Green activists skittle mine jobs 250km away from their homes on Sydney’s leafy north shore
Green activists from Sydney’s wealthy north shore helped to skittle the Bylong Valley coal mine hundreds of kilometres away — and kill 1100 desperately needed jobs in central NSW.
NSW
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Green activists from Sydney’s wealthy north shore helped to skittle the Bylong Valley coal mine hundreds of kilometres away — and kill 1100 desperately needed jobs.
Of 3192 comments to the Independent Planning Commission, 2530 objections came on a standard-form letter from Lane Cove Coal and Gas Watch.
“These people should not be allowed to comment on something that is not on their doorstep,” Mid-West Regional Council mayor Des Kennedy said.
The Commission cited “long-lasting environmental” impacts from burning the coal in South Korea for rejecting the mine, which would have created 650 construction jobs and 450 jobs for the Central West over its 30-year life.
“People here want those jobs,” Mr Kennedy said. “But at the public meetings they were bussing in activists from all over the place.
“The Commissioners even took a call from a greenie on the Central Coast and played it on speaker phone.”
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The Commission said: “Of the individual written comments, 2530 were a standard-form letter provided through Do-Gooder and the Lane Cove Coal and Gas Watch.”
On its website Do Gooder describes itself as providing “software to lobby policy makers and build progressive movements”.
The Commission received 350 submissions, mostly objecting to the mine — of which 235 came from people more than 60km from the site near Rylstone and Kandos.
By contrast, the strong local support for the mine was shown in a petition in favour that was signed by 382 local people and presented to the Commission.
None of the 14 government agencies consulted — including Department of Primary Industries experts on water, fisheries, lands and agriculture — objected to the project.
Despite this, lobbyist umbrella group the Lane Cove Bushland and Conservation Society vice-president Ron Gornall was unrepentant about helping to stop the coal mine, which would have injected $300 million into the state’s economy.
Speaking from his Lane Cove home, 250km from the proposed mine site, Mr Gornall said: “Our group was opposed to the mine … like a lot of environmental groups, we look at other areas.”
And he argued locals desperate for jobs had fallen for mining company spin: “They can sound very plausible — I am not saying country people are dumb, but they can be taken in by deliberately misleading and slick representations.”
An outraged Mr Kennedy said South Korean electricity generator KEPCO had spent millions on research but “we get one comment from some out-of-town greenie and everyone takes it as fact”. “The mine was not even going in the Bylong Valley or going near the water table, it is tapping into the same coal seam as three other mines in the side of a hill,” he said.
NSW Minerals Council CEO Stephen Galilee said: “The same small group of professional anti-mining activists appear at most IPC public meetings, and they seem to have more influence with the IPC than many genuine local people who support these projects.”
Coal mine machinery operator Michael Miles and his wife Ali said the project would have helped Kandos and Rylstone “boom again”.