Tent blockade stalls WestCONnex
BY WENDY BACON
Community campaigners have maintained the camp on Euston Road twenty-four hours a day for more than two weeks after Westconnex tried to begin work that would destroy hundreds of trees and remove strips of Sydney Park for the New M5 tollway. Westconnex failed to file a tree report required to justify the destruction before beginning the work. A report has now been filed but has not yet been approved by the NSW Planning Department.
A Save Sydney Park festival held near the camp last Saturday was organised by Reclaim the Streets in only eight days. “In that short time, we signed up seven sound systems and multiple acts, and convinced thousands of people to come out and support the fight against WestCONnex,” said Dr Ivan Crozier, spokesperson for Reclaim The Streets. Crozier claimed that this level of support in record time “shows how angry people are about WestCONnex, and how sick they are of Mike Baird selling us out to his toll road mates.”
The Festival and camp has been a boost to the anti-Westconnex campaign hit by more bad news after Westconnex announced that it plans to demolish more than a hundred homes and other buildings in St Peters in coming months and will take even more open space than originally announced in Haberfield, which is already devastated by demolitions and massive construction sites.
The Inner West Council also posted a legal opinion by Senior Counsel Tim Robertson who found that there are no grounds for a successful legal challenge to the Westconnex approvals for the M4 Widening, the M4 East and the new M5, all of which are underway. The legal opinion came as no surprise to the Westconnex Action Group that received the same legal advice earlier this year.
Westconnex has been approved under Part 5.1 of the Planning Act designed by the LNP government to prevent appeals. It gives the Minister wide discretionary power to approve projects such as Westconnex that are declared to be ‘Critical State Significant Infrastructure’. These approvals cannot be legally challenged on their merits, even if it can be shown that the arguments used to justify approvals are factually wrong. There are no hearings under this section. The key requirements are the completion of an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), which must be exhibited for a minimum of 30 days during which time any person is allowed to make a written submission.
The Minister sets down factors to be considered in the EIS such as traffic, biodiversity and air quality but as long as these factors are not completely ignored, the approval will be valid. The approval can only be challenged in court if it can be shown that the Minister did not have the power to make the decision.
The LNP introduced this section which based on the notorious previous Labor government’s Part 3A but is even more restrictive. Part 3Awas criticised by the then LNP opposition as being undemocratic, granting the Minister dangerous levels of power and leading to corruption. Opponents of Part 5.1 law argue that judicial scrutiny is even more necessary when $17 billion of public money and the mobility of Sydney’s residents is at stake.
For example, it is clear from the EIS that thousands more cars will be brought into Alexandria and Enmore as a result of the Westconnex and that there are no approved plans or allocated funding to deal with this extra traffic. Despite these obvious problems, no legal challenge can be mounted to contest the approval.
Shadow Minister for the Environment Penny Sharpe, Greens spokesperson for the Environment MP Mehreen Faruqi, Deputy Mayor Dr Kerryn Phelps and Labor Councillor Linda Scott have visited and offered support to the camp this week.
Newtown MP and Greens WestConnex Spokesperson Jenny Leong who strongly supports the camp told City Hub that the legal situation was “unacceptable” and a “legacy of the former NSW Labor Government which began the corruption of our planning process.” She said,“resident and community members have no choice but to take nonviolent direct action because the law as it stands deliberately shuts them out” with no “checks and balances on the Baird Government’s polluting private road agenda”.
WAG spokesperson Vince Pollito said the lack of legal fairness only made the community more determined to build its campaign against Westconnex.
Pollito said, “Communities across Sydney have engaged with the legal and governance processes set up by Westconnex and the Department of Planning in good faith. Unfortunately these processes have proven to be a complete sham. Over 17,000 people wrote careful, considered and detailed responses to the Environmental Impact Statements for stages one and two of Westconnex only to have their input summarily dismissed by the roads minister as “political opposition”. He also pointed to the protection of the Sydney Motorway Corporation that is constructing Westconnex from NSW freedom of information laws, secrecy around key parts of the business case, the refusal of Premier Mike Baird to release a report into unfair property compensation and the dismissal of democratically elected Inner West councils as a “clusterfuck of governance failure that leaves responsible citizens no option but to engage in direct action to prevent Mike Baird irreparably destroying large swathes of Sydney with this irresponsible and unjustified project”
Ten people have already been arrested for taking peaceful direct action against Westconnex. This week, No Westconnex campaigner Cassi Plate who locked onto a tree at Kingsgrove when critically endangered Ironbark forest was destroyed by Westconnex in September appeared at Burwood Court. A magistrate dismissed two charges against her of entering and remaining on land but put her on a six-month good behaviour bond because emergency services were called. Plate said that although she regretted that emergency services were called, “it’s very important to inspire people to take direct action because at the moment that is what we need to do to stop Westconnex.” She said that she was especially appalled that approval conditions supposed to protect animals trapped in the trees were ignored by Westconnex.
In the eyes of campaigners at least, her argument for direct action is strengthened by the IWC legal opinion that also states that no legal challenge to approvals is possible even when conditions are breached.
Wendy Bacon was previously Professor of Journalism at UTS and is a supporter of the Westconnex Action Group.
