News
27 February, 2026
Premier on Repoly site: 'Maybe we got it wrong?'
A couple of Moss Vale residents, Anna Phillips and Peter Arkins were able to get a hearing with Premier Chris Minns and Minister for Emergency Services, Jihad Dib when they visited Moss Vale Fire Station on Thursday morning.
A couple of Moss Vale residents, Anna Phillips and Peter Arkins were able to get a hearing with Premier Chris Minns and Minister for Emergency Services, Jihad Dib when they visited Moss Vale Fire Station on Thursday morning.
They were joined by Councillor Sara Moylan who also attended to hear what the Premier had to say.
Both the Premier and Minister Dib also held a press conference with us at The Southern Wire, ABC Illawarra and other media representatives, with a question being asked about the Department of Planning potentially 'making an error' in potentially approving a factory the size of Repoly, with Moss Vale having only retained firefighters and only one fire truck.
"Look, they may well have, and we have to take and accept the decision in court - it is before the courts at the moment," the Premier said.
"We also accept the decision of the Independent Planning and assessment panel (the IPC) - this is why we have it in NSW, so that there can be a third party that's not in Government that can make a decision - even one that might run counter to what the Government or the Department thought in the first instance. We ultimately want to bring the community along with us and we've got faith in these independent assessment panels and the courts."
Moss Vale resident Anna Phillips was one of those who attended the press conference, and she spoke to the Premier afterwards about her hope that the plastics factory would not be approved, and to express her concerns that if there was a fire at the facility, it would take a specialised HAZMAT fire tanker close to 90 minutes to reach Moss Vale to put the blaze out.
There is a HAZMAT tanker at Mittagong, but any other ones required to fight a large blaze would have to come from as far away as Oran Park, Goulburn or even Canberra, well over 1 hour away.
Ms. Phillips pointed to a recent fire at a smaller plastics recycling facility in Sydney’s west at St Mary’s, which needed significant resources sent to it to put the blaze out.
“The St Mary’s fire was in an industrial area, and it was a small facility, and it was like a tenth of what this facility here at Moss Vale will potentially be,” she said.
“Over 40 fire trucks went to that blaze at St Mary's, and when you look at the capacity of what they had to do, these facilities we have at Moss Vale are still not going to be adequate. The time it would take to evacuate a blaze of that level would be phenomenal – you will be evacuating aged-care, schools, everybody.”
Ms. Phillips said the site chosen by Repoly is only 150 meters from homes, and adjacent to the Garvan Institute Medical Research facility, known locally as ‘The Mouse House’.
“I just really wanted to speak to the Premier about the time when we spoke to him on ABC Radio back in 2024, when he said ‘Anna, trust the process’,” she said.
“Our community submitted almost 3,000 submissions to the Independent Planning Commission (IPC), and they were our ‘ethics committee’ in effect.
"They refused this project in January 2025, and this community had a victory for all the right reasons.”
However in late 2025, SHM was shocked to hear that the developer, then known as Plasrefine, had changed their name to Repoly, and had reapplied to have the site (located at the end of Beaconsfield Rd in Moss Vale) approved again, however this time they had applied to the NSW Land and Environment Court, and had appointed some top lawyers to fight the case.
The appeal is set to be heard on March 19.
Mr. Minns asked Ms. Phillips to clarify her point about the Garvan Institute, and what effect the Repoly site may have on it.
“I told him that it was a world-renowned research facility and said to him that most of all Premier, this site is still on Sydney’s drinking water catchment,” she said.
“The risk is real, and I said to him people have offered to buy this land but have been refused. Why is this piece of land so damn important - why?”
She also reiterated to the Premier that the community was having to raise under $1 million to fight the process in the NSW Land and Environment Court.
“I said the trauma on this community is just paramount at the moment,” she said.
“It’s never been the right site from the get-go.”
Ms. Phillips also stated that she understood the Premier had a job to do and has his departments in the State Government that he assigns to the various ministers.
“I did mention to him that when Penny Sharpe (the current NSW Environment Minister) was in Opposition, she stood there and said this (the Repoly site) is not the right place for this, and that it shouldn’t happen,” Ms. Phillips said.
“And so, I told the Premier - she is now currently your Environment Minister.
“I do feel, however, really pleased to at least have had the opportunity to speak with the Premier, and I hope it sowed some seed, because the State Government should have been our ‘ethics committee’- we should not have to be fighting like we are now – the IPC saw what we saw, and they saw the risk and knew this was not the right site.
“But because of law, here we are in the Land and Environment Court. This community will go down fighting, and the hardest thing about this is that we must have deep pockets and it has just worn our community down so much.”
Fellow advocate against Repoly, Peter Arkins, who was also present at the meeting with Ms. Phillips, said that he wasn’t overly confident that they would get an adequate response.
“Premier Minns is just a typical ‘pollie’ like the rest of them – he sounded interested and listened to us, but ultimately it’s really just ‘lip-service’ and ‘apple pie and motherhood statements’,” Mr. Arkins said.
“If he was really serious about microplastics and other dangerous chemicals leaching into Sydney’s water system, he would be outraged.”
He also reiterated to the Premier that it will be a major issue going into the next election in 2027 for the people of the Southern Highlands.
“If this project does get approved and the Labor government was seen to have done nothing about it, they are going to have some serious explaining to do then,” Mr. Arkins said.
“There are 53,000 residents of the Southern Highlands and if there was a fire, you’re going to have toxic materials raining down on locals like they did after that explosion in the USA, and how are you going to be able to evacuate that many people in a short amount of time?
"A friend of mine formerly of Fire and Rescue NSW told me that a fire only takes 3 minutes and 38 seconds to get to 1000 degrees Celsius, and then due to the toxic materials within it, could burn for up to 5 days before it is completely put out."
The Southern Wire will post up the press conference in its entirety shortly.
Read More: Moss Vale, Southern Highlands