Tamar Estuary needs Œless politics¹

FROM THE EXAMINER & FACEbook

Albeit that there's a fair bit of 'motherhood' invested in this move of Ald. Williams’, it is a step in a positive direction. It is very clear that the community needs its various ‘authorities’ to be working collaboratively and cooperatively towards a multidimensional outcome and in inclusive ways. Its something that's been evident to many for a long time.

The first notion that needs to be put aside is the one that suggests the Launceston City Council ‘operation’ has anything like the wherewithal to progress this kind of initiative by itself. If it had, and the problem is very, very old, we might have seen a lot more attention paid to it and in holistic ways a long time before now – not a bit of it!

On the evidence, Council and its operational wing have been looking the other way for decades. For progress to be made and real solutions found, innovative solutions, an authority cum research mechanism needs to be put in place that takes into account the entire bio-region and from a holistic perspective.

Launceston is situated at a point where in excess of 20% of Tasmania's drainage passes the city by. This is all too often downplayed and even overplayed for various political purposes.

Mondays meeting may be a start just so long as any grandstanding is put to one side. This is an issue that exceeds politics and the futility of bureaucratic egotisms.

Ray Norman

Alderman Emma Williams to ask City of Launceston to support a broader Tamar River solution.
Holly Monery 19 Mar 2017, 3:30 p.m.

Evidence-based action, not politics or single-focus plans, is needed urgently to address river health within the Tamar Estuary, says Alderman Emma Williams.

ACTION NEEDED: City of Launceston Alderman Emma Williams is seeking a multi-party resolution on the estuary.

She will put forward a motion at Monday’s City of Launceston meeting, asking the council to call on the state government to convene a meeting to resolve the strategic and financial commitments of stakeholders including TasWater and Hydro Tasmania.

Alderman Williams said studies had shown the health of the Tamar was not only linked to sewage but a range of issues including contamination in the catchment area.

“In order to address those we need to sit down around the table with those agencies and bodies that can actually do something, instead of just talking one to one, we need to sit down as a group,” she said.

“The Tamar estuary is an issue for the community in Launceston … its about developing actions that we can actually undertake and recognising that its not about one-off quick fix, even though sewage treatment is not a one off thing.”

She said repeated Tamar Estuary and Esk Rivers Program reports into the health of the estuary indicate that the zone of the Tamar within the urban area of Launceston has a poor and degraded ecosystem health.

“These poor results represent not only a threat to environmental and human health, but other social and economic matters including tourism, lifestyle and business investment opportunities,” Alderman Williams said.

“A body of evidence-based work has been produced identifying influencing factors in the current state of the Tamar, including the TEER Water Quality Improvement Plan (2015). However, these factors can only be addressed by a multi-stakeholder approach to responsibilities.”

BE ALERT: ALP pledges to keep TasWater in the hands of local councils

From the Mercury CLICK HERE

LABOR says it will leave TasWater in the hands of local councils if it wins government at the next State Election.


In his reply to Premier Will Hodgman’s Address on Tuesday, which announced the State Government would take over TasWater from 1 July 2018, Opposition leader Bryan Green said if Labor won it would:


• LEAVE TasWater to focus on its core business.• RELOCATE the sewerage works at Macquarie Point to clear the way for the $2 billion redevelopment project.
• FIX the Cameron Bay treatment plant in Glenorchy, which threatens to hold up Mona’s $200 million expansion; and• ADVANCE the replacement of Launceston’s failing sewerage and stormwater system.


Mr Green said Labor would fund these projects by offering them out through tenders to long-term institutional investors and Australian superannuation funds.


This would pour billions into the state, he said.
.
“There is an opportunity for long-term institutional superannuation industry funds to fund long infrastructure projects at a low rate of return and that’s what they will do as a part of our announcement,” he said. Mr Green also said Labor would work with the Federal Government and Infrastructure Australia to fast track TasWater’s planned water and sewerage improvements.


Treasurer Peter Gutwein — who put the State Government takeover of TasWater on the cards last month — labelled it a policy disaster.


He said it involved “fake money” from Canberra, privatisation, and putting pet projects in Hobart ahead of rural and regional Tasmanians. “These super funds will need a return and the only way to achieve that is through higher prices for customers,” Mr Gutwein said.


However, the plan to leave TasWater in local government hands was welcomed by the Local Government Association of Tasmania, while Tasmania’s longest serving mayor Tony Foster of Brighton said the state now had a real choice on water and sewerage ownership. 

Cr Foster said the approach by Labor was more co-operative than the one by the State Government, and he and other councils would be making sure Tasmanians know this at the next State Election.

LGAT president Doug Chipman said his organisation would now consider both proposals.

COMMENT

Labor’s policy of leaving TASWATER in the hands of Tasmania’s councils is OK so far as it goes in regard keeping ‘ownership’ closer to the ‘actual shareholders’ in Tasmania’s water infrastructure. However, what is Labor going to do about TasWater as a corporate entity? What does Labor have in mind in regard to accountability to its ‘grass roots’ owners?,

Labor’s stated priorities of fixing the clearly failing and inadequate infrastructure is simply a ‘shot-from-the-hip’ and short of it mark? Moreover, worryingly Labor ‘tips its hat’ to the status quo.

No room anywhere here for the paradigm shift that is clearly needed if Tasmania’s water management is to be resolved in a 21st C context. Likewise, it appears that there’s no room whatsoever in Labor’s ‘policy determination’ for critical thinking – worryingly. Most of all two things need to be put in place: firstly room for credible accountability; and secondly, rational solutions in a 21st C context for Tasmania’s ‘water management’ – now more than ever.

TasWater’s shareholders are the state’s property owners and residents. There is no doubt that their investment, compulsory as it is, is being trivialised by all the major political parties. More concerningly ‘their investment’ is made light of by the bureaucrats who depend upon it for THEIR living. All this is very, very, worrying given what’s actually at stake and what is being left out of the accountability equation in regard to the operation of a ‘public utility’.

Ray Norman on FACEbook

EDITOR'S NOTE

In Tasmania, TasWater is turning into being 'The fight we have to have'