Camp Weld, Huonville, Tasmania, Australia

Creating a Vision & Planning for a saner future – is anyone in power doing it?

What was the vision for the future of Tasmania / Australia / the world, of the people who commissioned the Environmental Impact studies for the Gunn Ltd. Paper Mill in Tasmania? What were their priorities? What were they trying to achieve? Who were they?

I say that to issue a giant Environmental Impact Study ( 7000 + pages ) document with a deadline for public comment of only ten weeks suggests a hurried, clandestine agenda and a contempt for the public who are “expected” to “comment” on it.

It strikes me that this timeline makes the Impact Statement a cynical exercise by corrupt and dishonest people who have no intention of taking any serious comments into consideration. I think these people consider the project as a done thing.

Ten weeks to approve a secret 20 year contract deal between a corrupt government leadership (are there any others?) and a greedy, soulless, sociopathic corporation who has the government in its pocket? A deal which we are expected to honour in the future? It takes a lot of contempt to seriously contemplate that. The worst thing is, it is likely to be approved and construction will commence with disruptive actions by green groups as a constant feature.

How else can you deal with people who are so bent? I’m talking about everyone involved in this – the spin doctors, the fearful employees, and the politicians who speak utter nonsense to discredit any opposition and its motives. People like that horrible man who is the Premier of Tasmania. I wouldn’t lend that man a screwdriver, because he’d ruin it by trying to use it as a chisel and a pinch bar, and then he’d try to sell it back to me, saying he’d improved it considerably.

There’s an obvious question which comes to mind – do we need the bloody paper from the new mill? I have a very reliable computer with a screen which displays what I need to know, off-line or on-line. I do my banking and research on line. I only use paper for artwork, etc. I know that the antiquated, silly “hard-copy” conventions retained by conservative institutions for “legal” reasons necessitate some of the vast over-use of paper on which Gunn Limited are planning the future of their enterprise.

All media is now available on-line. Why do I get three bills from Telstra every month? That’s nine sheets of thick paper plus unsolicited advertising material to make me into more of a mindless consumer. One email would do the job. Add to that the other utilities’ paperwork, the crap from self - promoting governments and the endless stream of junk mail and silly, ad-laden news magazines and news papers, and you have a small part of Australia’s paper wastage. Should we destroy our life support system for such a useless purpose?

I’m 58 now and over the last five years I’ve become computer literate to the point where can I build and repair computers and deal with software issues. I help students to get cheap computers. I help people over seventy to get on line so they can get in touch with the world again. They don’t need paper, just a little help.

Maybe the timber workers, who are threatening the ferals in the forest blockades with violence, and who trash and burn and thieve from unattended cars with police acquiescence, could show as much courage and patience as the ferals do with their passive resistance. Why should timber workers not also adapt to the times and retrain rather than behave like grunting thugs? I had to retrain at 52 years of age. What’s wrong with those people? Maybe too much beer, too much dope and a bad attitude in part generated by lousy union, government and employer leadership?

Another question that comes to mind – should the government, as its main objective, not plan to run the state / country / world with less paper so we do not have to destroy carbon sinks and natural beauty and oxygen giving vegetation? Is a clean, unpolluted water catchment not more valuable than tons of paper covered in advertisements and other soul-rotting nonsense?

One good newspaper a weeks is more than enough to read. Advertising should be restricted to electronic media - perhaps allow printed advertising only on toilet paper? The rampantly consuming public would be making a positive value judgment at least once a day.

The government is actively planning for further destruction and degradation of the already over-burdened life support system, planet earth. Isn’t that a monumental failure? Don’t they give a flying fuck about the welfare of their own grand children? Do they think that in the future THEY (whoever that is) can take care of all the mess we create now so that the present powers-that-be can dream on in their comfort zones?

Many men and women live in fond memories of the fifties and sixties when some of today’s environmental time bombs were first set and primed by ignorant planners who believed that anything other then unchecked development was a communist plot.

We are no longer as naïve and ignorant as we were fifty years ago. There’s no excuse for our leaders to be so blind, corrupt and ignorant. There’s no excuse for the business world to try so hard to turn us into even more useless gadget / bullshit consumers by spending ten billion plus a year on ad agencies and spin doctors for that purpose while the state treats the “environment” as a charity case on its scale of priorities.

Have the Tasmanian MP’s and the Gunn directors seen the once navigable Mainland East Coast Rivers which, after a hundred years of “management”, are just ankle deep from siltation (most of them, in fact) caused by clearance of catchment areas and river valley agricultural practices? Don’t Gunn executives like a good feed of healthy fish bred in clean, living waters? Or do they believe that she’ll be right, mate? Or is “fuck it, who cares, I’ll be dead by then” the prevailing attitude of these people? I know a lot of people who think like that. They all vote.

No wonder the young are so heavily into escapist drugs. They don’t have the power to maintain their comfort zone at any cost like their grand-/parents do with their pre-1970 dreaming. You can’t blame people for either attitude, self destructive though it might be.

Today we seem to live in the suicidal, foolishly competitive, perception based, I’m - alright - fuck - you world which our Prime minister Howard considers the pinnacle of his achievements. What a deluded ego maniac!

Our politics, and, in fact, all human-made systems, are ultimately powered by these lowest common denominators: fear, greed and ignorance. Politicians and others exploit these in a cynical and very calculated manner. At school they called it political science. But it’s not a science, it’s a fatal social disease. I wish this essay would flush out a few politicians and their established masters in industry, etc., who could find the good sense and courage to let their minds rise above their navels and look at the higher end of the spectrum. I would be very happy to help them get over their own fear, greed and ignorance.

I believe that many people who are doing the wrong thing now would have a lot to offer if they served in a system with a less defeatist vision. A system that allowed for long term plans to be made and executed - according to two basic Qualifiers: Life Support Integrity and Quality of life. A “standard of living”, our current first priority, can surely only be measured while we are actually alive and well to enjoy it?

Today’s politics are an outdated irrelevance in a world which cannot any longer afford the luxury of wasting life-time with endlessly playing dirty power games – if we want to survive for a bit longer, that is, and enjoy a tolerable quality of life while we’re at it.

Please take this seriously, folks. It’s much later than you think!

Kay Schieren
kschiere [at] bigpond.net.au Tel: 03 51524167 mobile: 0427 54167