Dear Mr Regan
Thank you for your email regarding comments I made in regard to the GST distribution to the States (HERE*)
I apologise if my comments have caused offence. It was not my intention to do so.
I was merely illustrating a point on the inequity of the situation where funds from Western Australia are being allocated to other States.
It was never my intention to offend the people of Tasmania.
Yours sincerely,
Colin Barnett MLA
PREMIER
What John Regan wrote:
Dear Colin & Don,
I write regarding your recent statements about Tasmania’s lack of destruction of our environment and our focus on loving and protecting our environment. As an Australian who has lived and contributed to the Australian economy in many of the regional areas of this Country for over 40 years I am deeply disappointed by the parochial and denigrating statements made by each of you in recent times.
I have always seen myself as an Australian, being born in Victoria, educated in Queensland and Victoria and worked in Victoria, NSW, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, ACT, and Queensland. I have settled in Tasmania as I found it to be the most liveable part of our nation. People here work hard to develop themselves and to love and care for their environment; social, physical and economic. Neither of you appear to be concerned for anything except making money for Western Australia and keeping it in Western Australia by what ever means you have at your disposal. My value system it appears is different from yours as I above all value people as people and our land as the source of our life and love.
As you rip apart your land ,I wish you and your descendants all the best but cannot see how you can be making any long term contribution to the future of human beings or for that matter the future of Western Australia. When all the mineral wealth is gone what do you have? The cost is too great in the long term but as we know leadership terms (in Australia)is a short one, only 4 years or at best a few more. Our focus must be the next 100, 200 or 300 years if we are to survive as humans. That is what leadership is about but unfortunately I see little evidence in the politicians of Australia today.
I ask only that you consider what you are doing and how it will impact on the lives of your great grandchildren and their great grandchildren. Tasmania will survive as it has for the past 220 years of european settlement and the past 30,000 to 40,000 years of human settlement and as you so eloquently put it Don, we are all “leech(s) on the teat of the Australian.”……continent .
