4 December 2023
Dear Mr Ellis, Mr Jaensch and Premier Rockcliff,
Read this newly released paper I have attached to inform you, and ask yourselves what if anything has changed since the 1960s regarding protection and valuing Tasmania’s natural environment?
Nothing. The same pro-forestry, pro-dam excuses are used to justify environmental degradation! It is simply unacceptable to play 3-year cycle political games with our natural heritage, which has a value that is not ‘utilitarian’ subjugated to solely human interests!
Ignoring the non-economic values of lakes such as real Lake Pedder (not the hydro-lakes), national parks (not the excised areas for woodchipping), world heritage sites (not for private developments) … is simply irrational.
Ignoring the precautionary principle, and the Commonwealth’s signing of international agreements and other obligations, is strange.
What happened to the obligation to protect migratory flight paths (Robbins Island, among others), protect World Heritage, protect threatened, endangered, soon to be extinct species of all kinds – eg Maugean skate v salmon pens with 160,000 fish or more in each pen in Macquarie Harbour and in our shore waters – protect a just discovered endangered orchid species found at Edgar impoundment last weekend, prevent the loss of giant kelp and sea grass, preserve the swift parrot, the orange bellied parrot, the sea eagle, the Tasmanian masked owl and the list goes on?!
Using the excuse of jobs jobs jobs is simply naive, and points directly to the electioneering cycle, and political bias v science and what my community wants, and in fact what we must protect and value (intrinsically not monetarily) for future generations, is utterly reprehensible! It’s called intergenerational equity and you are totally avoiding this.
The new protest laws you brought in are literally targeting my community, who are democratically endeavouring to ask you to stop actions that harm our natural, silent and struggling (under human actions) environment. What happened to participatory democracy and encouraging people to take part in decision-making and our ability to call out bad decisions?
I also ask that you actually listen for once, without political bias, to the science and to my fellow community members who are trying their hardest to wake you up out of the political stupor that is affecting you like a disease.
I know you aren’t stupid, but boy I have problems with your words and decisions and biased protest laws punishing members of your own community, to prop up foreign companies destroying what we in Tasmania and Australia and the world regard as matters that must be protected.
– Maria Riedl, B.S.Ed., M.Env.L. Battery Point
NORMAN LAIRD (1915–1978): PIONEERING TASMANIAN FILMMAKER, WRITER AND NATURALIST
by Benjamin J Richardson
Geoff Holloway
December 10, 2023 at 12:30
Yes, Norman Laird stood for UTG in 1972, the first of 10 elections that UTG contested from 1972-1977. Unfortunately, he missed out on being elected by 1,600 votes (according to Tasmanian Electoral Commission correspondence). He also had a very extensive and organised newspaper-cutting collection, which I assume is in the State Archives. ‘A New Ethic’, which is mentioned in the article, was written by Hugh Dell who died a couple of years ago.
The UTG is still the only party to have a set of ethical and ecocentric principles. For further information see here.
Geoff Holloway (Secretary of UTG)