Dear Fellow AustraliansBy MAX SALEDear Fellow Australians, For that is what we are. Never mind the puddle between Tassie and the so called 'Mainland'. We live in the same country and are about to vote in, the same government, one way or the other. Now let me get stuck into your State Government and those who call themselves Tasmanians but who are in reality capitalists with no other perspective than the bottom line in the annual report, to wit Gunns and all its shareholders. One major one of which I am fairly reliably informed, is the Commonwealth Bank of Australia whose only interest in things is again, its bottom line. We all belong to the same nation and we all watch the same TV shows. Allow me to refer to this morning's Sunday on Channel 9. A segment for which it seems both Gunns and the Tasmanian Government threatened legal proceedings against Nine in the event that it went to air. Well fellers, you can fool most of the people most of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. Particularly when you cause selected Company and Government information to be exempt from the FOI Act. The only grounds for not being upfront with information under the FOIA is that the information would not be in the best interests of the State of Tasmania. Your call! And what an ugly call it is. This is a decision made by politicians and bureaucrats. The Flanagan revelations should have been enough to inhibit all of this crap but now we have had to be exposed to native mammals and marsupials being poisoned by 1080 and dying agonised slow deaths. And rightly so according to Gunns man on the spot because they are too numerous. Never mind that they are a protected native species, they don't suit the Gunns plantation environs. Where are the signs - 'Wallabies Prohibited'? Even though we have destroyed your habitat in which all you Wallaby people never had a problem you are now a bloody nuisance, so we (Gunns et al) have a program which amounts to localised genocide to protect our bottom line further down the track. We are also exposed to whole communities of people suffering strange illnesses which would seem to be of an auto immune disfunctional nature. Carcinogens, rheumatics and lupus, mental problems, all got a mention. Who could ever countenance the aerial application by helicopter spraying of chemicals which are known to be promoters of carcinogenous illness? And the revelations that spray residues leach into topsoil and have a capacity to be delivered into creeks and streams in heavy rain conditions mean that nobody in Tasmania can be sure any more that they are being delivered pure clean water. Even microscopic amounts of sinister chemicals in drinking water, once taken into the body become, I feel sure, cumulative. No wonder Gunns and Lennon et al have the suppression of this information on policy and activities in the timber industry from the FOIA. It is one of the greatest disgraces of enlightened civilization in the 21st. Century. With all the information at hand in this day and age it is long past the time when politicians should have united in a bipartisan approach to the saving of the forests. Politics should be thrown to the winds, such is the seriousness of the total scenario. Instead of that a succession of Governments of both Federal and Tasmanian persuasion have allowed the profit takers to go on and on despite the national disgrace and damage that is being caused. A long time ago, as a youth, I worked in a small sawmill where I was required to operate the gauge on the sawbench and also to remove bark from sawlogs before they became 4x2's etc. I noted the savage machinery in the nine docco this morning which lifted trees from the ground, passed the trunks through abrasive jaws which stripped the bark and in the process docked the trunk length into transportable portions. Not many jobs to be lost here if clearfelling is eliminated. And do I understand that the really old growth is usually burnt because it is unsuitable for the wood chip industry? The last shot has to be at Gunns whose man said that the practices of the Tasmanian timber industry were far superior compared to that of Indonesia and other Third World countries. Even using the other Third World countries as a basis for comparison is an admission that Gunns and the Tassie Government are up to the same thing as are Third World countries. He also said that best practice was necessary because the Company had to compete with these other sources. The Haitian mudslides and consequent huge death toll were, it seems due to reckless deforestation. Probably also are the clouds of smoke over Tasmania which are exacerbating the greenhouse gas situation. Peter Cundall was right in his address to the National Press Club when he said that the greatest problem in this debacle is greed. Greed fogs the brain, clouds the vision, impairs the intellect so that the only perceivable thing is the bottom line.
Sad Max, Sale, Victoria
More opinion:
RAPID RESPONSE EMAIL: What do you think? Monday, September 27, 2004 |