Where has all the country gone?
Lunch Hour Theatre Script Where has all the country gone? June 1992
Where has all the country gone? June 1992, p 15
[On campaigning and volunteering]
…It should be noted that the Department of Harbours and Marine did not object to mining of the [Great Barrier] reef—a test case, if ever there was one! That was typical of the Government of the time, which was very clearly demonstrated later when the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Conservation held a Coastal Management Inquiry, Australia wide, which was boycotted by the Queensland Government, not allowing any Government employees to give evidence. Once again it was the unpaid volunteers who filled in.
If all the most highly qualified conservationists are in the Department of Environment & Heritage, where are the expert witnesses to come from when there is a test case? Take the Glasshouses. No! Stop! That should have been written as ‘Take the Glasshouses as a potential source of road-making material’. Those seductive characters just sit there tempting the Main Roads Department. Some years ago it was the public, led by a young farmer’s wife, that saved Glasshouse Elimbah from the clutches of a concrete firm that had an application before the Caboolture Shire Council for a quarry on it.
There were councillors who would welcome the proposed APM chemical paper pulp mill on Pumicestone Passage, with all its stinks and water pollution, but we squashed that, and APM abandoned the State entirely. A coal port on Bribie was planned, bringing the coal through a horrendously planned rail line from the Darling Downs; which is one that should be kept in mind, as it is highly likely to raise its threats again. They are canny those planners, after a defeat; the next time round it comes as an established fact that is indisputable.
Then again, with a different approach, your scriptwriter, acting for the WPSQ, took the LSC [Landsborough Shire Council] to court over the Lamerough Creek development, but failed to get improvements to the plan, after trying for more than ten years.
The public will be tested time and time again and if those with the acknowledged expertise are not allowed to say ‘boo’, there will have to be found a born-again Saint, to rise like a Phoenix from the ashes of past crusades.
Woe is me! ‘The waters are dark and the waves are high and we all grow tired of swimming’—quotation from The Bishop by Douglas Stewart [reproduced by arrangement with the Licensor, The Estate of Douglas Stewart, c/- Curtis Brown (Aust) Pty Ltd].
Reproduced with permission of Hugh McArthur; courtesy of Caloundra City Libraries
© WPSQ, Sunshine Coast & Hinterland Inc