.

The EPA is undertaking further investigations.

The Government has designated the EPA the lead regulator of environmental and health issues associated with coal seam gas, and established the Office of Coal Seam Gas in NSW Trade and Investment to regulate other important issues, including petroleum titles, rehabilitation, safety and engineering standards.

Contact: Pamela Wilson

Newcastle Herald 5 January 2015:

A NEWCASTLE City Council-owned waste facility has been  receiving  contaminated coal seam gas waste from far-west NSW, and little is known about where it ends up. 

Environmental Protection Authority documents from 2013 accessed by the Newcastle Herald reveal the council-owned Summerhill Waste Depot was the destination for contaminated soil and waste from the Santos Gas Project in the Pilliga Forest.

Santos says the waste includes ‘‘soil, sediment and pond liner materials’’ removed as part of its $17million rehabilitation of the site following its takeover from Eastern Star Gas in 2011.

But the council won’t say what happened to the waste when it got to Summerhill, where it ended up, or whether it is still receiving the waste.

A spokeswoman said in a statement that Summerhill ‘‘operates as a landfill facility with basic recycling activities’’ and is ‘‘not a treatment facility for contaminated wastes’’, but did not say where the waste ended up. 

‘‘Council is not prepared to discuss any commercially confidential arrangements it has with any of the customers that use the Summerhill Waste Management Centre, this includes any details around waste and revenue receipts,’’ the spokeswoman said.

With the lesser known issue of air pollution being raised.

World Coal 7 January 2015:

Astronomers at the Siding Spring observatory in Australia have warned light pollution from a planned coalbed methane (CBM) development may force the observatory to close.

Siding Spring is the country’s premier observatory. The site of the Australian National University’s observatory, near Coonabarabran in New South Wales (NSW), currently benefits from clear, dark skies above it.

This environment allowed the observatory’s powerful SkyMapper telescope to discover the oldest known star, at 13.6 billion years old, in 2014.

Yet astronomers have voiced concern that CBM developments at gasfields around 50 km away could produce so much light pollution the observatory is rendered useless.

Dark skies are vital if astronomers are to pick out stars and other celestial objects in space.

Mining firm, Santos, plans to tap the area, known as the Gunnedah Basin, for gas sourced in coal seams.

Astronomers are also worried that material dispersed from CBM mining operations will prove corrosive to telescope lenses.

Peter Small, a technical support engineer for Siding Spring, said an existing CBM operation at Boggabri already gives off more light than the neighbouring towns of Narrabri and Gunnedah.

“We get light pollution from that – we even get light pollution from Sydney, which is 400km away, so you don’t have to be that close,” he said.

“This will reduce visibility. If there’s light pollution from anywhere, never mind about the gasfields, this site becomes unviable. It would shut down and all those local jobs would be lost,” he added. “I’d hope there would be a compromise, but no dialogue has taken place with Santos as yet.”....

Santos does not appear to be quite as good a neighbour and not as professional a corporation as Yes2Gas would have us believe.

Whoever the principal or principals of Yes2Gas are, they may have to be very active in 2015 if they are to support their favourite coal seam gas miner Santos Ltd through this.

The Sydney Morning Herald 8 January 2015:

Billions of dollars worth of projects face an uncertain future amid write-downs and job losses across Australia's battered oil and gas sectors as the global oil crash deepens…..

"You have to believe you're going to see enormous write-downs in particular from Santos and Origin – BG have already taken an initial write-down on QCLNG and alluded to the fact it could take a larger one."

Carrying values for some acquisitions made over recent years could also be at risk.

"I don't see how Santos could still carry Narrabri at the book value of the acquisition of Eastern Star Gas," Mr Samter said of Santos's NSW coal seam gas business, based on its $924 million takeover of Eastern Star in 2011.

Santos shares dropped another 1.3 per cent to $7.45 on Wednesday and are now 51 per cent down from their August high.

Steps it took last month to relieve pressure on its balance sheet, including a 25 per cent cut to its 2015 capex budget and an extra $1 billion loan facility, have failed to calm investor fears that it will eventually have to raise equity to protect its investment-grade credit rating. It is also considering asset sales.

Illustrating the extent of the impact of the lower prices on Santos, Mr Samter released research that found the company's equity is worthless if current oil prices and foreign exchange rates are assumed to persist forever.

The Australian 12 January 2014:

STANDARD and Poor’s has cut its oil price forecast for the third time in five weeks, in a move that will increase concerns Santos will be forced to raise equity to keep its investment grade credit rating.

The ratings agency already had Santos (STO) and Origin (ORG), which both have BBB credit ratings, on negative watch and has said further cuts to oil price forecasts could lead to downgrades for the two companies, which are both building LNG plants at Gladstone. The price of LNG is linked to crude oil prices.

“Over the coming weeks, we will be updating our assumptions, and we anticipate a number of corporate rating actions,” Standard and Poor’s said.