| Justice Pain gave Karlos a belting. The Tweed Shire Council didn’t come out of it too well either. It’s a litany of either wrong or misconstrued advice, miscommunication and in our view, askewed interpretation of the local government act. That act and others around water were written to favour business and life has changed since it was enacted. No environment, no business in this shire. Read the judgement sections 230 to 233. It’s time to change the legislation and rules to ensure protection of our groundwater. Look how well the same set of rules has served the Murray Darling. Not! Our interpretation of the draft determinations – still not final – is that Karlos has 2.5 years to comply with the judgement – to wind back from 28.5Ml per year to 5Ml per year as originally approved, then somehow muddled through verbal wrong advice, Karlos misinterpreting it and complete lack of enforcement of DA conditions anyway. It should be back at 5Ml right now. Click here to read the draft orders. Here are a few other facts for you: Nobby’s Creek is still running enormous trucks carting water out.Nobby’s Creek has illegal infrastructure to fill these trucks built on Crown Land.That particular Crown Land has miraculously been released to council.On November 7 council will vote on whether to allow a swap to happen (I can hear the deal, “You can have the crown land, TSC will take a bit of your property. She’ll be right.”) so the illegal infrastructure suddenly comes legal.Click on the link and just have a read of Page 12 of the agenda. Council staff are recommending that it is approved.Our answer is a resounding ‘no’. Help us get the message to the Tweed Shire Council. You can’t make something legal retrospectively. Try doing that with your next parking fine. Here’s the link to the councillors’ contact phones and emails. Get in touch with them, email or have a chat. They are elected representatives and need to hear from you. Don’t forget they are your servants, not the other way around. And while we’re at it, how come crown land is suddenly available when our Uki Community Garden had to wait two years for the release of their modest plot of land? Here’s the heavy reading for you – the entire judgement from The Honourable Justice Nicola Pain in the matter of the Karlos appeal against the Tweed Shire Council’s refusal to allow further water extraction. |
