Environment
Ralphs Bay: the Franklin fallout
Sue Neales, Mercury
But on a federal level, the re-emergence of Ralphs Bay as a key community issue in south-east Tasmania might soon start ringing some alarm bells. A federal election is due next year, with pundits tipping any time from an early March election to a last-minute October one.
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It is not impossible to believe that the Liberals, with popular Huon local MLC Paul Harriss as their likely candidate for Franklin federally in 2007, might decide for reasons of pure political expediency — i.e, vote-pulling — to oppose any development at Ralphs Bay.
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The most likely way a federal government could overrule the Tasmanian government on such an issue — and it would have to carry some valued electoral clout for it to act in this manner — would be by using laws relating to the protection of an endangered species. Just as Environment Minister Ian Campbell last month used the excuse of the rare yellow-bellied parrot (er, that should be orange bellied) to stop a controversial wind farm being developed in Victoria’s south-east marginal coastal electorates, (Orange bellied scapegoat) so too could the spotted handfish which inhabits Ralphs Bay’s muddy shallow be called into action.