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Clear heads needed

Gavin King

Saturday, February 2, 2008

 

The lunatics have escaped from the asylum and they're ranting and raving and baying for blood.

They've all come out of the woodwork this week: from anti-development greenies and population growth haters to racists and rednecks and bleeding hearts and whingeing blackfellas.

It's like a bloody pride parade for the insane and ignorant, marching through the halls of public opinion.

They are complaining about two separate issues, but they are linked by the intensity of the fight and the narrow mindedness of the arguments.

At the moment we've got the utopian environmentalists up in arms about the approval of development at Myola and the limp-wristed left and far right at loggerheads over the need to say sorry to the stolen generation.

These issues may appear small and insignificant to you, because you're sane and relatively normal.

But they are almost a matter of life or death for the mob of bleaters involved, waging vehement campaigns to further their cause or shoot down the opposition.

The furore over Myola is a classic case of the greenies wanting paradise, but only for themselves.

Myola over the range near Kuranda was identified as a growth area for new residential development in the FNQ Regional Plan to cater for up to 11,000 people.

It is important to remember there are about 4000 people moving to the Far North every year, and they need somewhere to live, which is the reason plans like the 2010 version and the upcoming 2025 model are needed.

Funneling this stream of new arrivals out to Myola makes sense, not least because it provides new business opportunities to cater for them and facilitates the need to upgrade the Kuranda Range road.

This week the Mareeba Shire Council approved the plan on Tuesday, leaving the final decision in the hands of the State Government who will obviously ensure the environment is looked after.

Nevertheless, a handful of Myola residents are predictably howling in protest, mainly because they want to exclusively enjoy the area because, well, they were there first.

Even Barron MP Steve Wettenhall, a ghost of a politician who makes an appearance once a blue moon to hand out a certificate to some tiny community group, opposes the Myola plan.

This is despite his Labor predecessor Lesley Clark's input in developing the regional plan in the first place and Desley Boyle's soft backing of it in her role as Local Government Minister in 2006.

The greenies and nimbyists will continue to lobby and rail against it, hopefully to no avail but definitely at greater cost to tax and ratepayers.

While that mob are loud and obnoxious, they are tame compared with the vitriol spewed forth by both sides of the sorry debate this week.

The simple fact is the Federal Government should say sorry, mostly to stop the incessant whining from the chorus of urban Aboriginals and their sycophantic white supporters.

Getting the apology out of the way will also put a muzzle on the racist hounds of hell, who think blackfellas should be left to wallow and die in their own misery and dysfunction somewhere far, far away from suburbia.

This rabid pack of rednecks have sent text messages to this paper so vile they can't be printed, not realising their ignorant messages of hate only fuel and bolster the agenda of the opposition they despise.

I suspect everyone is keen to continue this whole sorry debate just to mask the failure to address the disastrous social breakdown in remote communities.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd should say sorry immediately and get on with the real job of introducing the same style of intervention in the Cape as the previous government used in the Northern Territory.

Both of these issues cost money, divide the community and annoy the crap out of most right minded people.

But I shudder to think what the crackpots and fruitcakes involved in these issues would do with themselves if they had nothing to complain about.


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