The Coast Community News (CCN) article dated 24 June 2025, titled “Appeal to Commonwealth Ombudsman over Kariong development,” serves as a revealing artifact in the broader campaign of cultural appropriation, environmental conspiracism, and anti-Aboriginal land justice currently unfolding across the Central Coast and Northern Sydney regions. While presented as a report on grassroots community concern, the article in fact performs the ideological work of legitimising settler-colonial narratives disguised as environmental advocacy. The actors at the centre of the article, namely the Coast Environmental Alliance (CEA), spokesperson Lisa Bellamy, and unnamed complainants, are not neutral stakeholders but are deeply embedded in a coordinated network of settler cultism, Indigenous identity fraud, and white possessive logics that aim to displace Aboriginal governance and land rights (Moreton-Robinson, 2015; Watego, 2021).
The core narrative of the article hinges on a dispute between CEA-affiliated groups and the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure (DPHI) over claims published in a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section related to the Kariong rezoning proposal initiated by the Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council (DLALC). The Department’s claim that the rezoning would have “no impact” on cultural heritage, koala habitat, or wetlands is contested by CEA and its supporters, who argue that this constitutes government misinformation. The CCN article uncritically reproduces these assertions while failing to identify CEA’s long record of conspiracist activism, its pseudo-environmentalist agenda, and the fabricated cultural authority on which it rests (Guringai.org, 2025a).
Jake Cassar, the founder of CEA, is well-documented as a purveyor of pseudoarchaeology and spiritualised white nationalism, notably through his promotion of the debunked Kariong “Gosford Glyphs” as proof of ancient Egyptian–Aboriginal contact (Guringai.org, 2025b). This myth has been instrumentalised by CEA and Cassar’s allies to claim spiritual authority over land that DLALC has lawfully reclaimed under the NSW Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983. CEA’s performance of ecological and cultural custodianship has been described as a form of “settler conspirituality”, a blending of conspiracy theory, New Age mysticism, and white environmentalism that recodes Indigenous sovereignty as environmental threat and settler activism as cultural protection (Deloria, 1998; Guringai.org, 2025c).
The spokesperson featured in the article, Lisa Bellamy, is similarly entangled in this network of false custodianship. As detailed in previous reporting, Bellamy has acted as a central voice for the Kariong Progress Association and the Save Kariong Sacred Lands campaign, both of which operate in alignment with the GuriNgai identity fraud movement. This group, comprising non-Aboriginal individuals who falsely claim descent from the historical Carigal of Broken Bay and leaders such as Bungaree, has actively undermined the authority of legitimate Aboriginal organisations including DLALC and MLALC (Bungaree.org, 2025).
Bellamy’s claim that the system allows Aboriginal Land Councils to “unlock” conservation-zoned land for development is a deliberate distortion. The 2019 State Environmental Planning Policy (Aboriginal Land) was created to provide Aboriginal communities with opportunities for economic development and cultural revitalisation after generations of dispossession. That Bellamy likens this to “putting the fox in charge of the henhouse” reveals the deep settler anxiety over the return of land to Aboriginal governance. Her assertion presumes that Aboriginal people are inherently untrustworthy or incapable of managing land without state surveillance—a position steeped in paternalism and racialised mistrust (Moreton-Robinson, 2015).
The CCN article omits any mention of the DLALC, its cultural assessment processes, or its legal authority. Instead, it presents a false dichotomy: a supposedly corrupt planning apparatus versus a grassroots community of defenders of heritage and ecology. This obfuscation is no accident. As demonstrated by Guringai.org (2025d), CCN has systematically platformed CEA figures and GuriNgai identity frauds while excluding legitimate Aboriginal voices. This media capture contributes to what Kolopenuk (2023) describes as a broader strategy of “settler knowledge production”, a retooling of information channels to elevate settler voices as credible and Indigenous ones as suspect or absent.
The structural biases of CCN’s editorial practice are further illuminated in its consistent platforming of non-Aboriginal GuriNgai-affiliated figures while marginalising DLALC. Between 2015 and 2025, CCN published over 60 articles referencing the GuriNgai group, Cassar, Bellamy, or Save Kariong Sacred Lands, while mentioning DLALC in fewer than half as many pieces, often unfavourably. This disparity is not just quantitative but qualitative, with DLALC framed as developers or bureaucrats, and GuriNgai figures described as protectors, custodians, and cultural authorities, despite longstanding evidence that these individuals lack recognised Aboriginal status (Guringai.org, 2025f).
Beyond the text, CCN’s visual and rhetorical framing plays a key role in asserting false cultural authority. Photographs accompanying stories often depict non-Aboriginal figures like Cassar or Howie performing ceremonies under Aboriginal flags, with no contextualisation of their unrecognised status. Such imagery constructs symbolic authority and deepens public confusion about who legitimately speaks for Country. Conversely, DLALC is typically portrayed via zoning maps, construction images, or protest banners, visually coding Aboriginal authority as institutional or corporate rather than cultural or spiritual.
Furthermore, the appeal to the Commonwealth Ombudsman is best understood not as a last-resort effort to seek justice, but as part of a broader settler tactic of bureaucratic resistance, or lawfare. As Maddison (2019) argues, settler actors often invoke state institutions not to protect rights, but to stall or frustrate Aboriginal sovereignty. The complaint outlined in the article is laden with language that mimics Indigenous rights discourse, invoking “Traditional Custodians,” “sacred sites,” and “truth and accountability”, but these terms are mobilised by non-Indigenous people with no recognised cultural standing. This mimicry functions to obscure the very voices and institutions who do speak with authority for Country.
The Kariong case is not isolated. It must be understood as part of a regional pattern of coordinated resistance to Aboriginal land justice, involving the same individuals and groups across multiple sites: from Kincumber and Patyegarang (Lizard Rock) to Northern Beaches and Hornsby. In each case, settler environmentalism is weaponised against Aboriginal-led development, often relying on fabricated genealogies, spiritual mythmaking, and conspiracist epistemologies to claim cultural legitimacy (Guringai.org, 2025e; Bungaree.org, 2025).
In conclusion, the Coast Community News article functions not as journalism but as ideological support for a broader settler campaign of obstruction and erasure. The Coast Environmental Alliance and its affiliates are not marginal protestors but central actors in a well-coordinated network of settler cultism and Indigenous identity fraud. Their appeal to the Commonwealth Ombudsman should be read not as an act of civic accountability but as a strategic continuation of settler resistance to Aboriginal land rights. The real danger here is not merely the delay of one development proposal, but the broader delegitimisation of Aboriginal authority, governance, and truth in public discourse.
References
Bungaree.org. (2025, June 16). Settler environmentalism and the politics of Aboriginal land rights: Coordinated resistance to MLALC and DLALC. https://bungaree.org/2025/06/16/settler-environmentalism-and-the-politics-of-aboriginal-land-rights-coordinated-resistance-to-mlalc-and-dlalc/
Coast Community News. (2025, June 24). Appeal to Commonwealth Ombudsman over Kariong development. https://coastcommunitynews.com.au/central-coast/news/2025/06/appeal-to-commonwealth-ombudsman-over-kariong-development/
Deloria, P. J. (1998). Playing Indian. Yale University Press.
Guringai.org. (2025a, June 6). The false mirror: Settler environmentalism, identity fraud, and the undermining of Aboriginal sovereignty on the Central Coast. https://guringai.org/2025/06/06/the-false-mirror-settler-environmentalism-identity-fraud-and-the-undermining-of-aboriginal-sovereignty-on-the-central-coast/
Guringai.org. (2025b, June 17). Jake Cassar and Coast Environmental Alliance (CEA). https://guringai.org/2025/06/17/jake-cassar-and-coast-environmental-alliance-cea/
Guringai.org. (2025c, June 13). Alt-right conspiracies and the Pretendian phenomenon in Australia. https://guringai.org/2025/06/13/alt-right-conspiracies-and-the-pretendian-phenomenon-in-australia/
Guringai.org. (2025d, June 12). Coast Community News, the Guringai group, and the reframing of Aboriginal custodianship on the Central Coast. https://guringai.org/2025/06/12/coast-community-news-the-guringai-group-and-the-reframing-of-aboriginal-custodianship-on-the-central-coast/
Guringai.org. (2025e, June 14). Save Kincumber Wetlands, Coast Environmental Alliance, and the denial of Aboriginal sovereignty. https://guringai.org/2025/06/14/save-kincumber-wetlands-coast-environmental-alliance-and-the-denial-of-aboriginal-sovereignty/
Guringai.org. (2025f, June 11). Indigenous identity fraud and conspirituality on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, Hornsby Shire and Central Coast of NSW. https://guringai.org/2025/06/11/indigenous-identity-fraud-and-conspirituality-on-the-northern-beaches-of-sydney-hornsby-shire-and-central-coast-of-nsw/
Kolopenuk, J. (2023). The colonial mechanics of Indigenous data. In Data Justice and the Right to be Counted (pp. 121–145). MIT Press.
Maddison, S. (2019). The colonial fantasy: Why white Australia can’t solve Black problems. Allen & Unwin.
Moreton-Robinson, A. (2015). The white possessive: Property, power, and Indigenous sovereignty. University of Minnesota Press.
Watego, C. (2021). Another day in the colony. University of Queensland Press.
Bungaree.org 
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