A pretty good vision … but

Alex Wadsley
This is actually a pretty good speech and vision, effectively a return to a successful brand formula for Tasmania… Holiday Isle, Apple Isle, Intelligent Island. The agricultural aspects follow on the vision outlined by Jonathon West at the Tasmanian Economic Forum and elsewhere, though i would advise that the government read Jared Diamond’s Collapse on the long-term danger of irrigation based civilisations. A strategy to avoid salinity should be established now to avoid the whole thing blowing up at the end of the century. And beware over production leads to prices collapsing. It might also be worth considering the agricultural potential of those areas that don’t require irrigation. Have the agricultural value-added potential of Kingborough and the Huon been managed to their full potential? And of course the government has still not addressed the worm corrupting the core of the apple… Reforms to planning still look like attempts to secure a few Projects of Pet Political Significance rather than rebuild a combined sense of Tasmanian destiny … which other aspects of the vision might have supported. A categorisation of projects of regional significance may be useful, but it should be determined by an independent RPDC rather than the planning minister and the experts appointed independently by that body. The panel should then advise and make recommendations to Councils, who are after all, democratically elected and in favour of development where it is in the community interest. One of the most insightful lines in the speech … 100 projects of $1 million add more than one project of $100 million. The government should bear this in mind in deciding whether it is really worth perverting the planning system to support a couple of bad apples. Read more, Comment here