Live and learn…....

Somebody must have deleted all of Thuggo’s expletives!

John Hayward

So according to Paul Lennon, court action is only blocked during the assessment process which we now know is never-ending.

So… is this true? I thought that Section 11 was also going to apply when the mill was operating.

Lennon has been suckered into believing his own propaganda. But there is no way such an effective piece of legislation was written by this lot of incompetents.

According to the letter, Section 11 was not designed to stop legal objections during the construction stage of the mill nor to bar protests during this construction period. According to John Lennon, it was only designed to allow for the assessment process to proceed unchallenged. If this is true, then it seems that Stuart McElwaine (Gunns Lawyer) has been giving the wrong advice to the local council about this Act preventing the right to refuse the pipeline through the land under their control. Gunns has no automatic right to commence construction on the Trevallyn site and is probably tresspassing.

It also means that the police actions in preparing a task force to arrest demonstrators is not covered by this Act and is possibly an illegal action in itself, as they are preparing to go against the the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that the Federal Government was a signatory to in 1980.

This letter, which I obtained, may turn out to be a very potent weapon in the fight against Gunns.

Barnaby (#6), I hope you are right about the potency of the letter, but I don’t think you are (see mine and other comments on a later thread).

Courts sometimes take into account in construing an Act the second reading speech given by the Minister introducing the Bill. But a simple letter (even by a then Premier) is just an opinion and would stand for nothing against the actual wording of the statute (in my non-professional opinion). It might be worth checking Hansard for the second reading speech for the PMAA bill (which I haven’t yet done).

Barnaby, had you had a few wines? JOHN Lennon? STUART McElwaine? The second is Shaun, unless he’s changed his name lately.

Looks like I upgraded them. John Lennon I actually like!

Perhaps Gunns’ lawyers overdid it in the wording - or perhaps it was intentional. They probably had Lennon’s assurance that he would fix the voting in parliament, pushing it through in one night.
Every blundering bull-like act by Gunns increases public resistance to the company and the mill, confirming Gunns’ arrogance and absence of community spirit.

What if a someone is killed as a result of the construction process? Will clause 11 be used to exclude compensation?