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Issue No. 127 | 08 March 2002 |
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Power Plays
Interview: Still Flying Women: Suffrage or Suffering Industrial: No Coco Pops For Brenda Unions: Back to the Heartland Activists: Getting to the Point International: Push Polling Economics: Debt Defaulters Poetry: Those Were the Days Review: Black Hawk Dud Satire: Fox-Lew Launch Rescue Bid for Beta Video
The Soapbox The Locker Room Week in Review Tool Shed
 How to Beat the BanksCollins Goes Cahill
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Activists Getting to the Point
****************** Polair circled the disputed territory. The Tactical Response Group arrested some 60 protesters, including yours truly. A couple of chair-bound protesting pensioners were carted aside. A relay of paddy wagons ferried the arrested to a nearby police station for processing.
The station is one of those closed by restructuring. A couple of local angry old ladies confronted police supervising the operation. Why was the station open today when appeals for local policing have long been ignored? they wanted to know.
A police rescue unit was on hand; three tow trucks removed blockading vehicles; a cherry picker was called in to help remove a tripod sitter from his eyrie. One protester collapsed during the melee and required an ambulance. An historian's innocent motor bike was damaged by a contractor's four-wheel-drive.
It was a massive and expensive exercise in policing; the best part of three hours clearing away some 200 protesters. As one recalcitrant wryly observed as our paddy wagon sped to the clink, "It must have Costa lot".
Earlier in the week company security personnel had paraded in the area, carrying side arms slung low in gunfighter style; Rottweilers and their handlers were also on display.
On the day of the action a company agent was busy with a camera, photographing protesters and the number plates of private cars parked in the area; the usual prelude to intimidatory legal actions.
Sandon Point, near Bulli on the South Coast of NSW; the afternoon of 14 February 2002; Valentine's Day. The company was the developer Stocklands, with former NSW Premier Nick Greiner on the Board. The protesters were part of a community picket line that had been blockading the site 24 hours a day for a year; retirees, pensioners, Aboriginals, unionists, students, Mums and Dads, kids, surfers, environmentalists.
The day the crunch came, NSW Legislative Council members Lee Rhiannon and Ian Cohen (Greens) were present, as were representatives of the South Coast Labour Council (SCLC).
An Aboriginal Tent Embassy and the picket line had been contesting the right of Stocklands to develop the site, one that is arguably of great Aboriginal cultural significance. High seas in 1998 revealed ancient Aboriginal skeletal and archaeological remains, which led to the establishment of an Aboriginal Tent Embassy once the area was directly threatened with development. Local knowledge claims that similar finds were cavalierly tampered with by official instrumentalities during the 1970s.
The site is home to rare and endangered flora and fauna, is part remnant native wetland, part flood plain, a locally treasured community open space, and a vital green corridor to the foreshore from the environmentally and geologically sensitive escarpment that overlooks the region. The beach is renowned for its world class surf. Some residents fear development will radically alter and redirect natural drainage systems. They are traumatically haunted by memories of relatively recent local flooding, arguably caused in part by inappropriate development, resulting in multi-millions of dollars worth of property damage, and the reluctance of insurers to honour policies.
Sandon Point is one of the few remaining areas north of Wollongong that still has environmental integrity, and some argue that if it goes, then any talk of coastal integrity by the Carr government is mere rhetoric.
The area has long been the subject of community concern about matters like zoning, and there is a troubled relationship with Wollongong City Council that goes back years.
The Stocklands' development got the final go-ahead following contentious consent from the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) to "destroy an Aboriginal place".
Planned is an extensive upmarket subdivision comprising waterview allotments. Word has it that the blocks will come on the market at a tad under a million bucks each.
Once police had broken the picket line, the developer moved heavy earth moving equipment and sheds on site, disrupting traffic for an hour. A security fence was hastily erected. Non-unionised out-of town labour was the order of the day.
No sooner had the fence been erected than an injunction came through halting work on the site. Aboriginal groups had filed and won the injunction in the Land and Environment Court. So Stocklands eventually went through the afternoon's process in reverse, removing the earth moving equipment and taking the fence down.
The stay of execution was based on Aboriginal concerns about the nature and thoroughness of the NPWS consultation process before the development was approved. The matter returns to Court on March 20. In the meantime the community picket and the Tent Embassy remain at Sandon Point.
Throughout the dispute the SCLC has taken a mediatory role, demonstrating considerable community leadership, maturity, and responsibility.
It was drawn into events following reference of the matter by affiliates. On hearing community concerns the SCLC decided to work to have these discussed and taken into account by all parties involved.
This has been a long, complex, and difficult process involving the developer, a diversity of community interests, and local politicians including the ALP dominated Wollongong City Council. The process has been all the more difficult against a background of heightening Left-Right ALP regional tensions.
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