A PROTEST rally at Wyong has heard the Planning Assessment Commission was likely to approve the $800-million Wallarah 2 coalmine, but that might not be the end of the matter.
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The PAC, the independent expert panel that determines applications for major projects, approved most of them, the rally heard.
But if the PAC approved this mine, planned for Bushells Ridge, near the Central Coast border with Lake Macquarie, the decision would likely be challenged by the community in the courts.
There was also historical evidence that showed the NSW Premier could intervene to block any PAC approval, the rally heard.
The protest was held outside Wyong Golf Club on Friday morning prior to another PAC public hearing inside the club.
Speaking at the rally, Wyong MP and Shadow Minister for the Central Coast, David Harris, reiterated his call for Premier Gladys Berejiklian to stop the mine, just as former Labor Premier Kristina Keneally did when the previous Wallarah 2 Coal Project won approval in 2010.
“I have to pay tribute to Kristina Keneally because she actually stood up at the end and said, in this case, we have to put the community first,” Mr Harris told the rally.
“That’s a very hard thing for a Labor Premier to do. What’s wrong with this (Coalition) government doing this as well?”
NSW Greens upper house MP David Shoebridge told the rally the PAC would probably approve the mine. But he said those who opposed Wallarah 2 were not alone, but part of a global uprising.
“It’s a global movement where people are standing up and saying ‘no’ to the fossil fuel industry, ‘we will not let you destroy our planet’,” he said.
He urged the mine’s opponents “to make it hard” for the PAC by presenting facts, evidence, and impacts.
PAC chair David Johnson told the hearing it might not be the last public meeting before a final determination was made.
“We may convene further meetings with relevant stakeholders after today’s meeting if we require clarification or additional information on matters that are raised today,” he said
Alan Hayes is a campaign director for the Australian Coal Alliance which has opposed the mine for decades.
“Standing here today, after 21 years, I almost feel like I’m in that Bill Murray movie, Groundhog Day, because the same thing keeps going on, over and over again,” he told the rally.
Mr Hayes was expressing his frustration that the community should have to provide evidence for a third time to the PAC to demonstrate “the considerable impact the mine will have on human health and the Central Coast’s major water catchment”.
He said the ACA had received legal advice that if the PAC approved the mine, there could be a legal challenge.
The $800 million coalmine is proposed for a site at Bushells Ridge, about five kilometres north-west of Wyong, near Wyee and Blue Haven.
The mine proposal is to extract five million tonnes of coal per annum for 28 years.
The Department of Planning and Environment said the project would provide “real and significant economic and social benefits” for the Central Coast and NSW, with jobs for about 450 people during construction, and 300 during operations.
The department has completed its assessment of the plan and said the mine was “in the public interest” and approvable, subject to the operators satisfying a raft of “strict conditions”.
The protest rally heard that conditions of consent applied to mining operations were “rubbery” and often ineffective, and that conditions were applied to convince communities that their concerns had been addressed.
“Those conditions are worthless,” Mr Harris said.
“They get modified. They get changed. They get ignored.”
Darkinjung Aboriginal Land Council CEO Sean Gordon told the rally Darkinjung was a major stakeholder in the mining plan as it was “the largest private land owner” in the proposed mining area.
He said talk about jobs and the economic benefits that would flow from the mine was misleading.
“This is not about the Central Coast economy because the Central Coast already has a thriving, sustainable economy. This is not about the need for resources. There are enough resources being mined around this country,” he said.
The Central Coast had “never been a mining community”, but instead sustained itself through manufacturing and thousands of small businesses, he said.
