‘Not backing down’: Narrabri bid to reroute inland rail gathers steam

A revolt by a majority of Narrabri shire councillors has bolstered a community push to reroute the inland rail through the region, shining light on the project's links with Santos and the Morrison government's "gas-led recovery".

At an extraordinary council meeting on 15 February, a motion was carried that the general manager provide comprehensive documents and timelines about the status of the inland rail project before the council's ordinary meeting on 22 March. This includes the proposed route of the rail corridor through Narrabri, and any correspondence with government.

The newly elected councillors John Clements, Rohan Boehm and Robert Browning moved the motion after the general manager, Stewart Todd, unilaterally sent a statement in support of the inland rail project to the NSW planning department without consulting other councillors in July 2021. This was followed by a similar public statement from the mayor, Ron Campbell, overturning council's previous environmental concerns about the proposed route.

The episode was the latest in a bruising debate in the Narrabri community about the Australian Rail Track Corporation's (ARTC's) 1,700km freight project and community concerns that decision-makers had gotten the extent of the flood risk wrong.

The newly elected councillors claimed to have a mandate to divert the proposed rail corridor further west to avoid the need for downstream infrastructure that may increase flooding of the Namoi River; while the re-elected Campbell told Guardian Australia that he was up for compromise that would bring broad community benefits.

Meanwhile, Todd had been stood down on special leave pending a performance assessment; and new councillors were concerned that council's flood plain risk management committee's recommendations had been swept aside.

Boehm said during the meeting that "the community is not fully aware, and has not been fully engaged".

Campbell told Guardian Australia "in hindsight, I probably would have got a resolution of council, but at no time was there any opposition through council and largely within the community of the current alignment".

According to Campbell, the decision to unilaterally support the inland rail route was justified because of the project's links to Santos's Narrabri coal seam gas project.

"The whole premise of the northern NSW inland port linked in with gas from Santos for reasonably priced, secure energy linked onto inland rail will give us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to drought-proof ourselves for generations to come, to grow our community, keep our children here to become self-sufficient as a community; create jobs, create opportunity," he said.

"I don't disagree with moving the alignment [of the rail corridor] across but I'm a realist, I realise it's not going to happen and it's too late.

In 2020, the Santos Narrabri gas project received public support from the National party's member for Parkes, Mark Coulton, whose electorate includes Narrabri. At the time, Coulton called the project's approval good news for the Narrabri community due to job opportunities, and he linked the project to "transformational inland rail".

Santos has previously told Guardian Australia that its Narrabri gas project would not benefit from the inland rail, even though a media release touts the benefits of their access to the rail.

In the past, Campbell has left the chamber during council votes on Santos matters, since declaring a conflict of interest as an owner of a waste contractor that services the gas company.

Guardian Australia asked what he knew of ARTC's plans to incorporate a gas pipeline along the rail corridor.

"There's no pipeline alongside the rail. Santos's operation is not far from the northern NSW inland port, so part of the Wilga Park operation, so it'll be a little gas line coming basically across to our port site," he said.

According to Campbell, "conversations with Santos about all that" give Narrabri a "unique opportunity" compared to all the other special activation precinct (SAP) sites along the inland rail "because we have that energy, that reasonably priced, secure energy which no one else has", he said.

"That gas is purely to supply to the port for industries that use a lot of energy. Then you've got the opportunity from there to double-stack containers and go to just about any port in Australia to ship the product out from Narrabri."

The newly elected councillor Greg Lamont said during this week's extraordinary council meeting that in all his years as a member of the Narrabri community, "I've never seen an issue as big as this".

According to Lamont, the inland rail route was a major local government election issue in the community, resulting in 71% of the vote going to seven new councillors.

"It should have been consulted through the community widely," he said.

According to Clements, council's report submitted in response to ARTC's environmental impact statement had abandoned major community concerns around flooding.

After the meeting, Boehm told Guardian Australia that the new council would be "insisting on correct processes, not backing down and only doing what's right for the community".

According to Campbell, negotiations with inland rail before his statement of support for the project in July 2021 were aimed at mitigating flood concerns, including consideration of another site for the controversial section of the route.

"I don't know what reasons they said it wasn't suitable, they'd already looked and investigated those areas," he said.

"We negotiated with them to seriously look at the flooding. We're not going to stand here and have the line turn this place into a dam. They've now taken all of our recent flood studies that have the whole picture put together so they're very well aware of that."

When Guardian Australia asked if there was any documentation with a commitment from the ARTC to mitigate the flooding concerns raised in council's submission, Campbell said he was not sure. "There'll be documentation about them getting all of our flood studies," he said.

The former Narrabri councillor Robert Kneale told Guardian Australia: "I'm not aware of any documentation coming back saying we have received your report and we are addressing those concerns that you had in that report. Nothing has ever come back to council, to the best of my knowledge, that states that," he said.

Some in the Narrabri community accept the current proposed route of the inland rail.

Matt Norrie, a cotton grower whose farm is in the alternative route, said that all available hydrological modelling should be made public. Otherwise, he believed the reasons for putting the line further west was more for aesthetic reasons.

Despite being unsure about whether he would be able to transport his cotton on the rail, he said: "As a farmer this is the infrastructure we've been craving."

Marilyn Binge, a Gomeroi traditional custodian, preferred the alternate route as she said the current proposed route was too close to the waterways already "being stuffed up by the mines, let alone the railway", and would affect more biodiversity.

According to Binge, ARTC and council "didn't consult the community". "They're not worrying about community, culture or anything else."