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The Byron Shire Echo Volume 38 #16 • September 27, 2023
It’s a done deal!
C
ongratulations to Council staff and Mayor Michael Lyon on convincing the NSW Labor government that Byron Shire is a unique place, and as such, it will now have a tailored holiday letting policy – see page 1. While clearly this will not ease any housing stress overnight, it could be considered partly addressing the issue, as Planning Minister, Paul Scully, points out. His media release also points out his government’s demand that Council deliver its ‘commitment to increase housing supply… to deliver over 4,500 houses by 2041’. So over the next 18 years, 250 houses will be built per year. Anyway, while politicians pat themselves on their backs, what the public are not privy to are the closed door deals, made on your behalf. It seems very coincidental that in the same week of the 60-day cap announcement, councillors will presumably vote to publicly exhibit an extensive development blueprint at this Thursday’s meeting. It aims to create more housing than previously planned – see page 1. Did the mayor make a secret agreement with the planning department/and or minister to increase Byron’s housing capacity in exchange for a 60-day cap? Get ready for a public relations campaign where we are told this level of growth is inevitable. Part of Council’s public relations campaign appears misleading. In a press release last week entitled ‘Housing Byron Shire’s future population – how and where’, the mayor again conflated the need to appease the NSW Labor government’s demands to increase development with the chronic homelessness problem. He said, ‘We have the highest rate of rough sleepers in NSW; we have
a community still reeling from the floods; we have people who cannot find affordable long-term housing and we have businesses who can’t find staff because workers can’t afford to live here’. Will increased dwellings address that? On the face of it, perhaps somewhat, yet it’s unclear who essential workers on stagnant, low incomes, will get a home. It’s a complex issue that has much more to do with social housing. Building more houses, which are generally used as investments to generate wealth, does not provide a home to those without one. Social housing is generally funded by state governments, but hasn’t been in decades, especially in NSW. As pointed out on page 8 by local MP Tamara Smith, last week’s NSW budget did not include much in the way of social housing. And any mention of ‘affordable housing’ should be considered with scepticism, because the metrics that facilitate it are not fit for purpose. That includes Council’s Affordable Housing Contribution Policy, which is aimed at securing roughly 20 per cent of a greenfield site, which would be retained by Council to be presumably passed onto a affordable housing provider to develop and manage. The Affordable Housing Contribution Policy is tied to the SEPP 70, which defines ‘affordable’ on median household income for the Sydney Statistical Division, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Currently that’s $2,077. A ‘very low income household’ is defined in the SEPP as less than 50 per cent of that. So – will all this development lead to more social equity, or will it further enable those with investment properties to expand their portfolios at the expense of those who cannot get into the market? Hans Lovejoy, editor
A short history of cruelty P rime Minister Anthony Albanese went to the last election promising to end live sheep exports from Australia. This rubbery promise has since been rolled back to his government’s second term (assuming they get one). The independent panel’s long-awaited report to the federal government on the issue has now also been delayed, from this week to late October. The last time a Labor government did anything brave on the animal export issue was in 2011, when Julia Gillard’s Agriculture Minister, Joe Ludwig, banned live cattle exports to Indonesia, following evidence of extreme and widespread cruelty recorded by the charity Animals Australia. That ban lasted only a month, but led to very expensive lawsuits, allegations that the minister had overstepped his authority, and no lasting improvements in the lives (and deaths) of the animals concerned.
Whistle-blowing Animals Australia have since continued their courageous whistle-blowing, spearheaded by their Director of Strategy, Lyn White AM, who spent 20 years in the police force and appears to be quite undaunted by threats from those who believe money is more important than suffering. In New Zealand, the export of all live animals has recently been banned (following the deaths of 41 crew members and 6,000 cattle in a 2020 shipwreck), but in Australia these practices continue unabated, mostly out of sight and out of mind, as the industry prefers. The animal export trade has a long and inglorious history here, firstly between the colonies, then to neighbouring countries, and later to the far side of the world. During one week in 1864, 120 cattle from a cargo of 180 died on one ship, 140 out of 171 died on another, and 130 sheep were lost from 200 on a third vessel – and that was just crossing the Tasman. In 1877, after the deaths of
‘Large numbers of animals, particularly sheep, continue to die en route or after delivery in appalling conditions, and the limited protections of Australian law vanishing once the animals leave our shores’.
David Lowe numerous sheep on a train, a correspondent to the Brisbane Courier said confining animals without adequate food or water was ‘as gross a case of cruelty as it is possible to conceive.’ In the 21st century, stories of mass deaths of transported animals owing to extreme heat, thirst, overcrowding, injuries and equipment failure have become commonplace. Australians love to point the finger at other countries in regard to animal cruelty, but the fact is that while you can’t stuff a sheep into your car boot before sacrificing it here, like in Oman, you can literally get away with murder if the animal in question isn’t a pet, as long as you do it behind a factory wall. The hypocrisy around ‘production animals’ means industry interests trump animal welfare in every Australian state. Mistreating and killing baby animals is essentially business as usual for industrial livestock farming, with examples including meat, chickens bred to grow so unnaturally fast that they can’t naturally survive beyond a few weeks old, pigs gassed and then having their throats cut, calves being snatched from their mothers to aid milk and veal production, and ducks not being allowed to live on water in their natural state. The live export situation is even worse, with large numbers of animals, particularly sheep, continuing to die en route or after delivery in appalling conditions, and the limited protections of Australian law vanishing once the animals leave our shores. Fines for revealing the truth of commercial animal exploitation
have become increasingly onerous, with industry pressure leading Australia to follow the US, where in some states the penalties for revealing animal cruelty (even using drones) are now more extreme than those for actual terrorism against humans, under ‘ag-gag’ laws.
Draconian laws Ironically, some of the hidden camera techniques used by Animals Australia overseas, on ships, and in countries to which we export, with the results then being shown on Australian television, are completely illegal if used here. These are the films which forced the Gillard and Albanese governments to actually do something about the export trade. In terms of live sheep exports, the independent expert panel set up by the Albanese government has now received 4,100 submissions, following 80 meetings with industry and other stakeholders (particularly in Western Australia), who have largely lobbied furiously for the status quo to remain, despite the decline of the live export industry. It will be revealing to see whether the government acts upon delivery of the final report, creating a precedent, or loses its nerve and hopes Australia forgets about the ongoing cycle of cruelty, allowing sheep and other animals to continue being delivered to an awful fate. Q David Lowe is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
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Your guide to maintaining health and wellbeing in Byron and the Northern Rivers 12 The Byron Shire Echo ĕżƐĕŔćĕſ ǩǮǽ ǩǧǩǪ
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