Sand mining decision will come back to bite

I write to join SGST, BCSC and correspondents in expressing dismay at Planning Minister Richard Wynne’s recent decision on sand mine expansion in the Westernport Woodlands – i.e. approval for Dandy Premix to clear 13 hectares of vegetation for a new pit, massively expand its current pit there, including digging below the water table, and to wash sand on site.

Several arguments against this have already been detailed, from… local conservation tourism to threatened species… all in a forest stand that’s survived in a largely cleared landscape.

DELWP’s draft Distinctive Areas and Landscapes (DAL) Strategy, recently under public consultation, ignores the woodlands as important. It was, in the accompanying map, buried under symbols for ‘industrial zone’! That, and the Minister’s decision, mocks this whole strategy consultation, and lowers any local respect for its outcomes.

South Gippsland’s conservation network is resilient, as I’ve learned over some 30 years of sharing actions, and in the political climate of 2022 this community is unlikely to tolerate the relentless and irreversible destruction of the bushland in question.

In the late 1960s, Victoria’s growing environment movement fought a battle over protection of the Little Desert, in far-west Victoria. Premier Hamer’s government, succeeding that of Bolte, never forgot the bruising it received, and went on to lay a visionary foundation for an enduring conservation regime that’s still evident.

The retiring Minister might be putting his government’s repute on the line, discounting important advances Labor has continued in Bass Coast. His government’s intransigent stand on sand mining here is set to inflame resentment in November.

The Minister would not dare endorse sand mining of a beach at Inverloch or Phillip Island, so what veiled priority is at work behind the large-scale destruction – also for sand – smack down the spine of our remnant coastal woodland?

My elephant hiding in a quarry near here is this: Why are known and mostly suitable sand deposits in central and west Gippsland not being heavily exploited?

Mr Wynne’s silence on such key questions, and his ignoring of his own appointed panel’s warnings while destructive extraction stubbornly expands, leaves us mug voters to conclude that the reasons are political and financial.

Well, why should our environment pay his price? Golden vistas in happy-clappy DAL studies clearly do not define what happens here. In the absence of a stay and review of the Minister’s announcement, the Andrews Labor government should expect a focused local backlash in this election year.

Ken Blackman, Inverloch.