Protest the Wilpinjong coal mine expansion at simultaneous events in Sydney and Mudgee:
9:30am, Tuesday 29th November
MUDGEE: outside Mudgee Town Hall (Market St). Here's the Mudgee protest on facebook.
SYDNEY: Martin Place (between Phillip and Elizabeth). Here's the Sydney protest on facebook.
Also, we'd love it if you could take a few moments to lodge a formal objection to the Wilpinjong mine expansion.
Coming to Mudgee from out of town? It's worth the trip!
If you're coming up on Monday please join us at Wollar Memorial Hall from 5pm onwards. We'll put on a barbecue, and you can camp there outside the hall, or sleep inside (BYO bedding). After the protest the following morning you're invited on a tour of The Drip at 11:30am Tuesday, a spectacular wet gorge now protected from coal mining after a long running community campaign. Check out this map for the full itinerary.
Why are we protesting?
The NSW Government is holding a poxy “public consultation” on the proposed Wilpinjong coal mine expansion.
They've invited us all to a public hearing, put on by the Planning Assessment Commission, where we'd be allowed a maximum of five minutes to outline the reasons we object to a project that even the NSW Department of Planning admits will cause the extinction of the Upper Hunter community of Wollar.
We've been to these “public hearing” events before. We speak, but nobody listens. The facts do not count. The decision does not change. Even when the Commission makes good recommendations, they get ignored.
The worst thing is – it takes away our legal right to raise our objections in a court of law, where facts do count.
By directing the PAC to hold a public hearing into the Wilpinjong mine expansion, NSW Planning Minister Rob Stokes has deliberately denied us our legal rights. And we're fed up. Community groups wrote to the Minister in September asking him not to take away our legal rights to challenge this project, but he's gone and done it anyway. He's hoping that we'll accept the rigged rules of his game and just play along, even though we know we'll lose.
Well, we won't. While the PAC is holding its ridiculous circus inside Mudgee Town Hall, we're going to be protesting on the streets. We need to show Minister Stokes that we will not participate in a meaningless stunt that serves only to take away our legal rights. We actually want to stop the Wilpinjong coal mine expansion.
We will have simultaneous protests in Mudgee and in Sydney, as the PAC begins its hearing. Please join us to stand with the community of Wollar against this coal mine.
