Wooyung Development

[jonjenkins]

As you are probably aware there is a huge tourist resort being planned at Wooyung. There are two main concerns for Tweed-based fishermen.  The first issue concerns access, by creating this huge new resort directly backing onto the beach as we did when they build Salt and Casuarina. 

The second issue is the possibility (probability) that the removal of approximately 1.3 million tonnes of soil will expose the local creeks and rivers to massive amounts of acid sulphate soils.  This will in turn create an ecological disaster both within the creeks and the adjacent seashore and in particular will have serious adverse effects on local fish life.

Attached is a PDF file which is a copy of the letter I sent to the developers following two public meetings at Pottsville and Wooyung.

Jon Jenkins

[Nauti-gal]

The NSW DEC plan of management for the Wooyung Nature Reserve [June 2004] management issues and strategies identified a high priority required for soil and water conservation of that region. Reference for this priority includes the  Byron Bay - Hastings Point Erosion Study Report No PWD 78026, Dept of public Works NSW Coastal Engineering branch.  It also acknowledged Aboriginal Cultural Heritge values and strategies of consultation in close conjunction with the Tweed Byron Aboriginal lands Coucnil and the Bundjalung Council of Elders.
As you probably Know the development site of the resort is one of three parcels of land that was part of the Ocean Blue portfolio that errupted into an ICAC investigation twenty years ago,  which predominently focused on the Fingal property.  The Fingal property at that time was not part of the Tweed Byron Local Aboriginal Lands Council [TBLALC]  portfolio, however following the ICAC investigation a successfull land claim had it transferd over to the TBLALC using cultural information supplied by Ngarakwal Lore keeper Mrs Millie Boyd.  This same Fingal land has been the subject of proposed development by the Great White Shark company medalist developments and Mcbank investors.  and The bChairman of the TBLALC Russell Logan was quoted in the press as stating his commitment to running for re-election was subject to the members of the lands Coucnil voting YES to the Fingsl development going through.
At the same time as the 2004 Wooyung nature Reserve Plan of management was in processes a Southern Cross University student {Ian Fox} was part of an ALP initiative called the Golden Pathway .  This took in a tourism plan of a corridor running from Wooyung-Billinudgel reserve complex and up through the Marsahal Ridges into the Mt Warning National Park.  All part of a proposed walking path for tourism to connect with the border ranges.
The ALP's plans got squashed when the ancestral Aboriginal tribe the Ngarakwal showed up. They could stop the corridor because the members of the TBLALC are not descendants of the ancestral moiety. In fact members of the TBLALC hierachy are not Aboriginal and to take and exploit the ancestral heritage was concidered a form of identity theft as well as breach of theri cultural and intellectual copyright.
Perhaps the Wooyung property, like the Fingal property got claimed by the Aboriginal Lands council, They have over 40 crown properties already in their portfolio.
Take the latest Bill passed in the NSW parliament on the last sitting before Xmas 2006,
The Aboriginal Lands Rights Amendments Bill 2006 , crafted by the ALP and allies to further empower the landed Aboriginal Councils who already possess a combined land value of over  3 billion, an investment fund worth more than half a billion, and currently have a staggering 9000 pending lands claims over NSW public lands, which  has been added to the last years ALP Xmas 2005 surprise package, the Aboriginal Lands Corporation development MOU with McBank.
Mcbank have earmarked coastal development potential fron Eden to Tweed.....Wooyung is quiet possibly part of that design




 
   

[CEO]

                                                                                FLUSH  &  FAN.
Then Labor's Planning Minister, Frank Sartor, Is highly likely to approve the development.........with some tokenistic modifications.  It might be worth flushing the member for nobody, Neville Newell, out about this issue.

[Nauti-gal]

Another point of interest that really should be put before the ALP and Noddy Newell is the advertised  oil mining site located at Pottsville.....YES, OIL @ POTTSVILLE......imagine the risk of an uncapped well on the water table.....Found out about this by reading a current  business opportunity advert in the Qld Trading Post 11th Jan- 17th Jan 2007 Vol 40. Ed;02  states "Oil has been located on my property in Pottsville Northern NSW.  Geologist report, licence and lease in place.  financial partner required to share 50/50 in business $$$ to be made Call MILA for more info (07) 55364764.
To obtain a lease requires the applicant to be processed via the NSW Lands dept....and once again Aboriginal legislation plays a part in this.

Further to theissue of water table is the risk of capillary action drawing the sea water into the extraction sites.  Nature abhors a vacuum.
I know the ancestral Elders have been very concerned about the underground water being potentially contaminated in thisregion. The Tweed Volcano being the lowest in a series of 4 volcano's,[the Bunya, the focal peak and the main range and then the Tweed ] of water catchments that
cascade down the Eastern coastal landscape and the Elders insist that they are connected by deep aquifers.  The impact of high density coastal populations draining that inland system, they say, could also cause capillary action into the fresh water....and a 350 bed resort resort at Wooyung would be sitting smack on top of the of the main under ground channel to the Windara banks.....

I took this up with Don Page some years ago.  He had just returned from a tour of India and had seen first hand hundreds of years of concentrated habitation creating the capilary action and causing contamination on the water table in that country....Page is also the shadow Minister for the North Coast...Noddy's Nemisis....

[Nauti-gal]

Now heres another turn up for the Books....The Greens party Byron Councilors and Greens party candidate Tom Tabart is responsible for allowing American War Profiteer HALIBURTON into the "Green Shire".....this is definitely something that the Greens Party don't want out just two months before an election....if you want to see for yourself log onto www.byronbay.org/?p=166.........yet another reason why we should get rid of these contrary hypocrites

[Nete-Quette]

I have copied the article in the link above so it never gets lost

War Profiteer wins Byron Bay contract

US ?war profiteer? wins Byron deal Kevin Meade January 16, 2006 IT?S enough to make the hippies and peaceniks of Byron Bay choke on their organic muesli. Byron Bay Shire Council has awarded a contract to a subsidiary of Halliburton, the multinational formerly headed by US Vice-President Dick Cheney and condemned by anti-war activists as a major profiteer in the Iraq war.

The hip northern NSW beach town, long a haven for anti-war activists, made history in 2004 by becoming the first place in NSW to elect a Green mayor, Jan Barham. But Ms Barham, one of three Green councillors who voted in favour of awarding a contract for a sewage treatment plant to Halliburton subsidiary KBR about three months ago, was silent on the decision yesterday.

She confirmed KBR had been chosen to build the plant at Bangalow, west of Byron Bay, but refused to comment further.

?Because the session involved a tender, the discussions were kept confidential, so I cannot comment,? she said. Not so coy was fellow Green councillor Tom Tabart. He also voted in favour of KBR over the two other tenders but said yesterday he did so reluctantly.

Mr Tabart did not hold back when asked his opinion of Halliburton, the multinational said by US organisation Corpwatch to have reaped $8 billion in contracts in Iraq in 2003 alone.

?I think it?s an absolute disgrace that a company can have such close political connections to the ruling clique in America and use it to such advantage and get away with it,? he said. He went further in a letter to the Byron Bay Echo explaining the council?s decision, saying Halliburton was connected to the ?odious Cheney neocons?.

But Mr Tabart said he had voted in favour of KBR because council staff had recommended its tender as the most cost-effective. He said refusing the tender on political grounds could have exposed the council to court action. ?And if you scratch any multinational you?ll dig up just as much dirt as you would on Halliburton, so what?s the bloody difference??

Mr Tabart said councillors who supported the tender knew who they were voting for as Halliburton?s association with Mr Cheney and Iraq were vigorously discussed at the council meeting by opponents of KBR. John Lazarus, a Green councillor who voted against the KBR proposal, said councils should think carefully before choosing multinationals such as Halliburton for such contracts.

?Halliburton has benefited enormously from contracts to the Iraq war,? he said. ?We should be looking closely at corporations we are supporting financially and at what they are doing on this planet.?

The awarding of the contract appears to have gone largely unnoticed in Byron Bay. Mr Tabart denied the decision was kept secret. ?It was all in the council minutes,? he said. ?It just wasn?t picked up by the media.?

[Nauti-gal]

The Cheney (US Minister for war) deal with Haliburton came back to back with the development consent Indigenous land use agreement ILUA for Byron Headland that the Byron bay Bundjalung struck with the ALP... a native title determination can only be achieved in the federal courts...the Byron bay bundjalung corporation couldn't prove ancestral connection to Byron despite the efforts of Ian Cohen (Greens) and co....So they had to settle a deal with the ALP for a ILUA, part of which is the signing and managerial stakeholderships over the Byron marine park.....and they even wrangled a deal that the Aboriginals could fish in the park that would now exclude the recreational fisho.....cause all this development needed new infrastructure like sewerages....enter Haliburton, escorted by the pro-development Greens....

As a matter of interset the current conveiner for the Tweed Byron Greens (Joanna Bolieu) held a position with Native Title Services [same private company that struck the Byron ILUA]  right up until she won [ was given] the contract to write the history of the Tweed for the ALP's State administrated Tweed Shire council...
the Greens version of the history is now due to be launched in the purpose built propaganda museum at Jack Evans boat harbour....right where the Greens want the next marine park....and with their conveiner rewriting history to empower the aboriginal lands councils who collaborate with the ALP....it's destined to be a done deal?.....

[Nauti-gal]

Solution.....injunction on the Dept of lands Minister Kelly...for regazetting the crown lands to be claimed without due consultation processes
totally legal and ethical step...
Its Adminstrative Law...or breach of administrative processes within the Supreme Court Common Law division
it facilitates the staturatory juristiction with respect to public bodies and officals
Administrative Laws List Summons are filed in the supreme court in Sydney...and any ecofishing pensioner can get an exemption to file

check it out on-line http://infolink/practice_notes/nswsc_pc.nsf/a15f50afb1aa2a9ca2570ed000a2b08/875...

in Europe the people sue the government all the time....
we have laws to protect our public rights here in australia..Commonwealth laws...which is why they want us to dump them and become a republic
so we can't sue the govenment to protect our rights because 80% of our Commonwealth laws (that protect us) would disolve overnight.

Don't you think it's about time we used these commonwealth laws...before they try to take them away also?