When two worlds collide
TASMANIA has a beautiful coastline surrounded by pristine waters. It is one of our great assets. So is our small, dispersed population. So are our little coastal towns, and those who live there, often for generations, and maintain those communities.
So are the beaches where generations of Tasmanians have enjoyed their shacks and camping holidays.
Why would we want anything different? We don’t, but sadly in this overcrowded and polluted world inevitably there will be those who see such gems and try to mould them to their view of how they should be, for their customers, and more importantly, their investors. If there is any benefit to the locals, it is only a secondary gain.
The mega-development proposed by Cambria Green Agriculture and Tourism Management Pty Ltd raises more questions than it answers. If this development is about community involvement and the proponents have been working on it for three years, why has there been no consultation?
If they wish “to take the locals along for the ride” ( Mercury, May 2) why so much secrecy?
Who does the local council represent when there were only four days’ notice of such a complex and novel proposal before their meeting?
To those locals who support the proposal I say “Be careful what you wish for”. Go for a holiday to Fiji and stay in an enclave while guards keep out the locals. Do the developers plan to buy building supplies at the local hardware store, and will Chinese labour be brought in to work on these projects as is allowed under the China-Australia free trade agreement? Who locally benefits from planes and helicopters flying overhead in an area where peace and solitude have been a selling point? How is it going to help the local golf club?
What is to happen to Nine Mile Beach? What will be allowed on it, horses, motorbikes? What will be allowed in the water? Jet skis? What will these do to recreational fishing, or whales that have started to visit?
Three years of planning and no details.
The question must be asked how do the local council and state government expect to control the environmental issues when they take no effective action against people who destroy sections of the sand dunes at Dolphin Sands?
The developers say they have access to 400 mega litres of water, but in a dry environment that is not a lot if they expand up to 27 golf holes. The run-off will include nitrogens, and what will be its effect on Moulting Lagoon, which the proposed golf course backs, and Great Oyster Bay?
What infrastructure costs will this involve for the state government — new airport, new roads, new bridges?
Will they be pressured to put a bridge through from Dolphin Sands to Swanwick as proposed when the area was first subdivided 50 years ago.
Tasmania’s coastal environment remains wonderful despite the onslaught of 200 years of European settlement. This is because people defend it.
Louisa Anne Meredith, the colonial writer, lived at Cambria in the 1850s and is
seen as Australia’s first environmentalist for her work in saving the black swan from extinction, as well as her drawings, particularly of endemic plants.
Is it even reasonable that any foreign consortium be allowed to have control over development of more than 31 square kilometres, an area equal to a slab of land along a line from Hobart’s GPO to Glenorchy and 1.5km on either side of that line?
The corporate nature of the proposal raises even more questions. Who actually owns the company, have they done such a development before and can we see it? How did they make their money in the first place? What other companies do they own and what are their arrangements with moving debt and profit between entities, and countries?
What of its own governance? Does it have any Tasmanian directors? Will it go the way of Moon Lake, the owner of VDL Australia’s biggest dairy farm, which has not delivered on its investment and last month had all five non-Chinese executive directors resign over issues of governance with its Chinese owner? Dr Tim Flanagan was raised at Longford, where he now lives, and works as a general practitioner. He has worked as a locum GP at Swansea and spent many childhood holidays at a family shack at Turner’s Beach. His family bought a shack at Dolphin Sands, where the Cambria Green development is proposed, in 2000, and his great-grandfather was born at Spring Bay in 1855.
Tasmania’s coastal environment remains wonderful despite the onslaught of 200 years of European settlement. This is because people defend it.