MLCs listen
Very useful indeed
HOUSING on the land behind the Margate Train and the bowls club has been suggested, with the land called useless (Letters, March 19). That land is privately owned, by us. It is part of Inverawe Native Gardens, a tourist attraction that draws visitors from Tasmania, interstate and overseas. It has been featured on TV, in newspapers and magazines, as far away as the UK. Over the past 17 years we have personally cleared 9.5ha of weeds, removed truckloads of rubbish and planted over 12,000 Australian natives, with labels and interpretation signs. It is Tasmania’s largest landscaped native garden and probably the largest such garden in private hands in Australia. It is home to marsupials including the endangered eastern barred bandicoot, and 103 species of bird have been spotted. It is part of an important flight path that links the Derwent with the Wellington Range. Our aim is to encourage people to plant gardens that sit softly on our fragile landscapes. We run regular workshops to enable people to use natives in their own gardens. Inverawe has rightly been zoned Environmental Living: it is not for development. termined and well-heeled vested interests is rubbish. Equally nonsensical is that the Labor/Green government was dysfunctional. A government that went full term, despite the best efforts of the Liberals, can hardly be called dysfunctional. Some good legislation was passed, arguably more fair and balanced than the Liberals managed. A health system in crisis, the dismantling of an agreement that sees a forestry industry incapable of profit without subsidies, failure to recognise our looming housing crisis or to plan for impacts of a growing population, climate change and industry needs, all suggest the Liberals were asleep at the wheel during their term. JUST an addendum to Ruth Forrest’s article on the Legislative Council (Talking Point, March 19). From personal experience it is exceptionally hard for small unfunded groups to change or amend the party platform position of whichever party is in power or for that matter the opposition of the day. However, it is not complex to communicate with the 15 members of the Legislative Council and bring to their attention any deficiencies in proposed legislation and what is more important is that they listen! Queensland to see the damage that can be done by an unfettered executive. For Queensland this was only remedied at the end of an election cycle after years of ideologically driven excesses.
That said, the last thing we need is an Upper House occupied by party politicians, where party policy and not rigorous assessment determine the vote of sitting members. If the Legislative Council simply acts as a blocker, or as with the Senate for a short period under the Howard federal government, simply becomes a rubber stamp, it becomes effectively useless. Let’s keep the Legislative Council effective by keeping it independent.