“PERCHANCE she for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that she knows not it tolls for her.” [adapted, see end.]
I read a comment from someone who wants “mainlanders and co” to go home! How are we supposed to react to such a comment? Let me direct my remarks to that person…
…Anyway, which mainlanders? Just the ones who don’t want the mill? Or the whole lot of them? Is that the visitors, the tourists? What about businessmen? The ones who fly in, cook up deals and fly out. They’re down there now, at Gunns Lindsay St, trying to figure out how to show a profit from a loss, while they’ve got their share trading on halt, like last time.
Gunns board – all bar two live on the mainland, don’t they? Timo Piilonen, he’s not a local, is he? And what about those Korean blokes I saw sniffing round FEA HQ just before they went bad. And who’s that mob wants to be the big partner for the mill … some foreign co isn’t it? Finnish. And Sweco Pic and that other mob, something like Jacko Porfry? True blue Tasmanians?
But my guess is that it’s just those who don’t agree with you, that you direct your xenophobic remark to, [name with-held by author]. But the world doesn’t work like that, nor does Australia. And neither does Tasmania. It chose to join the Commonwealth which was formed in 1901 and it is bound by the Constitution. Now I know some of you pro-pulp-millers would tear up every law that stood in your way in order to get that stinking rotten pulp mill, but it’s just a bit harder to do, to get a majority of people from a majority of states to vote to deprive themselves of the right as Australian citizens to live where they choose, travel freely, visit, have opinions and vote.
I’m presuming, I admit, but if you want to see Peter Cundall behind bars, we can probably infer that you are for the mill. Back at the start of all this, when they first brought it up, I thought the idea of value adding sounded okay, and they said it was going to be at Hampshire and pardon my ignorance, but I thought that that sounded like fair enough. And John Gay said it would be state of the art, world’s cleanest greenest, no chlorine, closed loop and something else that I can’t remember.
And then it all changed. And they put it into the RPDC, but it got called critically non-compliant, but Gunns pulled out before they could deliver the letter, Paul Lennon and whoever else created the PMAA, which was a pretend assessment and approval process.
I call it pretend, because it was a political process, not a scientific panel process like the RPDC. PMAA followed by assessment followed by approval and Permit. You probably don’t know, but the mill didn’t actually get assessed against all the guidelines that it was supposed to. The government knew it could ram the PMAA through the Parliament, because it had the numbers, even though the majority of ordinary people didn’t support it. And they even stuck in Section 11, which prevented any court from hearing any matter relating to this sham assessment and approval process. The mob that were s’posed to do the assessment, didn’t have time to complete it, but decided to tell Parliament they approved it anyway – TRUE – and Parliament, bless their hearts, voted to approve it and grant the Permit.
And now we have reached the stage where people have been arrested for what? Standing outside the Parliament, peacefully and quietly holding up signs protesting what has been done. And you are disappointed, [name again with-held by author]. You wanted them in jail.
That is such a poor response. Look, I didn’t really want to try a pep-talk online, but you might think about the following. Every time we do a little wrong, we actually do it to the society that we live in, our own society. When we make plastic laws like the PMAA, we diminish the value of and the respect for, our laws as a whole. And when we lack respect for others, we actually diminish ourselves. My comments apply equally to those ‘on my side’ as well as to you. We both can see examples of what I’m talking about on TT threads.
Is that the sort of Tasmania you want for your friends, family and fellow Tasmanians? One where we lock up people for peacefully demonstrating outside Parliament? You probably don’t really think or want that, maybe you were just indulging yourself in a bit of online spite. Then again, maybe I’m wrong. But I’m not wrong about the facts that I referred to, the dirty way that this saga unfolded and reached this stage.
I heard a sermon in the 60’s, commenting on the Simon and Garfunkel hit “I am a rock” The priest was trying to address what is sometimes thought to be the growing selfishness and dysfunction of modern society. Here’s a verse from the song:
“I’ve built walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain.
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
…
And a rock feels no pain
and an island never cries”
And I am sure that he, the priest, in that sermon, spoke against passively accepting this type of insularity. The song comes from the island of Manhattan, which we all know of as New York. It is a hard place, although a place where you will see spontaneous acts of humanity. A cripple fallen face down in the snow, is helped to his feet, dusted down, given his stick back by hurrying strangers in a darkening Madison Ave. A native American, living homeless in a park covered in a foot of snow, shows us a hawk in a tree on his island where buildings overgrow and outnumber trees and he, happy in his freedom, welcomes us to his country. He says his lack of possessions makes him free. His only wish, to meet a woman who will love him for who he is, not for what he has. His name is Swaveh.
We can live on an island and yet have a world in our hearts. And I say that what we want for Tasmania, our island state, must be uplifting, there is no good reason for acquiescing to mean-ness. No, and we harm ourselves and we harm our island if we would rather lock up decent citizens in order to keep the stinking, rotten pulp mill dream alive. Here is a better view of how individual Tasmanians can live:
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” John Donne.
