2mo ago

Sydney developer gets 'slap on the wrist' after illegally clearing hundreds of trees to build $3 million mansion

www.abc.net.au

'Damage is done': Trees illegally cut down to build luxury mansion

13 comments

Getting pretty sick of living in a world where the rules only apply to those who can't afford to break them.
The legal system should be an equaliser. The rule for one is the rule for all.
- Absolutely. It should, and unfortunately it won't be until plenty of us get together and force it to.
I heard while in mining that breaches of dust and noise result in fines that act more like a relaxation cost when price of coal is high enough.
At some point a law is more like a purchase price for the wealthy when a final sales value of a home could result surpass 5 mill and the "relaxation" fine is only $50k.
The wealthy value time. Time is an equaliser. Put them in jail. 6 months for every tree past the 5 that might have been allowed in 2008.
The council said it was too complex for them and somehow there was no mention of incompetence in the article.
That “mansion” is ugly as sin.
They should also be fining the Bulldozer driver who happily cleared the land without siting a permit.
- They did.. the company who did the work got fined $55k
  
  Nice, I didn't see that in the article.
Under an agreed vegetation management plan prepared for Mr Abara, he must plant almost 600 trees and a mix of 38,000 other plants to achieve that.
$5 says he doesn't
Looks like a mortuary
*McMansion
That looks like a lot of land and extra rooms for 3m in Sydney. It’s a pity they don’t say why the case was dismissed. Was it a settlement for that piddly amount, plus restoring it?
- "The complexities of this case is above and beyond what sometimes you can take through [the courts] and we've got limited actions as a council,"
  The only answer is they're too incompetent. He means to say, either the council laws themselves that they create, has too many loopholes like the ambiguous 2008 relaxation, or they aren't equipped to enforce the laws they have. In other words if you bully them, they'll fold since they're not competent to stand up.
  
  Haha, yes. If the laws are too complex, that's the councils fault. If the laws are too simple for complex matters, that's the councils fault.
  It's been my experience with neighbours that are a menace that they get away with it by being abrasive and abusive to council. They just don't want to deal with them. It's a sad state of affairs.

13 comments