Outside city hall before last night's council meeting
Friends of the Laman St trees doing their thing last night
What a great feeling to be able to celebrate an all-too-rare victory for the community and common-sense at a Newcastle Council meeting last night, when councillors voted to save Laman Street's majestic avenue of giant figs from the chainsaw.
The current council is dominated by conservative "independents" (they call themselves this, despite accepting donations from vested interests, such as developers), many of whom were long ago - and all-too-willingly - captured by the council administration.
On 17 August, the council decided (by a 5-7 vote) to remove all 14 of the Laman Street figs "as soon as possible", refusing to consult any further with the community on a range of options for the future of the trees that the community had never had an opportunity to scrutinise and discuss.
In the ensuing period, the community learned that the council intended to circumvent the normal requirements of the NSW Environmental Planning and Assessment Act by using a section of the Roads Act intended to allow roads authorities to remove trees for road works or to remove a traffic hazard.
As far as I have been able to establish, this strategy had never been previously mentioned by council officers, and came to light just before the chainsaws were about to move in. To stop the imminent removal of the trees, the Parks and Playgrounds Movement lodged an injunction.
The ensuing case in the Land and Environment Court turned on the interpretation of the wording of s.88 of the NSW Roads Act. The council argued that the Act allowed them to ignore normal planning requirements, and the PPM argued that it didn't.
Eventually, the Court found in favour of the council's interpretation. The judge noted the contrast in the wording of that section of the NSW Act with the equivalent provision in the Victorian Roads Act, which would not allow a council to circumvent normal planning requirements to remove trees where there was no genuine immediate need to do so.
Because of the clear public interest nature of the case, the judge determined that each side should bear its own costs. The council's legal costs were around $150,000.
The Land and Environment Court decision on the interpretation of the NSW Roads Act (which has not been tested by appeal) was a landmark decision, indicating a need to change the NSW legislation to clarify that it is an emergency power, and to stop roads authorities from misusing it to get rid of trees where there is no genuine urgent need.
However, the legal proceedings did provide valuable time for further discussion between the community and councillors on the future of the Laman St trees, and eventually enough councillors were persuaded to change their minds about the need to immediately remove them, and to put in place a risk management and monitoring regime aimed at preserving them.
Of course, the intervening period has also demonstrated incontrovertibly - in the courtroom of nature and reality - that there really was no need to immediately remove the trees on the spurious risk grounds argued by the council, since not a single tree has fallen over or damaged anyone or anything during that time.
The original decision was an over-reaction, driven by an administration in panic mode, whipped up by a risk-aversion industry that itself often poses the greatest risk to valuable community assets.
I recall in my time as a Newcastle councillor in the 1990s that it was once seriously proposed to construct a chainmesh fence along all the elevated sections of Newcastle's coastline to prevent the risk of accidental or deliberate falls. Common sense prevailed, and the idea was quickly scotched.
In the case of the Laman St trees, it's taken longer for common sense to prevail. On the night it decided to axe the trees as soon as possible, the council voted against an alternative motion (from Greens councillor Michael Osborne) to consult with the community on all the available options, which had never previously been scrutinised or discussed by the community. It's a pity that the council's refusal to do this at this crucial moment in the decision-making process ended up causing so much community anxiety and costing Newcastle ratepayers around $150,000.
All this could have been avoided if the council had been prepared to engage more positively and genuinely with the community on the future of the trees, rather than preemptively ramming through a decision that hardly anyone in the community supported, and that pandered to an extreme and bureaucratically driven form of risk aversion.
It remains to be seen whether senior council staff will accept the new decision of the elected council, and change their approach to a more cooperative engagement with the community.
Congratulations to the councillors who eventually came through for the community.
For the record, last night's vote to save the trees was:
For:
- Graham Boyd (Independent),
- Sharon Claydon (Labor),
- Shayne Connell (Independent),
- Tim Crakanthorp,
- Mike Jackson (Labor),
- Nuatali Nelmes (Labor),
- Michael Osborne (Greens), and
- John Tate (Independent).
- Bob Cook (Independent),
- Mike King (Independent),
- Brad Luke (Liberal), and
- Scott Sharpe (Independent).
The biggest congratulations go to the amazingly talented and committed group of grassroots community campaigners who came together so effectively to save this wonderful asset (you know who you are).
