Byron Shire Echo – Issue 30.32 – 20/01/2016

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THE BYRON SHIRE

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Volume 30 #32 Wednesday, January 20, 2016

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www.echo.net.au

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Phone 02 6684 1777 editor@echo.net.au adcopy@echo.net.au 23,200 copies every week AUDIT

All about Russell – Anna James Mr Morris riffs with reports on Byron’s Mandy – p33 homeless – p6

netdaily Rich Aussies get richer as poor stay poor

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www.echo.net.au/rich-aussiesget-richer-as-poor-stay-poor

Local Labor and Greens side against Nats Hans Lovejoy

With more than a hundred world titles under his belt, New Zealand’s Jason Wynyard is always a crowd favourite at the Brunswick Head’s Woodchop. Not only winning the Australian 275mm Underhand title, Jason was crowned the festival’s Champion of Champions. Photo Jeff Dawson

Mapping technology under fire Environment groups claim NSW govt taking an axe to native vegetation A multi-million-dollar vegetation mapping system that has proved overwhelmingly defective is just the latest in a series of threats to the state’s native vegetation, particularly on the north coast, say key environmentalists. Known as ‘segmentation mapping’, the new $10 million automated system uses pattern-recognition technology to identify the state’s 1,500 plant communities. But an academic study reported by SMH (Fairfax) has found its accuracy was just 17 per cent when determining

Sick of annoying and silly laws? – p8

Coal wedge

Chips of wood and potato

Chris Dobney and Hans Lovejoy

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individual communities in the upper Hunter Valley. Total Environment Centre’s Jeff Angel told The Echo the process was just the latest blow for the biodiverse northern rivers region. It follows the abolition of new environment zones proposed in the 2014 LEPs of five northern rivers councils and the intention to replace the Native Vegetation Act 2003 and the Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995 with the Biodiversity Conservation Bill. The new bill is due to be introduced to parliament around the

middle of this year by the coalition. Mr Angel said, ‘This is part of the new proposed biodiversity act that came out of the new National Party push to remove the Native Vegetation Act. The Humane Society International (HSI), the National Parks Association and the Nature Conservation Council have also called for the controversial mapping system to be scrapped. Despite confirming by phone that a reply was forthcoming, the Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) did not respond to The Echo’s questions by deadline.

The expanding fossil fuel industry looks set to be a key issue for the upcoming federal election, after Greens candidate for Richmond, Dawn Walker, called upon incumbent Labor MP Justine Elliot to clarify the Labor Party’s official position on the Shenhua coal mine proposal. The giant open-cut coal mine is slated to ‘coexist’ with fertile agricultural production on the Liverpool Plains, west of Port Macquarie. The issue has divided farmers and The National party; it’s located within the electorate of federal Nationals minister Barnaby Joyce, who opposes the mine owing to its potential to impact on agricultural land. Environmentalists oppose it for those reasons but also because it will exacerbate climate change. Yet the NSW Planning Assessment Commission gave Shenhua the approval last February and, according to the ABC, ‘was granted conditional approval’ by the federal government in July 2015. The office of Labor’s Justine Elliot told The Echo she supports the Greens position in opposing the mine, and believes ‘the local community was sold out by the National party.’ ‘The decision to approve the Shenhua coal mine was made by the federal and state Liberal National governments,’ she said. But Greens candidate Walker says the federal Labor Party have consistently voted against Greens motions in parliament calling for the Shenhua mine to be stopped.

Ms Walker’s press release last week claimed the Labor Party leadership at both a state and federal level ‘have been silent on whether Labor supports the mine or not.’ So does the local National Party candidate support or oppose Shenhua or other new mining projects given the threat by climate change, plummeting coal prices and potential threats to agriculture and aquifers? While Matthew Fraser refused to say, he did tell The Echo, ‘I am more concerned with local issues in the Richmond area but I do think Mrs Elliot pretending she does not support these mining projects is typical hypocrisy, as the lease was granted under a Labor government.’ The Tweed Heads-based Hungry Jacks operator also said, ‘The north coast Nationals have proved their effectiveness in government by once again fixing Labor’s mess and eliminating all CSG from the north coast of NSW and I’ve been proud to support them in that fight.’

Who is Shenhua? Shenhua is a Chinese-owned corporation, and it says on its website it plans to extract ‘10 Million tonnes per annum of Run of Mine (ROM) coal for a 30-year period.’ The company claims an average of 434 full-time equivalent employees will be employed during the operation of the project. As for economic benefits over the next 30 years, Shenhua says its Watermark project is expected to ‘pay more than $1.3 billion in company continued on page 2

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