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.