THE first stages of the giant Cobaki Lakes township beside the Queensland border, west of the Gold Coast Airport, were last night given an official green light.

Members of the NSW Northern Joint Regional Planning Panel, appointed by the NSW Government and Tweed Shire

Council, voted to approve the first two subdivisions in the huge project, which is expected to eventually accommodate 5000 homes.

But the approval, which came with just one member of the panel dissenting, followed a barrage of last-minute attempts by green groups, community activists, an ecologist and a Gold Coast City councillor to block the project.

The NSW Greens party even tried unsuccessfully late yesterday morning to have the NSW Parliament intervene to block approval in what Upper House MP David Shoebirdge des-cribed as an attempt “to save koalas”.

Fourteen speakers took more than two hours to plead with the panel members at the Tweed Heads Civic Centre to either reject or defer the developer’s applications for the first two subdivisions, which could provide nearly 1000 home sites.

They cited technical and legal arguments, concerns about koalas and other environmental issues, potential traffic problems and alarm that small lost sizes might set a precedent for other developments.

Gold Coast City councillor Sue Robbins warned of future traffic problems saying: “What developers will be selling to people is a ticket to grid-lock”.

The decision was welcomed by developers, the Leda Group, whose regional manager Reg van Rij said he believed the “Tweed community as a whole is generally content with the idea of Cobaki proceeding”.

He said the area had been zoned for development for 20 years.

The only member of the five-man planning panel to vote against a recommendation for approval by Tweed Shire Council planning staff, who insisted on more than 150 conditions for each approval, was Dr Ned Wales, who is an assistant Professor of Urban Planning at Bond University on the Gold Coast.

Panel chairman Garry West warned that the development could still require Federal Government environmental approval.