Time to honour historic pledge
CONGRATULATIONS to the ALP for initiating talks with Aborigines over a treaty. Aboriginal man Walter George Arthur, who was stripped of his real name, wrote to Queen Victoria in 1847, pointing out that his people agreed to leave mainland Tasmania for Wybalena after George Augustus Robinson promised that once the killings had stopped they would be returned to their country. It never happened. In 1883, Aborigines on Cape Barren wrote: “We are under no obligation to the government. Whatever land we have has been given in lieu of Tasmania.”
A settlement is long overdue. It will not affect any private property or affect people’s jobs or lifestyles. It might deliver justice to Aboriginal people and make Tasmania a better place for all.
Michael Mansell Launceston
Liberal spin
LEADING up to the last election we were fed a lot of spin by the Liberals about how they needed to have a majority government to make Tasmania great again. Unfortunately, many of us fell for that. While in government they have continued to feed us spin, spin and more spin. Spin about forestry, spin about health, spin about fish farms, spin about TasWater and spin about the need for a uniform statewide planning scheme.
What they have not told us is how this statewide planning scheme is aimed at making it easier, simpler and faster for developers (the Tasmanian Property Council are clearly happy with it). The newly introduced statewide planning scheme does not protect local amenity or our special and unique environment that people living in Tasmania and tourists alike value so much. It was interesting to see Mr. Brian Wightman of the Tasmanian Property Council coming out supporting the government in its decision to hijack our TasWater that we have invested in over so many years. You scratch my back ...
The next election cannot come soon enough. This Liberal Government has a “Fragrance” about it. Could it be from rubbing shoulders with a certain Singaporean billionaire? If these monstrous towers are taken on as Projects of State Significance, our concerns will be confirmed. Oh, for a government that actually cares about doing the right thing for the people who voted them in. This Government is focused on staying in power regardless of the future of the state, our current lifestyle or our children’s heritage.
S. Carter Sandy Bay
Blame cray fishing
IN “Giant kelp forest plight hidden beneath waves” ( Mercury, June 3) Simon Bevilacqua asserts that “Tropicalisation of our temperate waters encourages the march of sea urchins into the kelp forests, transforming them into barren wastelands”. I don’t believe this is exactly true. In the 1960s I enjoyed exploring the string kelp forests, and I can assure Simon that at that time the long spined sea urchin was abundant. The population explosion that occurred, and the resultant rapid devastation of the kelp, coincided with the removal of the urchin’s main predator, the mature large crayfish, by fishing. This was the time when the aluminium dingy appeared, allowing fishers to work in close among the rocks and reefs favoured by the kelp beads, known colloquially as “cray weed”.
It was a bonanza for the lobster industry, but it turned out to be not sustainable. I believe this scenario is widely accepted in the scientific community. The extension of the East Australian Current into Tasmanian waters has at best a minor role in the loss of kelp.
Sometimes it can be counter-productive to always blame climate change. The chances of cooling the oceans in the near future are remote, but changes to the regulation of the permissible sizes of harvested lobsters is achievable, and I think work is being done at present to investigate this approach.
Richard McCure Sandy Bay
Hardly cuddly
NO Greg Barns (“Hamas a cuddly puppy compared with our politicians’ vile chums”, Talking Point, Mercury, June 5), Saudi Arabia may have a lot to answer for when it comes to exporting Islamist extremism, but that does not make Hamas a “cuddly kitten” in comparison.
Hamas is designated as a terrorist organisation by most of the Western world for a reason. It is not just a part of the “Palestinian struggle for a homeland”, its genocidal aim is to kill or expel all Jews from the Middle East. It has a long history of conducting terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and, when Israel is forced to respond, using its own civilians as shields, a double war crime.
And Saudi Arabia is not the “most prolific sponsor of terrorist activity globally”. That, according to the US State Department, year after year, is Iran, whose many terrorist clients include Hamas.
George Greenberg Hobart