TasNetworks’ War on Community continues

Which is worse? The frustration of knowing the Marinus Project is a for-profit scam to export power and jobs to the mainland, or enduring another Marinus ‘community engagement event’. Tough call.
Over the weekend, some of our community were able to attend Marinus PR team’s ‘community workshops’ in Preston and Wilmot. The topic was ‘social impacts’ of TasNetworks’ proposed transmission lines. We told the PR people TasNetworks had ignored community for two years on this, and reminded them that TasNetworks’ new grid puts the social, economic and environmental costs on us while offering zero benefits (eg. the much-hyped ‘jobs and growth’). When confronted, the Marinus PR team couldn’t come up with a single benefit for Tasmania, excusing this by saying they ‘weren’t across the details of the project’.
Here’s some of our community’s comments following the meetings: ‘the usual TasNetworks PR’, ‘no genuine discussion’, ‘they gathered information but didn’t give any out’, ‘evasive’, ‘no local knowledge or understanding’, ‘they downplayed the visual impacts with just two long-distance images’, ‘we got nothing out of it’.
TasNetworks have had eighteen months to ask about our issues and have declined to do so, even in face-to-face meetings, so this latest PR exercise is just another box ticked on the path to approval. They’ll be able to claim our attendance means they ‘have engaged in extensive consultation with community’. The workshops were as we expected, uninformed PR shills and Dip Comm graduates heaping more misery on communities that TasNetworks continue to ignore. TasNetworks will never get social license for the Marinus Project because it doesn’t stack up economically, environmentally or socially. TasNetworks know this, even if their PR teams don’t, but that’s why they’re spending millions of our money on PR consultancies – to sell us on something we don’t want or need. Marinus is all cost and no benefit for Tasmania.

– Ben Marshall, Chair SOLVE (Supporting Our Loongana Valley Environment)

Featured image above: Loongana Valley, Leven Canyon & Black Bluff Mountain, courtesy of Kaydale Lodge and Gardens

International Day of Forests

Sunday the 21st of March is International Day of Forests
I’d like everybody to celebrate the native forests that we have left on this planet. I’d like it if people would help celebrate forests everywhere and do whatever they can to protect them. Right now there is a Tarkine forest blockade that everyone in Tasmania must visit. Please insist on the permanent protection of threatened forests. I would like to encourage the forest industry to transition out of native forest logging NOW, and to move into plantation forests. It is time.
Furthermore I am appalled and disgusted that even in 2021, Australia’s backward government continues to censor, discredit and ignore scientists and scientific research. As a scientist, I feel attacked and defamed, and I feel the government is slandering my university and many other universities by not taking scientific research seriously.
Ignoring scientists and scientific research will backfire on the government in a big way. Think about climate change and deforestation, the extinction crisis and carbon emissions. These issues are not going away and ignoring them is short-sighted and reckless. Think before the next election you incompetent fools.

– Colette Harmsen, Tinderbox

Head of State

In the not-too-distant future Australians will be awoken to the news that King Charles III is their Head of State and Camilla our Queen. Presenting a rather forlorn, hapless and a quintessential British demeanour it is hard to imagine a less likely figure to represent contemporary Australia and one who could well remain so for fifteen years or more.
On the other hand, we are lucky enough to have one of the soundest and most workable Constitutions in the World today. Naturally it needs to adapt to our changing society including recognition of First Nations but importantly it also allows us to break the umbilical cord with Britain their Queen and her somewhat sad and dysfunctional family.
It’s not too hard to do: Retain the Constitution as it is but simply replace ‘Queen’ with Governor General or President or Kanga or another suitable term as suggested here:
Chapter I—The Parliament Part I—General 1. Legislative power The legislative power of the Commonwealth shall be vested in a Federal Parliament, which shall consist of the Queen, (Governor General or president or kanga) a Senate, and a House of Representatives, and which is hereinafter called The Parliament, or The Parliament of the Commonwealth.
The current bipartisan selection process has generally worked well in the past and the functions would remain as they are although without sending dispatches to the King. It also avoids the unedifying prospect of a presidential election!

– Dr Ian Broinowski, Battery Point

Ban Venture Minerals from the Tarkine

Thank you to the Bob Brown Foundation protesters who continue to fight against destructive climate-unfriendly practices in the Tarkine/takayna.
Australia’s largest temperate rainforest in the Tarkine/takayna is threatened by two giant mines if the Venture Minerals mine at Riley Creek goes ahead.
This area will be transformed from a beautiful world-heritage class wilderness into piles of rubble, and ongoing environmental impacts will devastate the area for decades if not hundreds of years.
For the sake of our planet, stop this nonsense!

– Felicity Holmes, Tinderbox

A-League

It’s disappointing that the state government deal with Western United is on the surface very similar to the deals done with AFL clubs. Play a few games here, do a few clinics, faff about, here’s the money. After years of that, we know that it hasn’t led to the establishment of a Tasmanian AFL team. In fact it seems to put that goal further away than ever; AFL can ‘have a presence in the market’ without really making any kind of long term commitment. We’re on the hook to prop it up, paying for the ego-stroke of not being Nowhereville for a few hours.
With football, we have not made any progress toward an A-League team. Might I suggest that this current gavotte with Western United is a folly of bread and circus. Surely the money could have been better spent on local development, or planning for an A-League team, or progressing the search for a site and design of a rectangular stadium.

– Renato Curi, Falmouth

Letters are welcome on any Tasmanian subject, up to 300 words. Letters should be concise, respectful of others and rely on evidence where necessary. No links please! Letter writers should provide a real name and town / suburb. Submit letters in the body of an email to [email protected]

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