choose the future!
Dear Warren,
As you must be aware, Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke has just announced that he will ignore the recommendations of the Australian Heritage Council who have recommended the Tarkine be
protected, and instead open it up for the mining industry.
As a nation we have created systems and processes that enable us to protect the natural environment of Australia; we have done this because the majority of Australians feel, for a variety of
reasons, that this is an important and valid thing to do. We must respect our own commitment to protect other aspects of our existence than just the economic. While extractive
activities such a mining may support our economy in the short term, in the long term they weaken and destroy much that is valuable to the quality of human existence.
If all other aspect of life must be considered secondary to the economic aspects, that's because of the nature of our economic system, which must always grow, must always have more. When the mining industry have finished with the Tarkine they will want something else, and they always will want something else. No amount environmental destruction allowed will ever satisfy them.
Economic pressure must not be allowed to override all other aspect of life in Australia; the problematic nature of our economic system demands that we nearly always, and usually eventually, allow it to dominate everything else.
I support the protection of the Tarkine and ask that you inform me of the Coalition's position on this situation: will the coalition protect the Tarkine and other irreplaceable environmental assets?