More and more Crown land – public land – is under threat from wealthy developers and mining companies, writes June Bullivant OAM.

As the Eastern Seaboard and the Central Coast seats of politicians have fallen on their sword, it leads a person to wonder if this is indeed an octopus that has more than a couple of tentacles, that will reach into the areas of Sydney and suburbs that are heavily marked for urban renewal by the New South Wales Government.

If this is the case how this might be achieved? Urban Growth (the commercial arm who sell off prime land sites for the NSW Government) has 29 projects on their website. With the Government crying poor, how do the consultants employed by Urban Growth get paid, and who is supplying the money, and how are they are achieving this phenomenal growth? You hear of clandestine tours of Chinese speaking investors touring Sydney and suburbs and you ask who invited them here. Then you wonder why a public servant who worked on the sale of Carrawong is still employed and has a position of power within the Crown Lands Department. Also employed are two young up and coming people who worked on the Central Coast now employed by the same department.

Thousands of ordinary people have to fight to save the area in which they live. Does the government really think that the community is not watching? The areas under siege have people fighting to protect their suburbs, their livelihood, and their homes. Why you ask, is this allowed to happen, why the current regime prepared a White Paper on Planning that was weighed heavily in favour of developers. Since the paper was defeated in the Parliament the current Minister decided to use the current laws that are already in place, The Gateway Review, processed by the Joint Regional Planning Panel in your area.

The Gateway process allows developments which have been refused, to have an appeal lodged and just pay $5,000 to get to have another chance to get it passed. The problem with this is this time the local council and the community are taken out of the decision and it is handled and passed by the panel that are not representative of the community; usually made up of two members from each council in the area they are supposed to represent. Are they related to developers, we do not know.

This leads us to the White Paper on Crown Land (Public Land). This document is also weighed heavily in favour of the developer, with big chunks of land that has been put aside for the future use of the community is under threat by this paper. Large amounts of this land all over Australia have already been given long leases to mining companies. The community is supposed to receive the benefit from the money received from the lease.

The opposite is true, as mining companies have our land laid out like a smorgasbord for their pleasure, to pillage, plunder for private profit. Are these communities benefiting? No, they are not. Their homes and health are being compromised, one mine is being put within 30 metres of homes and they blast the mineral out of the ground. This results in the main street of the town being closed off so that people do not get hurt. Bulga, a case in point, has one exclusion zones of 6 kilometres. Is it being adhered to? No, it is not. Bulga has been to the Land and Environment Court 3 times and won, the Community was back in court in April 2014, the mine owner is Rio Tinto.

Rio Tinto is a Rio Tinto Group is British-Australian multinational metals and Mining Corporation with headquarters in London, United Kingdom and a management office in Melbourne, Australia.

The company’s name comes from the Rio Tinto river in southwestern Spain, which has flowed red since mining began there about 5000 years ago, due to acid mine drainage. Acid mine drainage causes severe environmental problems in the Rio Tinto, Spain.

How is this allowed to happen? It happens because our elected representatives are not acting in the best interests of the community. Even if brown paper bags of money have not changed hands, the politicians were elected to represent you. If they were employed by business, their services would be dispensed with, why then are they allowed continuing doing everything they can to destroy our communities. What is in it for them? What is in it for the Government? What is in it for the public servant that put the plans in place? And where does it leave our communities?

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