Greens to move no confidence on basis of toxic legislation. NGOs warning. Defeated …

Black Flags, Parliament House, Lawns, Tuesday, January 28. Picture: Matt Newton, http://matthewnewton.com.au/Commercial/People/1/

The Tasmanian Greens today said that if Premier Lara Giddings follows through on her threat to table further enabling legislation for the Tamar Valley pulp mill, they would have no choice but to move no confidence in her government.

Greens Leader Nick McKim MP said that the Greens also intended to move an amendment to the new doubts removal Bill so that it could not commence unless it received support at a referendum on the legislation, to be held in conjunction with the upcoming election.

“All Tasmanians deserve to have a say on this toxic and divisive legislation, and that’s why the Greens will move to give the Tasmanian people the chance to kill it off for once and for all.”

“While Labor and Liberal dance to the tune of a faceless corporation which is only interested in the bottom line, the Greens will stand up to give Tasmanians a chance to create our own future by rejecting this toxic legislation.”

“This is about far more than just a toxic and divisive pulp mill.”

“It is about whether we want to continue the transformation into a prosperous future based on the things that make Tasmania unique and different to the rest of the world, or whether we want to lock ourselves into ongoing public subsidies of bulk, undifferentiated commodity exports that have held us back so badly in the past,” Mr McKim said.

Green MPs, Parliament House Lawns, Monday, January 27, from left, Paul O’Halloran, Cassy O’Connor, Nick McKim, Tim Morris, Kim Booth

• Silica corporate welfare = another cargo cult

• Protest, Parliament House Lawns, Tues, Jan 28, 12.30pm

Bus from Launceston:

The bus will cost $20 per person and will be leaving from the Inveresk Tramsheds at 9.00 am.

There is all day parking there for $3.00. The bus will be leaving Hobart at 2.00pm.

If your plans change or you would like to bring another person along,

please call Bev on 0407 652 465. Together we will stop the dirty mill.

Kind Regards, Ruth and the No Pulp Mill Alliance.

• Watch live webcasts from the lower house here

• Watch live webcasts from the upper house here

• Korda Mentha: Key facts from Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2013 …

• 28 worldwide NGOs: We are deeply concerned …

• Peter Brenner, in Comments: Cassy, I absolve you of the perceived demand for you to engage in a shouting match. Amen! You got away without having to present your referendum proposal in Parliament today. Must have been a phew-moment! Beyond today, however, there is still a good reason to discuss your proposed referendum. Such a move is an extremely badly thought-through suggestion. In essence The Greens once again are about to conjure up a choice between a rock and a hard place. This situation cannot be solved by facebook-style “likes” or “dislikes”. We are not dealing with preferences here. We are dealing with basic right and wrong, well beyond the scope of a pulp mill. We are dealing (and many of us have for many years) with the fabric of our democratic life as a society. We are dealing with fairness issues. We are dealing with the adherence to laws. We are dealing with the accountability of politicians. And that of public servants. In the case of a pulp mill proposal we are dealing with major economic, social and environmental issues that go way beyond personal preferences and business interests. The sheer size of this chemical factory proposal places it at the centre of our survival as a small Australian State. Its heavy dependence on valuable natural resources and their wise management takes this problem way beyond shouting matches or superficial “likes” or “dislikes”.

• Richard Colbeck: Pulp mill key element of sham forest peace deal

WEDNESDAY:
• Defeated: Labor-Liberal minority government defeat referendum call on doubts removal bill

• ABC report, here EXTRACT: Constitutional law expert Michael Stokes told the crowd he was opposed to the process of the legislation. He said the fundamental principle of equality before the law was at stake. “There should be no special deals, no changes in the law because particular special interest groups want it,” he said. A market economy required a level playing field and Mr Stokes said tabling of the legislation around the pulp mill was a change in the rules. “Now what we have here instead of equality before the law is special deals being done. We’ve got crony capitalism which, of course, is phoney capitalism.” Earlier today, Environment Tasmania warned that the proposed changes to legislation governing the mill would remove environmental protections. Spokesman Phil Pullinger says the bill deletes a subsection of the Pulp Mill Assessment Act that allows the permits to be suspended if the mill breaches its conditions. He says that will allow any future mill to flaunt environmental conditions. … The pulp mill changes will today go before the Legislative Council.

• Liberal-Labor coalition government formed

• matt lyons, in Comments: What a nasty read Tasmanian Times has become! I am sorry to say this, I used to be a regular reader from the outset. Perhaps I should just avoid the comments section. The best thing the Green party could do is to disengage completely from the abuse directed at them from many of the letter writers on here. This supposedly passes as debate, but lacks the constructiveness and decency to pass as anything such. It is appalling and childlike. A major tenant of the Green charter is peace…hard to reconcile that this principle means much to anyone on here. To think that some believe that 5 out of 25 members of parliament can possibly impose their policy agenda in purity via legislation – in or outside government – shows remarkable lack of understanding of simple democratic process. What is the reaction from the purists on here that the democratic will of the parliament cannot be magically circumvented? Abuse those MPs for not being able to create the perfect society we wish for, and threaten a vote boycott, as retaliation…

• Ben Quin, in Comments: The pulp mill coalition has once more hijacked the Parliament, this time to ram through legislation whose intent is to remove any doubt that the pulp mill will in fact be dirty and stinking – the very facts that the original assessment panel of the Resource Planning and Development Commissions had warned us of before they were sacked. Somehow, this phantasmic project has been accorded too-big-to-fail status in the imaginations of the majority of our elected representatives. The ongoing prostitution of our Parliament and our legal conventions by wheedling pimps is unremarkable.

• John Biggs, in Comments: But it didn’t matter. I had that awful dream experience: you talk and nobody takes any notice. It didn’t matter what he said, 20 parliamentarians just didn’t give a stuff about legality, pollution, health risks or any negative effects the mill will assuredly have. They didn’t want to know. That was the thing that frightened me most. They were playing politics on behalf of a corrupt corporation and nothing would deter them. And today Giddings is reported as saying that “facts and indepednent science” back the case for the mill when the facts and independent science were specifically ruled out of the assessment — ask scientist Warwick Raverty. She also made the absurd claim that the mill is not a divisive issue in the community. Either she’s pathologically out of touch or she is a blatant liar. This is even lower than the 2007 Parliament that passed the original PMAA. We don’t deserve this bunch of politicians.

• Richard Colbeck: Photographs reveal deceit of Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area extension