Article
For Sale … to the highest bidder
Gunns, with an ex-premier on its board, and a current premier acting like a quasi board member, could site the pulp mill in an area where the community reportedly wants it, Hampshire, but the corporate bully has flatly refused and said it’s the Tamar Valley or nothing. Why? Because ‘our government’ and ‘our opposition’ says it can build what it wants, where it wants to build it, as fast-tracked as it wants the corrupt process to be. A non-corrupt government, governing for all constituents, would ask the corporate bully for concrete reasons for not moving the mill and then set about overcoming the difficulties in order that the wishes of a whole district would prevail over the wishes of Gay, Gray and McQuestin, plus quasi Lennon.
DO Tasmanians realise the power of the groups who have joined in opposing their right to live in the Tamar Valley — the Tamar Valley community’s right to be able to enjoy their properties, without their district being overturned from a small business community into a single industrial site, dominated and changed forever by ONE corporation?
The powerful groups include the two major political parties, a business lobby group calling itself Community Alliance, other major timber lobby groups, an out of control union, the CFMEU — as well as the Gunns giant timber business and the local newspaper?
Most of these groups are running full and half page ads on a daily basis in the media to force pulp mill propaganda down the throats of Tasmanians.
This is a David and Goliath fight, and your own government and opposition are tampering with the law or standing by and watching it happen in order to cut off all avenues of respite. And if they can’t beat you with corporate and ill-used public money and by withholding legal due process, and by silencing sections of the media through corporate deals, the final showdown will be left to the CFMEU whose members have shown themselves to be prepared to use questionable tactics to gain their short-term jobs — jobs that will last until it suits the corporations to dump them, as the ACL and Blundstone workers were dumped once the government handouts ran dry; but then they can’t see beyond their own short-term bullish thinking.
The CFMEU are now intending to pressure their faction of the ALP at the next ALP Conference to be allowed to turn Tasmania into a giant monopoly forestry business, no doubt with our own dinosaur premier being their mouthpiece.
One slim chance that we have is to write, ring, and email federal politicians every day that this corrupt process continues. Remind Garrett of what he said he stood for when he was elected — remind Rudd of his story about being pushed off the family share farm as a child — here we have a whole community under threat of being pushed off family farms and out of tourist businesses by a single corporate bully polluting their airways and waterways and roadways. And if Gunns succeeds here, they will move on to the next district and the next — how will the Southerners cope when this corporation moves its operations into full-swing in the South, along with the Walker Corporation types?
Every Tasmanian should be aware that their State is in danger of being sold out from under them and they need to get angry and get as determined as the corporations and the governments these corporations have corrupted.
Gunns, with an ex-premier on its board, and a current premier acting like a quasi board member, could site the pulp mill in an area where the community reportedly wants it, Hampshire, but the corporate bully has flatly refused and said it’s the Tamar Valley or nothing. Why? Because ‘our government’ and ‘our opposition’ says it can build what it wants, where it wants to build it, as fast-tracked as it wants the corrupt process to be.
A non-corrupt government, governing for all constituents, would ask the corporate bully for concrete reasons for not moving the mill and then set about overcoming the difficulties in order that the wishes of a whole district would prevail over the wishes of Gay, Gray and McQuestin, plus quasi Lennon.
In the Australia of a fair go — a long time ago, David could have called on a government opposition, on the law, on a strategic planning body, on a sympathetic union movement even for support to overcome bullying and corruption. But not now — corporatised political parties have been bought and they are studiously dismantling the very fabric of the Australian way of life in return for funding of campaigns equalling political power, and also post-government lucrative business deals and board seats.
Even the Greens haven’t quite realized what has happened here. They are concentrating on the worthy goal of trying to save old growth forest while the greater society that could stand with them are being whittled away — bought and sold like a commodity — one sector deliberately being set against another sector in order to divide and conquer so that a corporate elite can hold absolute power over the majority.
And what is the danger when a society loses its fabric and process and foundation? Violence, even acts of terrorism are likely to take the place of democracy.
Howard is spending millions of public money on a media fear campaign in the lead-up to the federal election trying to convince the people that we need him to protect us from the terrorism from without. He and all governments would be better employed protecting us from industrial and corporate terrorism from within, which kills the spirit of mankind first, and the body inevitably follows, thus nations pass from one brand of dictatorship to the next brand.
Put away the folk songs and wishful thinking that decency will prevail Northerners. The people of the Tamar Valley should hire themselves a PR firm that can get the message to the nation and neighbouring countries — show our governments up for what they are — lying, corporatised, morally corrupt at the least, and hypocrites, as THEY preach to neighbouring countries about climate change and the need to preserve a dense forestry reserve and protection of all species and natural diversity and the need to be educated and to diversify skills and to work smart — when our governments are busily polluting whole communities of their own people, using corporations and thug unionists to do the dirty work as they feed tax rorts to a giant privately-owned forestry industry, which is trampling Australians in its path, as an elite amass the wealth and power of a country because politicians have put the ‘FOR SALE TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER’ sign out.