Tasmanian Police a Disgrace

A LETTER TO THE EDITOR

"Tasmanian Police, in charging Peter Cundall and several other elderly protestors, who were demonstrating in a non-violent, non-offensive manner against the Pulp Mill on the steps of the Tasmanian Parliament, have successfully demonstrated that they are now either a totally compromised and politicised arm of Government policy, or they have simply lost the plot.

Did the police ever get around to laying charges against Forestry workers who seriously assaulted Forestry protesters, and/or vandalised their property earlier in the year?

What can ordinary citizens do to publicly protest their serious objection to the ongoing destruction of Tasmania's precious old growth forests, and poisoning of its water catchments?. The Government doesn't care, and watches aimlessly while a Forestry Industry relentlessly continues to destroy some of the best carbon sinks in the world at a time that we desperately need them.

Monocultural regrowth on a 90 year harvest cycle does not maketh a complex, mature age ecosystem several hundred years in age.

In terms of human time scale, it is no different in principle to constraining the average human lifetime of 70-80 years to that of a 10 year old, then having the nerve to suggest that a generation of 10 year olds will carry the wisdom and complexity of life experience to that of a mature age adult population.

Well done Tasmanian Police for demonstrating that you can no longer be relied upon to apply the law with any common sense."

Darren Phillips
Lilydale, Tasmania

An apology to the Launceston Examiner

In response to the complaints made by Fiona Reynolds, editor of the Launceston Examiner, in her Examiner article of 18 October 2009

We members of the Tamar valley anti-pulp mill community hereby apologise to Ms Reynolds for any distress that she is experiencing.

We felt that we should apologise on behalf of the 60% of so of Tasmanians who oppose the incompletely assessed pulp mill.

We apologise to Ms Reynolds for the following:

Being amateurs and lacking discipline
When we determined that Gunns incompletely assessed pulp mill could represent a huge threat to our health, lifestyles and investments, we didn’t know that the standards of the Examiner required us to be professional protestors and to have internal discipline.

We honestly thought that it was OK for us to be a group of individuals brought together to fight for our lifestyles and to get the political representation that we have been paying for all of our lives.

Of course, Fiona Reynolds is right. Our internal discipline is highly suspect, our parade ground has fallen into disuse and our members keep making up their own minds.

We’re not good enough and we apologise.

Failing to be professional environmental campaigners
When TAP was formed, a fee of $2 was agreed for members. Even with over 1,000 paid up members that doesn’t give us the money to hire staff, lawyers, or media consultants.

It’s clear that our idea was wrong. Rather than make the joining fee so low to enable pensioners and others to comfortably be represented when everyone else was refusing to listen to them, we should have charged $100 or more so that we could assure our members of professional lobbying.

We had thought that because our problem with the proposal was the lack of any study of risks or socio-economic costs (as opposed to benefits) that a community organization was needed to represent community needs.

It has taken Ms Reynolds to make us aware that we should be an environmental organization with professional campaigners.

We therefore apologise to Ms Reynolds for not being a professional environmental campaign group.

Having many different kinds of people as members
As a community organization, we have tried to embrace all of those in the region that felt the need to fight for their health, lifestyles and investments.

This has resulted in their being many different kinds of people in our membership resulting in many different approaches to resisting the incompletely assessed pulp mill.

Clearly this has produced a problem for Ms Reynolds and we apologise to her for that.

Failing to understand the media
Ms Reynolds has us that anti-pulp mill protestors are losing credibility with the Examiner and her article proposes that our ‘knowledge of the media is thin at best’.

We are sorry. As amateurs we had foolishly thought that the local media would work to understand the concerns of local residents. We were wrong. Ms Reynolds has told us that “To achieve balance and fairness we can go to professional environmental campaigners like the Wilderness Society for comment” even though they are based 200 km away and don’t represent the community.

Ms Reynolds says “We choose not to read the rantings of conspiracy theorists who spread rumours and are rapidly alienating sections of the media and community who were prepared to listen to their concerns.”

How the Examiner knows the contents if they do not read them is beyond our limited comprehension and is clearly part of our lack of understanding of the media.

We apologise unreservedly for our failure to understand the media.

Failing to submit articles when offered the opportunity

With our resources we cannot afford to hire writers neither can we respond to thoughts that we should publish articles in the Examiner.

Again this is just not good enough and we apologise.

Being opposed to Gunns pulp mill

To be honest, the main reason we oppose the mill is that the socio-economic risks have never been assessed. Just because we’re afraid for our health, lifestyles and investments due to our living downwind of one of the world’s biggest pulp mills in an inversion trapping valley of nearly 100,000 people.

Clearly, those concerns are subservient to our failure to meet The Examiner’s tough standards for a community.

The local community is clearly not good enough for The Examiner and we apologise to Ms Reynolds unreservedly for that

AND YES, we are very very sorry that this apology might seem to be a little late!

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