Defending koalas, management of Raby Bay’s canals, Toondah Harbour secrecy and use of SLAPP suits by corporations are discussed in letters published this week.
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Koalas need a fighting fund
It seems quite clear to me that at both state and Local government level there is an unwritten policy that koalas, if not wildlife in general, are a hindrance to development and growth.
So they need to be displaced from developing areas (as stealthily as possibly) while at the same time maintaining an apparently sustainable wildlife policy.
This fools the wider community into believing Council is genuinely concerned for wildlife.
The koala population in the Redlands is now at a critical point, with numbers so low that death rates outnumber birth rates. Extinction is inevitable unless very serious steps are taken.
If we had planted a million trees a few years ago and doubled the habitat area, it would have made little difference to the number of koalas today.
The reason for the steady decline in the population of koalas is complex and probably goes back to when the they were heavily hunted for their fur and skins. The koala population decline is also directly related to the human population increase with all the associated factors of destruction of bushland, more and wider roads, faster traffic, all increasing the stress on the koala.
Governments have failed to research and install the essential underpasses and overpasses for wildlife while again failing to address domestic dogs and koala proof fences.
This is all highlighted with the deaths of four koalas on the railway line at Ormiston. Perhaps this should be used as the basis for a court case against Redland City Council and the Department of Transport for neglect and complicit destruction of wildlife.
Nothing concerns the government more than bad press! It seems to me that a call for a community fighting fund with the aim of developing a legal case against the Council and the State Government might show the powers that be that we are serious. And the media could hardly ignore grass roots funding of a legal challenge to save our koalas.
DB
Thornlands
Raby Bay rates, levies and canals
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry reading the 9 Oct Redland City Bulletin article on Cr Murray Elliott’s call for a new approach to funding infrastructure on the Southern Moreton Bay Islands based on the Raby Bay wall remediation program funding model.
While I understand completely that there’s a huge infrastructure need on the Islands and that there’s no hope of Council ever being able to fill it, to suggest a Raby Bay funding model is heaping insult on injury, on us, in Raby Bay, and on SMBI people who have even less chance of being heavily taxed.
Doesn’t Murray Elliott understand that Council is gravely mismanaging Raby Bay walls? That Raby Bayers are paying more, much more than wall remediations cost? That Council has no plan, no budget just an endless burdening of Raby Bay residents, no end-date, no hope of ever finishing and removing our burden? That Council is making a profit from us? That for six years Council was charging a $2.5m annual levy ($2500 per property) for which regulations required Council to plan, forward budget and provide an end-date and Council couldn’t comply? That last year Council abolished the levy and simply added the same amount to Raby Bay rates because it couldn’t produce a plan, a budget and an end-date?
Doesn’t Cr Murray Elliott realize that we have been told that over 95% of our canal walls are “in good condition or better” but we are still being charged the same huge fees (Mayor’s letter to me 21/7/19)? That this year Council sent us a notice for 7 new sites to be tested because they have been “identified as “statistically possible future sites requiring remedial work. They are not considered frail..”? What gobbledygook! These walls will be measured for movements only but the same huge budget and impost on us will apply to measuring these new 7 new sites as to repairing heavy catastrophic failure walls.
It appears we are destined to getting snippets of information from our very own ministry of alternative truth, our unaccountable Mayor, Councillors and managers who charge us a never-ending $2,500 annual fee imposed on us to fix we don’t know what weaknesses in our canal walls. Council management of this small and not difficult to fix engineering program is a disgrace. Don’t let them levy SMBI residents to do engineering programs of any sort.
ZJ
Raby Bay
Toondah project: what are they covering up?
We need to call out the Walker Group’s proposed development at Toondah Harbour for what it is – ill conceived environmental vandalism with the potential to inflict future massive costs on ratepayers.
It is one thing for teenage vandals to inflict damage on parked cars at our ferry terminals but quite another for a developer to propose major damage to the Ramsar protected wetlands.
In my view Redland City Council has lacked diligence from Day 1 and the inappropriate commercial development plan for high rise apartments over our protected shorebird wetlands should never have got this far.
It is a poor reflection on our Council which seems not to have considered the environmental or infrastructure impacts of an attempt to cram another 8-10,000 people into a small area of Moreton Bay.
The secret deal signed by RCC has been surrounded in “commercial in confidence”. This means the rate payers are left in the dark. The actions of the Council in signing the deal look completely out of step with national media organisations and the “Right to Know” campaign.
And so the question about the Toondah deal remains…when government keeps the truth from you, what are they covering up?
DT
Victoria Point
SLAPP actions against community activists
It was with the dismay that I listened to a podcast on the ABC Listen website recently which illustrates how far we have strayed from the intended purpose of democracy.
Under the program heading “The Signal”, the item concerned highlights the use of lawsuits by those with deep pockets purely to silence opposition to their plans.
This is now quite a common practice, a form of corporate bullying, the
victims of which are usually individuals and community organisations who do not have the funds to take up the cudgels in the courts. As is revealed in the podcast these lawsuits often pass unnoticed by members of the public due to the use of injunctions to prevent disclosure by the abused parties.
These actions are generically referred to by the legal profession as SLAPP (Strategic lawsuit against public participation) actions. The use of the technique is diametrically opposed to the intent of our governance systems, that the public participate with Government in striving for a jointly agreed outcome.
The podcast is most informative, and well worth the time and effort to hear it out. It is a personal story of when Sadie climbed on top of a coal train to protest about climate change. Months later she was served with a $75,000 lawsuit.
DC
Thornlands
Redlands2030 – 19 November 2019
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One Comment
I’m a wildlife rescuer. I’ve been doing it for a few years now for a number of different organisations. It doesn’t matter what my name is because there are lots of other people doing what I do; we rescue all wildlife regardless of what they are believing that “all animals are equal, but NONE are more equal than others”. We rescue the cuddly, the thorny, the furred, the feathered, the scaly, the smelly, the flighted, the slithery, the bitey and the scratchy
This is my story of the last six months or so.
I’ve driven about 15,000 kms in a 20 year old ute to answer about 250 calls. I’ve gone days and nights without sleep, near worn myself and my ute to a standstill.
I’ve rescued the sick, the diseased, the stressed, misplaced, broken, lost frightened and abandoned, the hit by car, hit by train, bitten by dog, the left to lie at the side of the road. I’ve tramped miles through the bush, crawled down drains and climbed up trees. I’ve been on roofs, on motorways and anywhere else you can think of .Not everything has died or been euthanized – but lots have not survived.
I’ve seen tears in the eyes of grown- ups (including mine) when I know an animal is not going to survive and I’ve had sick or injured koalas die in my arms. I’ve seen time worn vets, vet nurses, carers and dozens of volunteers struggling with stress and exhaustion for the sheer volume of work they have to get through.
And smiles of joy on little kids faces when they see a koala released back the bush.
The point I’m trying to make is that every rescue I have had to do, goes back to something we have done in the past without considering the consequences to our wildlife AND WE ARE STILL DOING IT NOW.
Anything we from now on is almost too late .Qld Govt./Main Roads/ Roadtek have just started some koala fencing on the M3 at Klump road (and good on them) but I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been called out, at all times of the day and night to herd a koala off the motorway or to scrape up the left overs.
The point I’m trying to make to the Developers, the Federal or State Ministers, the Mayors, the Councillors, the buck passers and the greedy is this:
So, if you think what you are doing and the way you are going about it is OK and good for something or other and that what I and hundreds of others are having to do as a consequence of your greed and vandalization of Australia, then keep trashing our country. While you are lying in bed counting the bucks, we’ll be out there counting the bodies.
Sleep well –if you dare! (select your own expletive)