It had to happen. Richard Flanagan’s article of the Bacon years is yet another blessed sign that dissent is back on Tasmanian streets, daring and undimmed from an attempted throttling after the highly politicised carnival surrounding Jim Bacon’s memorial service.
Many, who are aghast at the government sanctioned destruction of priceless ecology in order to line the pockets of woodchip multimillionaires and institutional shareholders, have again been given permission to be unbowed in their rage.
The shuffling line of public dental patients waiting outrageously long periods for the most basic dental care can now speak of their anger at Labor’s 20 million dollars of corporate welfare for the racing industry at the last state budget, not to mention the millions in taxpayer equity lost by Forestry Tasmania, as it hands over our forests to the woodchip cartels.
Tasmania’s dwindling sawmillers should now come out and rage over the thousands of tonnes of whole logs that the government cuts from under their noses to be carted and shipped to Asian customers with the now usual minimum of jobs, and pathetic returns to State coffers.
Tasmanians can again name out loud the wrath we feel over what is the true, and continuing legacy of the Bacon years: record woodchipping of high conservation value forests, massive killing of native wildlife with 1080 poison, record poker machine revenues and record amounts of money thrown to a slippery spin machine to rival that of Tony Blair’s.
Well might new Premier Paul Lennon squirm and squeal at the Flanagan article, because he knows that the legacy he has already amassed, will be an even greater catalogue of horrors.
We can be glad however, that the government’s elaborate attempts at taking us all for utter fools has been named, shamed and lies in tatters. Dissent is alive and well on the woodchip Isle and democracy survives another day!
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Sunday, July 25, 2004