Response from Brad Hazzard, Shadow Minister for Planning, NSW Liberals “The concept of a Metro Strategy is a good one and the Coalition would continue it. There are however problems in the way Labor Government has gone about it, particularly in relation to a transport blueprint. Sitting out of the spotlight are also issues of biodiversity and agricultural issues. The identified Growth Centres in Western Sydney are lines on maps that have not taken into account the need to conserve biodiversity and agricultural lands in these areas. The State Labor concept of making developers conserve some land, we think on the face of it, has some merit but the detail is flawed. Under the Labor policy developers can bulldoze high value biodiversity areas which happen to sit within the boundary line of growth centres and in exchange save land somewhere else. That doesn’t stand up to comprehensive environmental scrutiny. Species in the land being bulldozed won’t survive because an island of land somewhere else is saved. We need to keep corridors of biodiversity, even in growth areas. We shouldn’t just be planning for houses, we should also be planning for a sustainable future.”

Thats all good stuff Brad. The Libs/Nationals therefore need to come out strongly and put the blowtorch to the Kenneally Govt over this issue. It is clear to us that the DoP - DECCW bureaucrats that authored this Strategic Assessment of the Growth Centres are seeking to get their hands on a huge chunk of the Growth Centres conservation fund to use on pet projects outside of Western Sydney. We have sensed for sometime these bureaucrats have given up on conserving Western Sydney's last great bushland remnants and these reports now appear to confirm this. They should be sacked. It's important to realise Peter Garrett the Federal Environment Minister is the beneficiary of this report. It is his approval the NSW Gov is after. Approval switches off his EPBC Act across the 27,000 hectare Growth Centres and clears another hurdle to development. So it's plain to see the motive for NSW Gov massive change in direction in this report, to now shift $285 million from the $530 million Growth Centres conservation fund towards protecting Federally listed (EPBC Act) species and ecological communities. Its an out and out bribe by the NSW Gov. This means Garrett's dept benefits from NSW monies. He can then claim the protection of matters of national environmental significance without spending a cent of Commonwealth money. Its a rort if this occurs. We were promised that the Growth Centres conservation fund would be targeted at protecting Western Sydney Priority Areas and that is what we want delivered. Brad you will also need to get Greg Hunt the Shadow Federal Environment Minister onto this matter to hound Peter Garrett. Peter Garrett if pressured can refuse to approve this plan and insist on better conservation outcomes including that all offsets to the land clearing in the Growth Centres occurs in Western Sydney by protecting the DECCW identified Western Sydney Priority Conservation Lands. E.g. The Deerubbin Land Council lands. Your commitments to protecting more of the ADI Site and creating a Western Sydney Conservation Corridor are undermined by this Strategic Assessment. Tony Kelly and Frank Sartor are overseeing numerous draft plans that are imminent disasters for Western Sydney e.g. the imminent gazettal of the draft Penrith LEP 2008, the flawed Cumberland Plain Recovery Plan, and now this.

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The Recently exhibited DRAFT "Growth Centres Strategic Assessment" is a lengthy and highly inadequate document that fails Western Sydney people and wildlife (again) and fails to protect the endangered Cumberland Plain Woodland specifically where it currently exists - not swapping $$$M for lower-significant 'cow-paddocks' or land outside the Cumberland Plain!. Victoria is way ahead of NSW with a commitment to zone for conservation and compulsorily acquire something like 15,000ha in offsets in West Melbourne. This casts a shadow of mean spirited deception on what is being proposed by the current NSW Government. I'll be voting Green to rely on best practice through all Department of Government. The Commonwealth Government must remember the offsets achieved in Melbourne when the Victorian Government was assessing the environment in its growth centres. The potential for these DRAFT Sydney Growth Centres Assessment to 'commit to destruction' of ecological communities that ARE currently under consideration for Threatened Species Recovery and Federal EPBC Act listing must be avoided and rejected. Why is NSW so bad at this - as the Victorian Government has shown far more ecological sensitivity and transparency in securing offsets in fair proximity to its growth centres.

I have been operating in the western Sydney area as an ecological consultant for 18 years. I constantly deal with clients and residents who are furious at the deceit and hypocrisy of both commonwealth and state governments on both ecological management and planning issues. The perception among the people in my experience is that on one hand there is state and commonwealth legislation and planning policy designed to protect ecological values and on the other both governments blatantly and actively bypass their own legislation. the biocertification of the Growth Centres SEPP is but one example. As small private landowners they go through extraordinary cost and process to build a truck shed or home and generally are more than willing to reserve part of their land for conservation of endangered species and communities, at their own ongoing expense. There are hundreds of them. They see proposals such as the breathtaking deceit and hypocrisy of the biobanking scheme proposed in the growth centres and are completely alienated and disaffected. It is nonsense to equate endangered Cumberland Plain communities with grassy woodlands way out west. Similarly it is disingenuous of politicians to suggest that farmers can simply move out west - is the government going to play God and raise the rainfall annual average and provide a suitable seasonal rain pattern to grow those crops? It would be wonderful for there to be firstly serious application of good science (spectacularly lacking at present), secondly rigorous scientific scrutiny by the commonwealth of the state proposal and thirdly genuine application of the existing legislation designed to protect both the ecological life support system of western Sydney and the agricultural food productivity. I actually attended, by invitation, the first community forum at the beginning of the growth centres process. The view was voiced clearly and loudly that resident did not want the vast growth proposed, but not a single breath of that dissent was reported in the publications that resulted from those meetings. Government needs to come clean.

I am appalled at yet another blow to conservation in this State and predictably it has come from this State Labor party. Now with this utterly bankrupt appeal to the Federal Government they seek a get out of goal card for the environment, from Peter Garrett. The Federal Minister for the Environment now needs to get out here and come to grips with the issues of protecting biodiversity in Western Sydney. AND - what is our Federal Member David Bradbury doing - eyes focused on his career in the Gillard Government and not watching his back here in the electorate. Bradbury stands by while critically endangered bushland is bulldozed. Greens voters should not reward the self serving smiles and spin by voting him back into government. Greens want action - real action - a genuine commitment to creating & protecting the Cumberland Conservation Corridor. Bradbury can get Peter Garrett out here to meet with us to plan for and fund a sustainable future for our children and a fair go for the bushland that has been here for the last 40,000 years. Bradbury has been approving unsustainable overdevelopment in the Penrith community at every stage for the last decade. Critically endangered bushland is finally being pushed to extinction and he blithely watches it being destroyed each day. It has always amazed me why we vote for people that behave like lawyers and not law makers.

I am encouraged by Brad Hazzard's comments. However, with my greatest respect to him, the people of Western Sydney have heard this many times before. History is quite instructive here. When the Growth Centres plan came out, we treated with the greatest of caution the "future" promise to spend to save priority areas. Well, the future is here, and the promise has vested - but guess what? Our "cynical" fears are being realised, and the promise to save precious bushland is again dissipating. What we need now is not 'future' promises, but an iron-clad commitment to saving priority corridor areas. And it is into this breach that Brad Hazzard can step - and own it - if he has the will. Great community support will come his way if he does.