Magali and Brian McDuffie
Opponents of a new bypass through Tugun, in northern NSW, say the state-federal supported development will endanger hundreds of species of plants and animals and ride roughshod over an important Aboriginal site, the Murraba Landscape.
Tugun is at the southern end of the Gold Coast, near the NSW and Queensland border. As with many areas along the Pacific Highway, it is plagued with traffic problems. Surveys for a bypass road started in 1998, with four options emerging. On December 22, 2005, premiers Morris Iemma and Peter Beattie approved the C4 option and federal minister for the environment and heritage Senator Ian Campbell, followed suit on February 24. The Gold Coast Airport Authority is also involved.
But in the first challenge to legislation passed last year, the Tugun Cobaki Alliance (TCA), supported by a senior counsel and the Environmental Defenders Office in Sydney, took the NSW government to court over the approval process. The amendment to the NSW Planning Act, which the Sydney Morning Herald described as a "developers' banquet" means that the NSW planning minister can override any expert's advice or opposition to the proposed works if they deem the project to be a "major, critical infrastructure".
The TCA lost the court case and is now considering an appeal and other legal options.
The Tugun bypass is yet another case of developer greed: what's being built is not a bypass, but a road to service big business. Developers have three industrial developments and two huge residential developments ready to go after the bypass is finished.
There are more than 800 species of native plants and animals of significance in the Cobaki precinct, 55 of which are on international, national and state endangered species lists. There are also five endangered ecological communities, 37 "matters of national environmental significance", 244 native terrestrial fauna, 473 native plant species and 175 species of birds, 26 of which are listed under the Camba-Jamba treaties.
These treaties, between China, Japan and Australia, recognise the importance of the East Australian Coast Migratory Flyway and are designed to ensure that governments protect bird habitat, and the bypass approvals undermine that. The proposed motorway and its 1 kilometre-long tunnel will also destroy the fragile wetlands.
Two scientists who worked on the environmental impact statement, Dr Stephen Phillips and Dr Jean-Marc Hero, say the construction will lead to the local extinction of the green thigh frog, the wallum sedge frog, the wallum froglet and two endangered mammals, the planigale and the long-nose potoroo. More than 100 flora species will be destroyed. This includes a very rare and endangered swamp orchid. Most of these species are on the path of the Tugun Bypass, and cannot easily be successfully relocated.
The C4 option will also endanger the Murraba Landscape, for thousands of years the meeting point for the area's Indigenous peoples. This site has even been documented by explorers including Joseph Banks and John Oxley. Archaeological surveys over the last 20 years indicate that this is the last site complex of its type in the region. A small part of the area was put on the National Estate register in the 1990s, but not enough to preserve the overall cultural significance.
While a bora ceremonial ring was destroyed in the 1940s during the construction for the airport, numerous middens, tool-making sites, scarred trees and potential burial sites, remain intact. But the consultation process with the traditional community was flawed. Out of the 177 people registered as interested parties, approximately 170 oppose the bypass and are calling for more in-depth archaeological, sociological and anthropological surveys of the area. The local Aboriginal community has tried to get an injunction to stop the works, but to no avail. According to them putting a major road through the middle of Murraba Landscape is equivalent to building a highway through the grounds of Parliament House.
While a lot of people stand to make a lot of money from this road, it is costing taxpayers $80 million a kilometre for a road that is not any shorter, or longer, than the existing one. The estimated costs involved have now gone over the $600 million mark. The controversial tunnel — a construction feat never attempted before — will involve removing 240,000 tonnes of soil contaminated with acid sulphates, a few hundred metres from the Cobaki Broadwater.
There are other options, the easiest one being to upgrade the highway on the current alignment, which could sustain another four lanes, with a series of overpasses or underpasses. This would cost a fraction of what is being spent on the C4, and it would have no cultural or environmental impact. But it would certainly prevent a lot of development.
The last word should go to traditional descendant Jackie McDonald who has been spearheading the fight against the C4 bypass for nearly seven years. "When will our people be able to say no, and no will be respected? If this desecration continues, our history will just become a verbal account, and a fading memory."
[The authors have made a documentary, Bypassed: the Erosion of our Environmental and Heritage Laws which features interviews with world-renowned scientists, experts, traditional owners, and environmental campaigners. For more information or to order a DVD, contact <pandion@aapt.net.au> or (02) 6677 9016.]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, July 26, 2006.
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