ENVIRONMENTAL ART and CULTURAL ACTIVISM
Documenting Local Ecologies and Disseminating Subaltern Cultural Strategies for the Environment. All photographs and writing copyright by Bernadette Smith unless otherwise stated.
Your democracy at work in Stockton Bight
In God we trust all others pay cash. Featuring historic analogue video footage from 1993 of Port Stephens Council deliberating on the fate of coastal heath lands earmarked for the inappropriate Fern Bay housing estate in southern Stockton Bight, Australia. Attempts by the local community to have a say over their own neighbourhood prove ultimately futile as vested interests trump environmental concerns. Nature is the biggest loser in this unseemly process of land rezoning. It has been estimated that the corruption turnover occurring in Australian land use decision making is bigger than the illicit drug trade.
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Future Shock
Nature versus miners http://www.theherald.com.au/news/local/news/general/15bn-sand-mine-but-none-for-port-stephens-council/1788213.aspx
PORT Stephens Mayor Bruce MacKenzie's company could make $1.5 billion from his Stockton Bight sandmines, but the council won't receive a cent in rates.
PORT Stephens Mayor Bruce MacKenzie's company could make $1.5 billion from his Stockton Bight sandmines, but the council won't receive a cent in rates.
The mines are exempt from council rates and other charges because they are on land given to the Worimi Local Aboriginal Land Council as conservation lands.
The Port Stephens council, which has asked the State Government for an 8.86 per cent rates increase, confirmed it cannot receive rates from one of the most valuable projects in its area.
If the mine operates for the next 60 years, it has the potential to extract more than 100 million tonnes of sand.
Cr MacKenzie's company, Mackas Sand, is required to pay developer contributions to the council because the mine uses local infrastructure.
Cr MacKenzie said his company also paid generous royalties to the Worimi.
"We wouldn't have won the lease if we didn't," he said.
The most recent valuations available from the NSW Land and Property Management Authority show the Worimi Conservation Lands on Stockton Bight to be worth more than $4 million.
Those valuations are based on the land being zoned for "protection". It would be worth considerably more if the mining project were taken into account.
Based on only the protection valuation, the project would have put $20,000 a year into council coffers.
With an increasing number of sandmining operations being approved on Stockton Bight and elsewhere in Port Stephens, groups including the Tomaree Ratepayers and Residents Association have suggested increasing rates on the mines to raise revenue.
The council is hamstrung because the NSW Department of Local Government classes sandmines as quarries, and special mining rates cannot be applied.
Ratepayers association chairman Bob Young said the company was mining a community resource and should be making a contribution to the community by paying rates.
"Here's an individual who's making more money than anyone else in the whole [local government area]," Mr Young said. "It would be disappointing if there wasn't some form of contribution."