new years eve
THE BYRON SHIRE Volume 30 #29 Wednesday, December 30, 2015
www.echo.net.au Phone 02 6684 1777 editor@echo.net.au adcopy@echo.net.au 23,200 copies every week
P O R TA L F O R T H E T H O U G H T F U L M O R TA L
CAB AUDIT
Climate change or Should the first Get out and enjoy system change? settlers accept us some live music – – p12 as refugees? – p10 Gig Guide – p36
Sunrise faces zero internet
Story & photo Eve Jeffery
Not happy, NBN. Sunrise residents make their point.
Sunrise residents are leading the local charge to regain internet access when their neighbourhood becomes a dead spot after local provider Linknet closes on January 31. The federal government has left Linknet without compensation after NBN Co took over local services. Unfortunately the NBN service does not cover all local residential and business customers. Spokesperson for the Sunrise Residents Group Robyn Wilcox said the loss of internet service to the area has terrible implications for children still at school, for home businesses and activities such as banking online. ‘It has come as a shock to many families and business people who study or work from home in Sun-
rise and other parts of Byron Shire, as well as businesses in the Byron Arts & Industry Estate, that they will have zero internet access in just over four weeks’ time’, she said.
Forced out Ms Wilcox said that for most of Sunrise there has never been ADSL. ‘We don’t have line-of-sight for fixed wireless to any of the towers on St Helena or elsewhere’, she said. ‘We can’t get 4G, cable or satellite. Our saviour was Linknet. Now they have been forced out. ‘We have watched this happen over the last couple of years, but we still hoped this day would not dawn.’ Ms Wilcox says the resident group has contacted local federal
MP Justine Elliot, who has written to the minister for communications. ‘We have contacted the telecommunications ombudsman. ‘We have contacted Telstra, Optus, TPG, Vodafone, World Without Wires, Advatel, Virtel and NBN Co. Everyone would like to help, but no-one can. ‘We have contacted the minister for communications a number of times with no response, and the prime minister’s office.’ ‘The good news, says the NBN Co, is that we will have fibre to the node perhaps by April 2017.’ Ms Wilcox says that new Elements resort has solved the problem with their own pole. ‘They have had a pole put up by Advatel of Lismore, continued on page 9
netdaily Women’s domestic violence service closure Online in
www.echo.net.au/closure-oftweed-domestic-violence
New rules mean trouble for koalas, say activists
North coast environment groups and the National Parks Association of NSW are calling on the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) to abandon their plans to overhaul logging regulations, which will dilute protections for koalas. Integrated Forestry Operations Approvals (IFOAs) are the rules that regulate logging in NSW. The EPA is currently writing new IFOAs which are due for public consultation in early 2016. Documents acquired by environment groups and the Environmental Defenders Office under freedom of information laws show that the new rules will spell more trouble for already beleaguered koala populations. The new IFOAs seek to replace on-ground surveys with habitat models to streamline pre-logging koala surveys. Models use expected predictors of koala occurrence such as plant community types and presence of feed trees to predict where
Photo Frankzed flickr.com/frankzed
koalas should be. The groups say this will not work. Dr Oisín Sweeney, science officer with the National Parks Association of NSW (NPA), said, ‘The experts who reviewed the EPA’s models found that they can’t predict the occurrence of koalas because they don’t take into account either the social nature of koalas or past disturbance. ‘Basically koalas, like humans, like to stay close to their families. These social ties mean that habitat is not the sole driver of koala occurrence. The models don’t consider past disturbance either: intensive logging and fires leave a legacy that affects whether koalas will use an area. ‘Perhaps the most shocking thing in the documents was the revelation that, despite almost ten decades of logging taking place in NSW, there continued on page 3