[Greens-Media] Tas Greens_Greens Bat for Community at RPDC PAL Hearings_K Booth MP

[greens at parliament.tas.gov.au]

GREENS FIGHT FOR COMMUNITY AT RPDC PAL HEARINGS

As Government Locks Out People and Locks In MIS and Multi Nationals

Kim Booth MP
Greens Shadow Primary Industries spokesperson
 
Tuesday, 25 November 2008
Contact: State Parliamentary Offices of the Tasmanian Greens, (03) 6233
8300

www.tas.greens.org.au


The Tasmanian Greens today will attend the Resource Planning and
Development Commission (RPDC) hearing into the Revised Draft State
Policy on the Protection of Agricultural Land 2007(PAL) and give
evidence supporting the rights of rural communities to live in the
country, and rejecting government moves towards banning the construction
of homes in rural areas and opening the floodgates to Managed Investment
Scheme (MIS) driven plantations.

Greens Shadow Primary Industries spokesperson Kim Booth MP said today
that the Greens rejected absolutely the government's arbitrary ban on
the construction of homes in rural areas. 

Mr Booth also said that the Greens opposed the proliferation at a
landscape scale of MIS plantation schemes that are covering the rural
landscape like a plague and are designed to give obscene tax breaks to
wealthy individuals and companies but did nothing for the community.

"Today I will be giving evidence to the RPDC of the folly of the
government's arbitrary ban on homes in rural areas and also highlighting
the damage that MIS schemes are having on our rural and regional
communities and land scapes," Mr Booth said. 

 "The automatic ban is arbitrary and capricious and reflects government
policy to turn Tasmanian's rural areas into a toxic industrial zone
smothered in MIS plantations, harvesting tax breaks for the wealthy
rather than the rich tapestry of diversified businesses and communities
that are the culture and economic engine driver of rural Tasmania at the
moment."

"The country needs innovative people with ideas and capital to grow
their communities and the economy of the state, rather than a barren
de-populated waste land smothered with failing plantations and a
shrinking rate base."

"Homes in rural areas other than prime agricultural land should be
discretionary enabling Councils to assess competing interests in a
rational way as the planning system is designed to do."

"Homes are needed for people to live in, to grow the new sunrise
industries such as intensive horticulture, viticulture, tourism and
other farming enterprises and to provide the critical mass needed to
retain services such as schools, councils, health services and trades as
well as farm and saw mill workers." 

"The Tasmanian rural landscapes are of outstanding beauty and of
international significance and the banning of people and their
conversion to a toxic industrial zone will massively damage Tasmania's
long term social and economic future," Mr Booth said.




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