[Greens-Media] Tas Greens_Ralphs Bay Calendar Launch-Alternative Vision to Walkers!_C O'Connor MP

[greens at parliament.tas.gov.au]

GREENS SUPPORT ALTERNATIVE, NATURAL VISION FOR RALPHS BAY

Walker Corporation Plan Unsustainable, Unpopular and Just Plain Daggy!

Cassy O'Connor MP
Greens Shadow Coastal Policy Spokesperson

Sunday, 16 November 2008
Contact: State Parliamentary Offices of the Tasmanian Greens, (03) 6233
8300

www.tas.greens.org.au


The Tasmanian Greens today reaffirmed their strong support for the
community fighting to save the internationally significant bird and
marine habitat at Ralphs Bay from the destructive plans of Sydney-based,
Walker Corporation.

After joining the Save Ralphs Bay group to celebrate the launch of its
2009 fundraising calendar today, Greens Leader and Franklin MP, Nick
McKim MP, and Shadow Coastal Policy spokesperson Cassy O'Connor MP took
the opportunity to view Walker Corporation's latest design incarnation
for Ralphs Bay.  Ms O'Connor said the experience made her feel
physically ill.

"Walker Corporation's display at the Lauderdale Football Club was like
travelling back to the 1980s, where I grew up in SE Queensland and where
ugly canal housing estates blight both the Gold and Sunshine Coasts.
Tasmania's spectacular, unspoiled coastline is far too precious for such
a toxic scenario," Ms O'Connor said.

"The developer's pastel drawings and 3D display are based on a deceit.
They are attempting to gloss over the fact this development would
devastate a Conservation Area, eliminate critical bird feeding, roosting
and breeding habitat, threaten the critically endangered Spotted
Handfish, and turn Ralphs Bay at Lauderdale into a construction zone for
the best part of a decade."

"If Walker Corporation was really listening to the community, it would
have packed up its unsustainable, unpopular and totally daggy proposal
years ago.  The developer is simply pretending to listen, but it must be
deaf because the community has made its view of this proposal very clear
over the past four and a half years."

"Essentially, what Walker Corporation proposes is destruction of a
natural environment justified solely by greed.  Well, times have
changed, the world is changing and people are realising we can't
continue to trash the environment for profit."

"The true vision for beautiful Ralphs Bay is represented in the Save
Ralphs Bay 2009 Calendar, with its spectacular images of the Bay's
changing moods, light and vistas, and its resident and migratory
shorebirds.  This is the wild, coastal Tasmania we must protect," Ms
O'Connor said.




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