Doug Lithgow President of the Parks and Playgrounds Movement described the announced Stockton Bight National Park as a "fizzer" and more about vested interests than concern for the future conservation of the Bight.

The failure to include the heart of Stockton Bight in the National Park as an essential unit will have to be rectified.

The Carr Government had been delaying the promised National park for years and has at last put its idea on the table. The details announced include 1905ha.National, Park, 818ha.State Recreational Area, 1475ha.Regional Park and 804ha.Aboriginal Community Land.

Parks and Playgrounds Movement is concerned that parkland announcement was cynically timed to create a diversion to hide the impact of the consent to the sand-mining of half the length of the Stockton Bight that has just been made.

The distribution and status of the proposals opens the Bight to further exploitation by mining and sand extraction. The open go for mining of the ‘Aboriginal Community Land’ is deplored.

Stockton Bight is the Newcastle Region’s most distinctive natural coastal area. It is an awe-inspiring natural phenomenon containing significant aboriginal sites. It is an important acquifer recharge area and has a unique reversing dune field backed by old growth coastal woodland and captured dunes. The outer barrier system extends 28 kilometres from Newcastle to Anna Bay in the Port Stephens Local Government area. The aquifer is Newcastle’s reserve water supply.

The Bight was promised as a National Park by the ALP when Bob Carr was in opposition.

The conservative government of the day only offered the Bight as a State Recreation Area..

It was to be gazetted in the ALP’s first term in office but it wasn’t. An announcement has only been made now after mining and sand extraction has been entrenched in the Bight.

The SRA in the southern quarter of the Bight is being mined now and turned upside down and presents a sorry sight that will be extended over more than half the Bight during the next 10 years.

The mining damage includes powerlines haul roads artificial undifferentiated dunes and debilitated margins and weed growth.

It has also been announced that the whole of the 28km. of the Bight is to be granted to the Local Aboriginal Land Council under the 1983 NSW Aboriginal Land Rights Act with the condition that the proposed park areas be leased back to the Government.

Parks and Playgrounds Movement is the one local organisation that has continued to work for the conservation of the Bight for 30 years and we are annoyed that we haven’t been informed of the details of the latest proposals. We have written to the Premier seeking details and asking that a condition be placed on the title that the land will be open to the public in perpetuity.