WAT TEH F*K?!? (state Labor edition)
Image: Tasmanian government trying to take over farms, NSW government trying to get rid of them. Let's call the whole thing off....
Serendipity
In Tasmania, Premier David Bartlett is trying to rush through more anti-democratic legislation. Reneging on an 11-month-old commitment to transform the state’s culture of cronyism and contempt for due process, his government is pushing new laws that would effectively cut councils and communities out of planning processes.
Near-absolute power would reside with a small core of government ministers and would see private landowners forced to submit to government will. Of course, it is only coincidence that Bartlett launched this effort within a week of Gunns’ chief John Gay announcing that his $2.2b pulp mill may well have found a financial suitor.
And it is only coincidence that a major stumbling block has been the resistance of landholders determined not to host the mill’s water pipeline. Obviously.
For latest detail, see www.tapvision.info
Education buys the farm
Here in New South Wales, the Labor Government wouldn’t dream of secretly abandoning its public obligations. Or acting without vision in the name of short term business interests.
They are trying to take a massive farmland belonging to Hurlstone Agricultural High School, zone the 140 hectares as “surplus to future educational purposes” and sell it to developers. This is in spite of the fact that an Agricultural High School without a farm is just another under-resourced state school.
The Rees Government made this plan public in the November mini-budget… on page 6…. under `Asset Divestment’.
So well-researched was the decision that the Government has already had to partially retreat, given that three of the state’s top schools for children with educational and behavioural difficulties are sited on the land to be excised.
An inquiry is now under way. See www.sheap.org to sign the petition.
