Dear Mr Rudd

Jo McRae

THE Launceston council only voted to support the majority population against a plantation development in Lillydale a month ago, yet already parliament has passed a law ensuring that democracy is not to be allowed to work for the people in the future.

No longer will any Tasmanian be able to say they don’t want a tree plantation outside their window, or choose not to have aerial spray contaminate the air they breathe or the water they and their animals drink.

This is all to support the much-vaunted “2020 Vision”, part of which states that by 2020 Tasmania will have 3.3 million hectares of plantations – and we are currently about halfway.

Forestry Tasmania is donating the wood to Gunns, Hydro has kindly offered the water, and no doubt Bartlett will put in his ha’pennyworth too, in spite of all the rhetoric.

As for jobs, the number of jobs at the pulp mill will be a drop in the ocean compared to the other effects from the pulp mill – the rise in food prices due to less farmland and water, the drop in property values meant to provide for people’s retirement, and the real loss of jobs due to the destruction of our way of life.

Nothing about this pulp mill is for the benefit of Tasmania or Tasmanians.

Jo McRae
Lenah Valley 7008