Gilly Flower

Or that's what it feels like anyway.

Submission is an unfortunate choice of word I've decided. It implies acceptance. Meekly kneeling with bowed head and acceding to whatever those in authority consider is good for us.

But the tide is turning down here in Gunnsmania. A growing number of people are no longer prepared to submit. They're rattled, and cranky, and completely fed up with the arrogance of a premier who continues to dismiss anyone who disagrees with him as being 'anti-everything greenies'.

Well last Tuesday evening's 'Tasmania: a failed democracy' Launceston meeting should have given him something to think about. Coming as it did, hard on the heels of a similar meeting in Hobart. The Tailrace at Riverside was packed. People of all political persuasions came to listen to a raft of speakers that included TT editor Lindsay Tuffin, MLC Terry Martin, Kim Booth (Greens) MP, Jeremy Rockliff (Liberal) MP, Dr Warwick Raverty (pulp mill scientist & former RPDC panellist) and former AMA Tas president Michael Aizen.

Kim, Terry & Warwick all received standing ovations, and while Jeremy R was initially politely received, when the meeting was thrown open to Qs from the floor, & Jeremy consistently side-stepped all references to the pulp mill the mood turned ugly. Not violent ugly, just we-insist-you-answer-the-question ugly.

He didn't of course. He blustered belligerently on, sticking determinedly to the script his media minders had so obviously written for him, and contradicting himself along the way until Warwick eventually stood up to give him a truly stunning put down to which Jeremy could offer no reply.

The gist of it was that if Jeremy was so supportive of a pulp mill for Tassie, and so adamant he had the best interests of his NW electorate at heart, then how come he was so silent over the initial option to build the thing at Hampshire, an area that is considerably less environmentally sensitive than the heavily populated Tamar Valley, and which would've been far less likely to result in the furore that this ill-advised project has spawned thus far.

But to return to the submission of the title - which needless to say is pulp mill related - it concerns the Bypass planned for the East Tamar Highway. A road notorious for the number, and speed, of laden log trucks that travel along it 24 hours a day. Not to mention the number of road accidents - many of which involve log trucks - that occur along it.

A Bypass is long overdue, and I'm certainly not knocking a Bypass, but its design has been quietly reduced from the safest option of an overpass (the model the community were initially advised would be built) to what is known in the trade as a 'seagull intersection'. A T-junction in other words, that would involve those of us living in this area risking life & limb every time we got in the car to go anywhere. Entering a highway heavily populated with log trucks hurtling along at 100 kph, on a stretch of road characterised by thick fogs during winter, would be akin to playing Russian roulette on a daily basis. And it doesn't appeal.

So our close-knit community hastily convened another public meeting last Thursday evening in our tiny community hall. That was packed too.

Never mind we're all becoming rather expert at this type of organisational ability, we shouldn't have to do it. I'm all for knowledge and learning new things, but the ins & outs of civil engineering, road building & traffic really doesn't do it for me. I resent having to spend precious hours sifting through academic reports & documentation in order to write a submission with a deadline of barely a week.

But, I've done it. Tomorrow I shall re-jig it on behalf of J since the word is the more of them the council/RPDC receive the better. And the more likely we are to achieve the second best outcome to an overpass, which is roundabouts.

And the next time I add to this blog I'm determined the words 'pulp' and 'mill' won't be mentioned. Sadly, though, there's no guarantee. Sorry folks.