A Penrith Labor Councillor has stated the producers of a YouTube video criticising Councils rezoning of Aboriginal Land should be arrested. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfdVzeNozcQ&feature=youtu.be

At last night’s Ordinary Meeting of Penrith Council a rescission motion was debated seeking to reverse a decision by Council that it’s Stage 2 Local Environmental Plan (LEP) rezone a further 114 hectares of Priority Conservation Land (PCL) owned by the Deerubbin Local Aboriginal Land Council (DLALC) to RU4 Primary Production Small Lots allowing 2 hectare subdivision of heavily vegetated bushland. In Stage 1 of the LEP Council had already allowed about 500 ha of the DLALC PCL to be zoned RU4.

The NSW Government has a Cumberland Plain Recovery Plan which in order to succeed seeks to protect the identified Priority Conservation Lands. Councils LEP in zoning the DLALC owned PCL as RU4 undermines the recovery of the threatened species and ecological communities of western Sydney. NSW OEH advice to Council was that Priority Lands should be zoned E2 Environmental Conservation.

Labor Councillor Karen McKeown in speaking against the rescission motion stated she had met earlier in the day with the DLALC and was appalled at the disrespect shown to the DLALC in that no one had picked up the phone to speak to them and that permission was not sought from the DLALC to film the YouTube video on their land. She went on to say the police should be called to arrest these trespassers. Clr McKeown went on to argue the DLALC were seeking to conserve their lands.

“Karen McKeown, in speaking for the ALP, has got most of it wrong. She ought to go and read the DLALC Business Plan to learn that the DLALC have a property portfolio of over 15,000 hectares. They don’t just own land in Penrith. That they are seeking financial returns from their land holdings. That attempts by Councils to reduce the value of their land (such as with E2 zones) will be the subject of complaints to Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and that the Darug people (which claim traditional ownership), who oppose the DLALC, are extinct in western Sydney.

“Clr McKeown in claiming the high moral ground needs to reflect on her comments. Did Clr McKeown also meet with the Darug? Did the Councillor read the advice of the NSW Government to Penrith Council that Priority Conservation Lands be zoned E2? Did the DLALC tell her that WSCA had initiated two informal meetings with them in recent months to discuss how to assist them with obtaining income streams to help conserve their land? Was she told that the DLALC has not responded to any of our recent correspondence? Clr McKeown herself never responds to any correspondence from WSCA.

“Clr McKeown can’t be serious to argue the DLALC seek to protect their land when they paid a consultant to produce a report and lobby Council arguing for 5 further development options, totalling 114 ha, within their Priority Conservation Lands. If the DLALC were seeking their land conserved then all they need to do is pick up the phone to the NSW Government and agree to enter into a Biobanking Agreement or sell them the land.

“In response to Clr McKeowns call for us to be arrested for trespassing on the DLALC land to make a video highlighting Councils flawed assessment process I say that you are clueless about what it takes to protect Penrith’s environment. Penrith Council trumpets the recent protection of the 181 ha Cranebrook Nature Reserve but they forget that this land was saved from a developers bulldozer due to people power, people trespassing on the land to photograph, video and document the extent of threatened species that the developer of that land had failed to include in its ecological reports. Public tours were illegally run on that land that facilitated the groundswell of public opposition.

“Our YouTube clip was shot mostly from the road or the public footpath. The shots from the DLALC land were within about 20 metres of the road. If Clr McKeown is truly serious about arresting trespassers on the DLALC lands then she should be targeting not those seeking to conserve it but those ruining it. These lands are huge, largely unfenced; they are used daily for trail bike and horse riding, four wheel driving, rubbish dumping, firewood gathering etc. The odd body gets found dumped out there. They’re the criminals Clr McKeown not us.