19/11/2025
This is so important, the Draft Central Coast Conservation Plan has been called "The Biggest Threat to Central Coast Environment in Our Lifetime”.
In short:
This plan is equal to paving 2,500 football fields with concrete to create poorly planned, unsustainable urban sprawl. Factor this in with the infrastructure crisis on the Central Coast this plan fails the community and the environment. It is pure madness.
It is a plan that excludes Traditional Custodians and therefore cannot claim legitimacy. It threatens areas of global cultural significance from the north to the south of the Central Coast.
The plan’s claims of affordable housing is a lie due to the cost of biodiversity offsets going straight to the home buyers, totalling $9,500 per new dwelling.
The Draft Central Coast Strategic Conservation Plan:
Fails ecologically — enabling mass clearing and extinction.
Fails socially — ignoring community and culture.
Fails economically — inflating costs and killing tourism.
Fails strategically — entrenching sprawl, not sustainability.
Fails ethically — dressing destruction in the language of conservation.
We do not consent to this process or this plan.
Conservation Plan is a Con says next two speakers
Jake Cassar and third speaker Lisa Bellamy are speaking against the Conservation Plan from the State Government that council has reviewed and will decide tonight how to respond to it.
Jake said the community had spoken and said the question was: who will act on their wishes.
Below is the speech from Lisa Bellamy, a Kariong resident.
Please note she didn't get to say it all but it what she sent earlier to Council Watch.
Central Coast Draft Strategic Conservation Plan
Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.
I stand here as a long-term Central Coast resident, a grandmother, and
someone who has attended enough Council meetings to know that
sometimes it feels like the community’s voice doesn’t matter. Seven
councillors consistently vote to protect our social and environmental
values, while eight seem prepared to support whatever makes things
easier for developers — even when it erodes our way of life.
I truly hope tonight is different.
Because what is being called a “Strategic Conservation Plan” is not
a conservation plan at all.
The community has not been told the full story. Here are the basic
facts:
The Plan is 3,000 pages long, with 265 maps, and took five years
to prepare — yet the public was given just six weeks to comment.
Few residents even know the Plan exists because the
communication was appalling and inadequate.
Traditional descendants were not consulted, despite clear cultural
and legal obligations to do so.
40% of the land assessed is “not urban capable”, yet that land
receives no real protection under the plan.
60% of the land is classed as “urban capable”, regardless of
ecological value.
Around 40% of the land wasn’t even surveyed for biodiversity.
The Plan was supposed to avoid, then mitigate, then offset — but
instead it skips straight to offsets, the weakest and most unreliable
tool in the system.
It effectively grants a 30-year licence to bulldoze bushland, with
five-year reviews — far too slow to protect species that weren’t
detected or were poorly surveyed.
The “wildlife corridors” are fragmented, narrow, and scientifically
unworkable.
Even the Plan itself admits it will cause serious and irreversible
impacts.
This is not strategic.
It is not conservation.
It is clearing dressed up as planning.
But I don’t just want to give you facts — I want to appeal to your
humanity.
Imagine if the government announced that one-third of the human
population would be wiped out, and the public had only weeks to
comment. People would be outraged.
Yet this Plan will directly destroy hundreds of millions of plants and
uncountable birds, reptiles, and mammals.
When bushland is clear-felled, wildlife does not simply “move on.”
They die.
The mother bird who returns to find her tree — and her nest — gone.
The possum asleep in a hollow with her joey, crushed under a bulldozer.
The goannas, wallabies, echidnas — thrown into shrinking scraps of
habitat that cannot sustain them.
This is the reality behind the bureaucratic language.
And then what?
What is Council’s plan for the dead and injured wildlife?
For the gridlocked roads?
For the schools, childcare, hospitals, sewer and water systems that are already at breaking point?
Kariong already has terrible water pressure — what happens when
another 70 houses are added?
What is the plan for Woy Woy Road?
How does any of this fit with being an eco-tourism destination?
Mount Penang Gardens, Somersby, Norah Head, Summerland Point,
our lakes, wetlands and hinterland — all placed at risk of becoming a sea of rooftops.
We already have a homelessness crisis.
Urban sprawl will not fix it.
But this plan will certainly benefit developers including one
particular local private landowner and developer, openly given
favouritism in this plan.
And the way it has been delivered — rushed consultation, missing
surveys, poor transparency, misinformation disseminated by the Minister
for the Central Coast — is the kind of thing that raises ICAC-level
concerns.
Councillors, you should also know this: this plan has united the
Central Coast like never before.
Dozens of groups — progress associations, birdwatchers, plant
societies, lagoon care, landcare, wildlife rescuers, Future Sooner, the
ACF Central Coast — as well as thousands of residents from all political
backgrounds, have joined forces.
People who have never met, who don’t always agree on things are
standing together because this plan is so clearly wrong.
And more join every day as they learn the truth and what is at stake.
So I ask you plainly:
Will you represent your community — or not?
Councillors: We are the future ancestors of the Central Coast.
One day people will look back and ask what legacy was left.
How do you want to be remembered?
I am asking you — on behalf of the people who love this place — to
stand with your community and oppose this plan.
Tell the State Government that the Central Coast is not a resource to be mined to meet rushed, questionable housing targets.
We are a community with precious bushland, unique wildlife, and a way of life worth protecting.
Please do not sacrifice the future of this Coast for short-term political convenience or developer profit.
End of Lisa Bellamy's speech
