Letter to Cairns Post and Mossman Gazette, 25th August, 2005

One by one, and to our lament each time, our costal communities are converted into the same kind of land rush based, overdeveloped feeding frenzies.
Humans doing what humans do?
Every time it happens we have the same arguments and air the same grievances and make the same platitudes about how “it’s gotta be managed differently this time”. Yeah Right. Maybe we can’t help it. Maybe free will is an illusion or perhaps it can only appear in individual persons and not in The People.
Every now and then we hear about some community in Holland or Tasmania or somewhere, who have stepped outside the square of undirected human swarming behaviour. They have consciously decided to take control of their local futures to the universal satisfaction of the community. You know exactly what I mean. You also know that these communities are prosperous.
However, everyone wants to make a buck now and how better to get richer quicker than to sell the cane farm or subdivide the lifestyle block. The landowners in areas under the spotlight know the potential to make quick cash and they also know that local government restrictions work at odds to their development options. They’ve seen it happen elsewhere and they are chomping at the bit to have their go. They are the old guard, who have seen the region in the heyday of its agricultural history and they have seen the world overtake their traditional interests. The economic focus has shifted from land under service to land left alone. That notion is incomprehensible to the limited intellects who are driving the lobby for unrestricted development. They remark with amusement that people would come and spend perfectly good money to look at scrub. They see tourism and conservation as a silly fad which will pass when people come to their senses.
They sell to the city based developers and marketers who have no connection to the area whatsoever other than that some desperate cane cocky sold him the farm. They can’t sell land to the locals so they market it to the cities and so runs away the population.
These people will be dead soon. They are old and frail in body and mind. They are corpulent and corrupt. Their interests are undisguised and personally assimilative. They aren’t equipped to understand the issues we are now realizing, matter deeply. They are also entrenched within the decision making machinery of the region. Their immediate interests work at odds with the sustainable maintenance of a healthy, happy community living in relative harmony with the living treasure on its doorstep.
Think about that word, ‘treasure’, please, and know it for the literal truth I intend it to convey.
The fundamental consideration that the environment in its current condition, is the new basis for the existence of any community in this region, should never be overlooked for even a second. I’m not using the word in its airy fairy greeny context as an emotional hook for a very special place. It is that too. But, as the fundamental economic basis for the very existence of this community, our landscape is the definition of treasure. If you think your existence in this shire, in this day and age, is independent of the new global interest in your area then you are a very special kind of fool.
If the forces for development are appeased we will have sold to them our continued ability to trade with the world market. We will become obsolete. The appeasement of some individuals now will bankrupt this community. We are rapidly trading away our treasure without ever having had it valued.
Why do we crave homogeneity? Why do we need to go through the same cycle we know without a doubt will lead to the destruction of that which supports us here? Don’t disappoint me by pretending that you don’t know what I’m talking about.
Douglas Shire could be a truly landmark community, with our abundant water, our pristine forests and marine environment. We have a tiny population which is very wealthy even by Australian standards. We are the best placed community on the continent to showcase a truly sapient relationship with our landscape. The set of small valleys that is our shire is already legendary around the world. Many millions of people’s idea of Paradise is the view out of your window every day. Think about that for ten seconds each day. Look out your window. If you think I’m exaggerating then pull your head out of wherever it’s in.
Despite the obviousness of these facts we are still debating whether to fritter away this magnificent asset on a strategy for which we already know the long term consequences. This is a one of a kind slice of the luckiest country on the planet, and we are seriously entertaining the debate as to whether or not to open the floodgates to its inevitable demise.
We have a few men, individuals with their own agendas, who are constitutionally incapable of understanding the importance of curbing human growth in areas like this. I say this because if they could understand, they would be ashamed of themselves and they are not. These people, some of whom are on the council and in business, are simpletons. But like Dustin Hoffman’s, Rainman, sometimes a simpleton can be brilliant in specific ways. The gang of four, and others driving the push for more of the same, have an intelligence which is more like rat cunning and Machiavellian understanding.
If you don’t know Machiavelli then shame on you and google him now before reading further.
Men like these, understand viscerally how to win favour with the nervous and insecure and how to ensure that there are plenty of nervous and insecure to win favour from. They understand how to find and close deals and that their position is better the more deals they make. But what they can not do is think on a scale sufficiently large as to introduce them to more important and permanent concepts.
It is this type of human who is hijacking this shire. You know it and so does anyone who cares to look.
Would you be as selfish as to permit the destruction of that which most likely brought you here and absolutely supports you simply because a reaction would cut into your beer time or the footy? Make your opinion known and make your vote reflect your ability to see beyond your next mortgage payment.

Letter sent to Warren Entch and Radio National 16th June 2005.


Looking out for the underdog was once a characteristic held in the highest regard as a fundamental aspect of our character as a people. It was part of our identity.
No longer, is this the case.
It has been made desperately apparent in recent years that the underdog is no longer a priority in our increasingly mercenary culture.
In the face of profit and economic gain, the underdog is a liability, an un-needed distraction which must be dealt with as a burden to be shed at the first opportunity.
It is with this new relationship to the 'worse off', that we have approached, amongst many other things, the current fiasco of the Chinese defectors whose lives are currently in our hands.
It would be paranoid to think the fuss surrounding this issue is a smoke screen to keep our eyes off a more important ball. Therefore we must assume there is substance to the story.
That in mind then, we must acknowledge a few simple facts.
Three high ranking officials from a notoriously oppressive, Juggernaut regime, come forth with a plea that we protect them from the inevitably terminal repercussions of their decision to step forward with matching accounts of an assortment of nefarious activities directed towards this nation.
In response to their provisioning us with this information and the full knowledge of their unpleasant fate if returned, we have all but given them or driven them to the very forces they have sought to evade.
This is a new low point in our status as a supposedly civilized people.
Are the stories of the bureaucratic nightmare inflicted on these men true? If they are, I am calling for every executive in the relevant departments to be immediately sacked for criminal ineptitude and a flagrant disregard for the safety of those whose lives are literally in their hands. Not that this issue is the only, or even best, example of the same kind of ingrained incompetence from the same names and faces.
If a foreign diplomat on our soil seeks protection from their own government, there is a very good chance that they are in serious risk of persecution. If they are made to feel compelled to seek refuge in the civilian world because of their treatment by our administration, then we have a very deep problem that has to be analyzed at the level of the personalities making the decisions.
This is because the decision to feed a man who is pleading for the help that only you can give, to what all evidence suggests is his persecutor, requires a special kind of black eyed callousness which must be recognized and apprehended. It must be removed from any executive positions which place it in command of situations where morality and honesty are required.
There exists then, a moral responsibility for those who are capable recognizing the amoral, to do their best to expose them. The actions or inaction of an executive are a reflection of their moral code and character. The actions of readily nameable members of the government and public service have revealed them to be without the moral fibre that should be requisite of anyone placed in the positions they currently hold. Start at the top and work your way down defense and immigration to start with. They must be removed immediately or risk dissolving in the minds of the impressionable public, any sense of need for the values upon which civil society is built.