Hearsay, self-mythology, unverifiable statistics, Aboriginal opposition, “paid trolls”, personal sacrifice, accusations of government dishonesty, and then: “Get ready for our next action”

Jake Cassar’s latest Coast Environmental Alliance post deserves closer attention than simply noting that he has repeated an unverified allegation attributed to Member for Gosford Liesl Tesch.

Almost every paragraph contains another claim.

Some are opinions presented as fact. Some are impossible for readers to verify. Some are oddly precise statistics supplied without evidence. Some are contradicted by the public record. Others are claims Cassar has been repeating for years, apparently as part of an increasingly familiar narrative in which criticism, Aboriginal opposition, institutional disagreement and personal consequences are assembled into evidence that Cassar is the persecuted protagonist of the story.

That pattern matters because the post does not end with reflection or verification.

It ends:

“Get ready for our next action”

The result is a useful case study in precisely the grievance-based mobilisation and personality-centred authority that guriNgai.org has previously examined across Jake Cassar, Coast Environmental Alliance, Campfire Collective Australia and their associated networks (guriNgai.org, 2025a, 2026a, 2026b). (A Long Con, Gone on Too Long.)

Claim: the Planning Department is “extremely sketchy”

Cassar begins by announcing that Kariong Progress Association President Lisa Bellamy is preparing an email to what he calls the:

“extremely sketchy Planning Department”

That is not evidence. It is characterisation.

The NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure has published a detailed account of the Woy Woy Road proposal, including its procedural history, Gateway determination, public exhibition, environmental conservation component, relationship to the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983 and the geographical relationship between the proposed development site and the legally recognised Kariong Sacred Lands Aboriginal Place.

Most importantly, the Department explicitly states that the proposal is not developing the Kariong Sacred Lands, that the development site adjoins the protected area, that a rezoning would not itself authorise land clearing or construction, and that 7.1 hectares of the property are proposed to remain environmental conservation land (NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure [DPHI], 2024). (Planning NSW)

CEA is entitled to dispute the Department’s analysis.

Bellamy is entitled to identify particular factual propositions she believes are wrong.

But “extremely sketchy” does not identify an error, much less prove one.

It primes the audience to distrust the institution before the evidence is discussed.

Claim: the Department publishes “misinformation” that it “refuse[s] to take off” its website

This is considerably stronger.

“Misinformation” means information that is false or inaccurate. Cassar therefore needs to identify exactly which statements are false and demonstrate why.

His Facebook post does not do that.

CEA has previously complained about the Department’s Kariong FAQ material. Media coverage reported those complaints and CEA’s dissatisfaction with the NSW Ombudsman response. But reporting that CEA alleges misinformation is not a finding that the Department published misinformation, much less that officials knowingly maintained information they knew to be false (Central Coast News, 2025). (Coast Community News)

In fact, the Department’s central factual proposition is devastatingly inconvenient for the campaign branding: the development site is not the gazetted Kariong Sacred Lands Aboriginal Place (DPHI, 2024). (Planning NSW)

This distinction has been repeatedly documented by guriNgai.org, including in the August 2026 fact-check of Bellamy’s rally speech. That analysis showed how the campaign repeatedly blurs the proposed residential footprint, adjoining Darkinjung land, Brisbane Water National Park and the legally recognised Aboriginal Place into one supposedly threatened entity called “Kariong Sacred Lands” (guriNgai.org, 2026c). (A Long Con, Gone on Too Long.)

Calling the Department’s correction “misinformation” does not make the correction false.

Claim: Liesl Tesch supposedly called the campaign “an ego trip for Jake Cassar”

This is the weakest evidentiary claim in the entire post, yet it becomes the emotional centre of it.

Cassar writes:

“I also heard our State member Liesl Tesch, told one of our members that the campaign to protect the Kariong bushland is all about ‘an ego trip for Jake Cassar.’”

“I heard.”

“Told one of our members.”

That is the evidentiary chain Cassar himself supplies.

He does not say Tesch said it to him. He does not identify the member. He provides no recording, text message, email, contemporaneous note, date or context. He does not even establish whether the unnamed member personally told him or whether the story travelled through another person.

Perhaps Tesch said it.

Perhaps she used different words.

Perhaps she criticised Cassar rather than the environmental concerns themselves.

Perhaps somebody paraphrased her.

Perhaps she never said it.

The post gives readers no means of knowing.

The obvious response to such a report would be to contact Tesch and ask.

Instead, Cassar broadcasts it to CEA.

That is precisely how hearsay becomes grievance material.

Claim: “I’ve always treated our elected leaders with respect”

This is perhaps the easiest claim in the post to test because Cassar has left a long public record.

The first difficulty is internal.

Within sentences of declaring that he has always treated elected leaders respectfully, Cassar says of Tesch:

“I guess Liesl just can’t imagine that someone could actually really care about our local wild places as she seems to have no connection herself”

That is not disagreement with a policy position. It is an attack on Tesch’s motives, imagination and personal connection to the environment.

The absolute claim, “I’ve always treated our elected leaders with respect”, begins contradicting itself inside the same Facebook post.

The wider historical record is little better.

When Cassar announced his 2015 State election candidacy, he accused the “current elected leaders” of “selling out our beautiful area to overseas interests” (Peninsula News, 2015). (Peninsula News)

In 2021, a CEA media release attributed to Cassar attacked the response of Tesch and then MP Adam Crouch to CEA’s koala campaign, rhetorically asking whether elected leaders had already forgotten the koalas killed in the bushfires and describing their silence as “deafening” (Central Coast News, 2021). (Coast Community News)

In a lengthy interview about Kariong, Cassar sarcastically invoked then Planning Minister Rob Stokes, suggested political actors had devised a strategy for dismissing criticism as racism, and characterised political conduct as “gutless” (SuperFeast, n.d.). (SuperFeast)

Robust criticism of politicians is perfectly legitimate.

But that is exactly the point.

Cassar has every right to be disrespectful, sarcastic, accusatory or angry about politicians if he chooses.

He cannot then credibly rewrite that public record as:

“I’ve always treated our elected leaders with respect”

“Always” is doing a great deal of work.

Claim: he has lost “95 per cent” of his local work because he took on “an Indigenous organisation”

This is one of the most revealing sentences in the post.

First, there is the figure.

95 per cent.

Where does it come from?

No business records are supplied. No historical turnover figures are provided. No booking records are shown. No cancelled contracts are identified. No clients are quoted saying that they stopped engaging Cassar because of the Darkinjung campaign.

There is also no evidence establishing causation.

Even if Cassar’s local income has fallen by precisely 95 per cent, demonstrating that decline and demonstrating why it occurred are two entirely different propositions.

Cassar’s Bushcraft business remains publicly operational in September 2026. Its website currently advertises paid Central Coast courses for October, November and December 2026, together with school, corporate, bushwalking and other paid services (Jake Cassar Bushcraft & Survival, 2026). (JakeCassarBushcraft)

That does not prove his 95 per cent claim false.

It demonstrates why the correct verdict is unsubstantiated, not established fact.

More significant is Cassar’s own description of what supposedly caused the loss:

“taking on an Indigenous organisation”

Not “challenging a planning proposal”.

Not “opposing a rezoning”.

Not “campaigning for stronger environmental assessment”.

Cassar describes his activity as taking on an Indigenous organisation.

That organisation is Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council, a statutory Aboriginal body constituted under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983. NSW Planning explains that Aboriginal land councils exist to improve, protect and foster the interests of Aboriginal people and that land returned through the land-rights system has an economic function precisely because dispossession deprived Aboriginal communities of their land and economic base (DPHI, 2024). (Planning NSW)

Cassar’s wording is unusually candid.

Claim: criticism of Cassar is simply the price of confronting Darkinjung

The racial dimension did not suddenly appear because anonymous internet critics decided to call Cassar names.

Aboriginal opposition to his campaign has existed from its earliest stages.

In June 2020, Darkinjung Elder Kevin “Gavi” Duncan publicly described what he regarded as “racist attacks” by Cassar and his followers. Cassar rejected the accusation. Central Coast News subsequently reported Cassar’s claim that Duncan had privately apologised and removed the post (Central Coast News, 2020a, 2020b). (Coast Community News)

That history matters because Cassar now collapses the entire controversy into a persecution story:

He opposed an Indigenous organisation, therefore people called him racist.

But that reverses the evidentiary sequence.

The relevant question is not whether Cassar intended to be racist. It is whether Aboriginal people have identified racialised harms in a campaign in which a non-Aboriginal activist has spent years attacking the legitimacy, decisions and cultural authority of an Aboriginal-governed body while simultaneously platforming disputed alternative “GuriNgai” custodianship claims.

guriNgai.org has documented this problem repeatedly, including Cassar’s amplification of contested custodial authority, the treatment of Elder Gavi Duncan, the role of non-Aboriginal “GuriNgai” claimants, and the manner in which settler environmental advocacy can invert Aboriginal land rights so that Aboriginal governance itself becomes the supposed danger to Country (guriNgai.org, 2025b, 2025c, 2026a). (A Long Con, Gone on Too Long.)

Being criticised for racism does not prove someone is racist.

But listing one’s sacrifices does not disprove the criticism either.

Claim: he is “hated by half of the Aboriginal community”

This may be the strangest purported statistic in the post.

How did Cassar determine half?

Which Aboriginal community?

Darkinjung members?

Aboriginal residents of the Central Coast?

People with cultural connections to the region?

Aboriginal people across New South Wales?

What is the denominator?

What survey was conducted?

How was “hate” measured?

There is no methodology because this is plainly not a demographic statistic.

It is rhetoric.

And the rhetoric itself is revealing.

Cassar transforms Aboriginal disagreement with his conduct into hatred of Jake Cassar.

That is an important reframing.

Criticism of his involvement in Aboriginal cultural matters becomes hatred.

Opposition to CEA becomes hatred.

Objections to contested custodianship claims become hatred.

Challenges to his campaign against an Aboriginal land council become hatred.

The substantive disagreement disappears, and Cassar becomes the injured party.

Even taken purely rhetorically, the statement is extraordinary. Cassar has spent years presenting himself as acting alongside Aboriginal people and defending Aboriginal cultural heritage. His latest account simultaneously asks followers to believe that something approximating half the Aboriginal community hates him.

There is no evidence for the percentage.

There is, however, ample evidence that significant Aboriginal opposition to Cassar and CEA exists.

Those are not the same claim.

Claim: “paid trolls” are stalking him and trying to destroy his life

Again, Cassar supplies no evidence.

Who are the alleged trolls?

Who supposedly pays them?

Who employs or directs them?

What is the evidence of payment?

What conduct constitutes stalking?

Has it been reported to police?

Has anyone been charged?

Has a court made findings?

Has Cassar produced documentation establishing an organised paid campaign?

None appears in the post.

“People criticise me online” and “paid operatives are stalking me to destroy my life” are radically different propositions.

The latter requires evidence.

Without it, “paid trolls” performs another useful rhetorical function: critics cease to be people with genuine objections. They become covert agents.

That is precisely the kind of epistemic insulation previously examined in guriNgai.org’s work on conspirituality and high-demand-group dynamics. Criticism is not processed as potentially useful information. It is attributed to corrupt institutions, dishonest bureaucrats, trolls, political enemies, racists against Cassar, shadowy interests or people supposedly motivated by hatred (guriNgai.org, 2025a, 2026a). (A Long Con, Gone on Too Long.)

If there is evidence that identifiable people are being paid to stalk Cassar, it should be produced.

Until then, this is an allegation.

Claim: he has received threats of violence

This allegation should be treated differently because Cassar has made it publicly for years.

In an earlier interview concerning Darkinjung and Kariong, Cassar said that he had received threats of violence by telephone. He connected those alleged threats with legal pressure, accusations of racism and other consequences of the campaign (SuperFeast, n.d.). (SuperFeast)

The persistence of the allegation means it should not simply be dismissed.

Equally, repetition does not independently verify it.

Publicly available material reviewed for this article does not establish who allegedly threatened Cassar, what was said, whether police reports were made, whether charges resulted or whether any court has made findings.

The responsible formulation is therefore straightforward:

Cassar says he has received threats of violence.

That is different from independently establishing that particular people threatened him.

There is another revealing feature of the earlier interview. After describing legal threats, violence threats and accusations of racism, Cassar said that this was how you knew you were “on the right path” and “making a difference” (SuperFeast, n.d.). (SuperFeast)

That is highly relevant to his latest post.

Adversity becomes validation.

Opposition becomes evidence of righteousness.

Criticism strengthens rather than weakens certainty.

This is precisely the feedback loop that makes grievance-centred movements resistant to correction.

Claim: Cassar has given “thousands of hours” over seven years

Perhaps he has.

Again, no evidence is supplied.

But there is also a chronological problem if this figure is intended to describe the current Darkinjung Kariong campaign.

The public record shows CEA campaigning against the Woy Woy Road proposal by June 2020. In September 2026, that is a little over six years, not seven (Central Coast News, 2020a). (Coast Community News)

Cassar has, of course, been involved with Kariong and Bambara for much longer than the present Darkinjung planning dispute. Indeed, in an earlier interview he described ten years devoted to protecting neighbouring land and much longer involvement in youth activities (SuperFeast, n.d.). (SuperFeast)

So what exactly does “thousands of hours over 7 years” measure?

The Darkinjung campaign?

All CEA activity?

Kariong generally?

Bushcraft activities?

Political organising?

The figure is sufficiently vague that it cannot meaningfully be checked.

More importantly, time invested in a cause does not establish the truth of that cause.

This is the same sunk-cost dynamic guriNgai.org has previously examined. The more time, identity, reputation and personal sacrifice someone invests, the psychologically harder it can become to reconsider the underlying assumptions.

Seven years of effort would demonstrate commitment.

It would not demonstrate that NSW Planning is lying.

Claim: being called racist proves he is being unfairly persecuted

Cassar places “being called a racist” at the end of his catalogue of sacrifices.

This rhetorical placement matters.

Loss of work.

Violence threats.

Aboriginal people supposedly hating him.

Paid trolls.

Thousands of unpaid hours.

Being called racist.

The accusation of racism is packaged alongside harms allegedly inflicted on Cassar.

That shifts attention away from the people who have raised concerns about the racial and cultural consequences of his activism.

The public record shows why those concerns exist.

Cassar’s December 2023 Save Kariong video explicitly promoted “Guringai and Darkinoong (not Darkinjung)” people as the Traditional Custodians opposed to the development, while accusing Darkinjung LALC of being willing to destroy Aboriginal heritage “for profit” (Jake Cassar Bushcraft & Survival, 2023). (YouTube)

guriNgai.org has subsequently documented the much broader issue of Cassar lending visibility and legitimacy to contested non-Aboriginal “GuriNgai” authority while attacking the Aboriginal-governed Darkinjung LALC (guriNgai.org, 2025c, 2026a). (A Long Con, Gone on Too Long.)

That is a substantive cultural and political criticism.

It cannot be answered with, “look how much I have sacrificed.”

Claim: Liesl Tesch “seems to have no connection” to local wild places

This is another personal assertion masquerading as political argument.

If Cassar means that he somehow knows Tesch’s private emotional or spiritual relationship with nature, that is unknowable.

If he means that Tesch has no demonstrated public connection to environmental issues, the record contradicts him.

Tesch formally placed the Kariong dispute before the NSW Legislative Assembly in November 2020. Her motion expressly recognised community concerns, the cultural importance of land around Woy Woy Road, the need to protect important cultural stories, Aboriginal land rights and the requirement for respect for ancient culture (NSW Parliament, 2020). (Parliament of NSW)

She has also raised Wamberal beach protection in Parliament, supported opposition to a seawall on environmental and amenity grounds, and currently serves on the NSW Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Net Zero Future (NSW Parliament, 2022, 2026). (Parliament of NSW)

Her electorate has also benefited from recent NSW Government urban-greening investment, which she publicly supported, and her official site promotes the Great Koala National Park (Central Coast Council, 2026; Tesch, 2026). (Central Coast Council)

None of that requires anyone to agree with Tesch’s position on Kariong.

It simply makes Cassar’s suggestion that she has “no connection” to environmental matters difficult to sustain as a factual proposition.

It is an insult, not an argument.

Claim: Tesch is effectively aligned with her “mates on the ‘Land’ Council”

Cassar then adds:

“same as her mates on the ‘Land’ Council”

The quotation marks around “Land” are themselves revealing.

Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council is not a nickname or invented community collective.

It is a statutory Aboriginal organisation constituted under NSW law.

Cassar offers no evidence that Tesch has some improper personal alliance with Darkinjung. Referring to people as her “mates” insinuates collusion without establishing it.

The documented position is far more mundane.

Tesch has recognised both environmental and cultural concerns surrounding Kariong and the legal right of Aboriginal people to make land claims and develop Aboriginal-owned land for cultural, social and economic outcomes (NSW Parliament, 2020). (Parliament of NSW)

That is not evidence of being Darkinjung’s “mate”.

It is an elected representative acknowledging that Aboriginal land rights are part of the law.

Claim: the Planning Department has engaged in “blatant dishonesty”

This is stronger again than accusing the Department of being “sketchy” or publishing “misinformation”.

Dishonesty implies knowing deception.

To substantiate it, Cassar would need to demonstrate not simply that a Departmental statement is wrong, but that the relevant officials knew it was wrong and intentionally misrepresented the truth.

No such evidence is supplied.

Instead, Cassar tells his followers that the Department is “extremely sketchy”, that its website contains misinformation, that it refuses to correct that misinformation, and that its conduct constitutes “blatant dishonesty”.

Then he prepares them for action.

This is how institutional disagreement becomes institutional malevolence.

The difference is important.

A planning department can make mistakes.

A planning department can make decisions that deserve judicial review.

Its assessments can be challenged by ecologists, lawyers, Aboriginal people, residents and political representatives.

None of those propositions requires asserting deliberate dishonesty without evidence.

Claim: this is all happening because Cassar cares more than everyone else

That is the emotional core of the post.

Cassar’s defence ultimately becomes:

How could this be an ego trip when I have suffered so much?

But suffering and ego are not opposites.

A person can sincerely care about an environmental issue and still become overly identified with a campaign.

A person can make genuine sacrifices and still spread misinformation.

A person can receive unfair criticism and still behave unfairly toward others.

A person can perform valuable environmental work and still cause cultural harm.

A person can believe profoundly in their own moral purpose and still be wrong.

Those possibilities are precisely why movements require external evidence rather than stories about the virtue of their leaders.

The post is almost a textbook example of the pattern guriNgai.org has been documenting

The significance of Cassar’s latest post becomes clearer when read alongside the wider network examined throughout 2025 and 2026.

guriNgai.org’s analysis of conspirituality identified a repeated fusion of ecological concern, spiritualised authority, distrust of institutions and narratives in which Cassar appears as a particularly enlightened defender of land against compromised outsiders (guriNgai.org, 2025a). (A Long Con, Gone on Too Long.)

The analysis of The Cave and its cosmology identified remarkably similar narrative structures in Cassar’s fictional world: hidden truths, compromised systems, ecological catastrophe and a central figure positioned close to privileged knowledge and moral purpose (guriNgai.org, 2025d). (A Long Con, Gone on Too Long.)

The Campfire Collective analysis subsequently examined the extent to which Cassar’s personal authority, activism, commercial activity, charitable activity and cultural narratives increasingly intersect within a founder-centred ecosystem (guriNgai.org, 2026d). (A Long Con, Gone on Too Long.)

The January 2026 high-demand-group analysis then described the broader pattern in terms of epistemic enclosure, charismatic authority, persecution narratives, cultural authority laundering and the conversion of ordinary policy disagreement into morally absolute struggle (guriNgai.org, 2026a). (A Long Con, Gone on Too Long.)

Cassar’s new post condenses much of that into a few paragraphs.

The government is “sketchy”.

Official information is misinformation.

The Department is dishonest.

An MP supposedly insulted Cassar.

Cassar has always behaved respectfully.

Cassar has sacrificed his livelihood.

Aboriginal people hate Cassar.

Paid trolls are attacking Cassar.

Violent threats have targeted Cassar.

Cassar has given thousands of hours.

People call Cassar racist.

Tesch supposedly does not care about nature.

The Aboriginal Land Council becomes her “mates”.

Cassar becomes the injured environmental defender surrounded by dishonest institutions and hostile actors.

Then comes the operational instruction:

“Get ready for our next action”

Persecution becomes proof

Perhaps the most important connection is one Cassar himself supplied years ago.

When discussing the backlash he said he experienced over the Darkinjung campaign, Cassar described threats, accusations and legal pressure, then said:

“that’s when you know that you’re on the right path”

That is the mechanism.

If criticism becomes evidence that you are right, criticism cannot correct you.

If Aboriginal opposition proves you are threatening corrupt interests, Aboriginal opposition cannot correct you.

If government disagreement proves government corruption, official evidence cannot correct you.

If critics are “paid trolls”, critics cannot correct you.

If an elected MP disagrees, she supposedly has no connection to the environment.

Every challenge becomes another brick in the fortress.

That is why high-demand-group dynamics are relevant here. The issue is not whether CEA fits some simplistic popular definition of a “cult”. It is whether its information environment increasingly rewards loyalty, grievance, certainty and identification with a central figure while making external correction progressively easier to dismiss (guriNgai.org, 2026a). (A Long Con, Gone on Too Long.)

And then there is “half the Aboriginal community”

Cassar may not realise how revealing this particular line is.

For years, the Save Kariong narrative has relied on selected people being elevated as Aboriginal or “Traditional Custodians” in order to give a settler-led campaign cultural legitimacy.

Now Cassar himself tells his followers that he is:

“hated by half of the Aboriginal community”

Again, there is no evidence that the figure is remotely measurable.

But the confession embedded within the exaggeration is important.

There is substantial Aboriginal opposition to what Cassar is doing.

That opposition cannot continually be explained away as jealousy, hatred, trolls, corrupt Land Councils, dishonest bureaucrats or people who simply do not understand how much Jake Cassar cares.

Aboriginal people are entitled to object when non-Aboriginal people involve themselves in Aboriginal governance.

Aboriginal people are entitled to object when disputed non-Aboriginal custodians are elevated over Aboriginal organisations.

Aboriginal people are entitled to criticise the racial consequences of a campaign that repeatedly presents Aboriginal land rights as a threat from which settlers must save Country.

Aboriginal disagreement is not persecution of Jake Cassar.

From “I heard” to “get ready”

That is ultimately why this post matters.

It begins with claims against institutions.

It moves into hearsay about Liesl Tesch.

It becomes a defence of Jake Cassar.

It then becomes a catalogue of Jake Cassar’s sacrifices.

Opposition from Aboriginal people is reframed as hatred.

Critics become “paid trolls”.

Government disagreement becomes dishonesty.

A political representative becomes someone incapable of understanding genuine environmental care.

Darkinjung becomes her “mates”.

And the audience is finally told:

“Get ready for our next action”

There is no evidence in the post that Cassar is calling for violence or unlawful conduct, and guriNgai.org does not suggest otherwise.

The concern is more ordinary, and in some ways more important.

This is how a grievance community is mobilised.

Not through evidence first.

Through enemies, injury, loyalty, sacrifice and certainty.

Before the “next action”, perhaps answer the claims from the last post

Did Liesl Tesch actually make the alleged “ego trip” statement?

Who heard it?

What exactly did she say?

Why was she apparently not asked before the allegation was broadcast?

What information on the Planning Department website is demonstrably false?

What evidence establishes that the Department knows it is false?

What establishes “blatant dishonesty”?

What evidence establishes a 95 per cent loss of local work?

What establishes that the loss was caused by the Darkinjung campaign?

How was it determined that precisely half the Aboriginal community “hates” Cassar?

Who are the alleged “paid trolls”?

Who is paying them?

What evidence establishes paid coordination?

What does “thousands of hours” measure?

Why does Cassar say seven years when the publicly documented campaign against this particular Darkinjung proposal dates from 2020?

What evidence supports the insinuation that Tesch and Darkinjung are simply “mates”?

How does accusing elected leaders of selling out the region, questioning their connection to the environment and publicly portraying them as uncaring sit with the assertion that Cassar has always treated elected leaders respectfully?

These are not trolling questions.

They are evidence questions.

And for a campaign built around accusations that everyone else is spreading misinformation, they should not be difficult to answer.

Until they are answered, the most accurate description of Cassar’s latest post is much simpler:

An unverified allegation about Liesl Tesch is used to trigger another self-centred grievance narrative, unsupported claims are presented to followers as though established, Aboriginal criticism is reframed as personal hatred, government disagreement is reframed as dishonesty, and the audience is told to prepare for another action.

That is not careful environmental advocacy.

It is exactly the pattern guriNgai.org has been warning about.