30.07.14
Letter to the Editor
The Townsville Bulletin – business story – Mega mine a lifeline for Bowen economy is a typical story of a small business person who owns two hotels and is typically, crying poor. The business man begins his story with a tale of doom as follows: “Heaven knows we need these sorts of projects (the Adani Group Carmichael mine) to help create jobs, to provide a future for our families, and get towns like Bowen back up and running” and “it’s been like a bad game of monopoly around here over the past two years.” Clearly this bloke is thinking only of himself and using the community as a backdrop for his whinging and greed.
Later in the story it is revealed that this bloke has spent $6.5 million refurbishing one of his hotels in recent times and more renovations are ongoing. Not bad for a bloke who complains that “two hotels (in Bowen) have closed down and nobody is stopping at the ones that are still open.” One assumes that this statement includes his own hotels, so where then does he find a lazy $6.5 million to spend of his refurbishments? Just another typical small business person crying “broke,” they are never broke.
He is obviously spending the money because he has known that the coal mine would be approved if the LNP came to government. Meanwhile Adani claims the mine will produce upwards of 10,000 jobs, and this may well be so however, those jobs will need to be weighed against the loss of up to 60,000 jobs if the front page of the Townsville Bulletin today is repeated Ship of Fools where a Chinese coal ship thought that they would take a short cut through The Great Barrier reef which could have ended in tragedy for Australia’s greatest tourist attraction and the people who rely upon the reef for their livelihoods. This is not the first breach of shipping laws on the GBR and unfortunately won’t be the last. Surely the GBR is more important to the Australian economy and an alternate route for the coal should be found, possibly via Darwin. The by-line with the story “These idiots put our reef at risk by trying to take a shortcut with a 290m bulk coal carrier. But they think it’s all a big joke” stands as a warning that the federal government needs to do much more as far as employing local pilots to accompany shipping until they are clear of GBR waters.
Regards,
Shaun Newman