The EES process & terms dictated by ‘the Brumby cartel’ for the Inquiry is the probably the most manipulated time frame for an State imposed project that has occurred in Vic.
Such is the repeated observations made by Watershed members to the EES Panel and in letters to Ombudsmen and parliamentarians.
It is acknowledged by all legal minds as without precedence: “Very strange, very unusual” said one Barrister when he briefed the newly formed Watershed Victoria group in late September 2008.
Unlike comparable proposals like the proposed (and failed) Nowingi Toxic Waste Facility, the people of South Gippsland and Eastern Melbourne and Mornington Penninsula directly affected by the cobbled together proposal, were given little time and little of no access to resources to prepare their cases on the huge effects on housing, farming, tourism, marine ecology, wetland ecology, migrating whales, and climate change.
Nevertheless the State pushed on with the EES process like a steam train on meth-amphetamines and using the same technology as the steam train era!!