On Our Door Step

[squidgie]

AN ARTICLE I DID IN RICHMOND RIVER SUN WHICH WAS EDITED FULL VERSION IN BUSH N BEACH LAST MONTH

Well the New Year is upon us and so is a big dark cloud with the threat of a marine park on our doorsteps Yep, you heard me, a bloody marine park! A group calling itself the Nation Park Association of NSW (NPA) is pushing for a park running from South Ballina Beach Nature Reserve to the Clarence River at Yamba.
That is our area, but the group wants more. In the words of its program manager, Nicky Hammond, on December 4: “Today’s unveiling of the Sydney Marine Park proposal is just part of the biggest NSW marine protection plan
ever to be released.
“The marine park is part of a state-wide proposal for an intricate network of marine protection from Tweed Heads, in the north, to Cape Howe, in the south. In total, it will offer complete protection for more than 200,000 ha of NSW oceans.”
Yep, you got it. Our little area here is first cab off the rank. This radical extreme green group or FUN POLICE, as I call them, wants to lock down, close up and toss away the key and shut us all out of all fishing grounds. Can you imagine what this means to us and to the many towns involved? Between Ballina and Yamba, how many thousands of jobs will go? Three fishing fleets from Ballina to Yamba gone, three fishing coops gone, all tackle shops gone, also no need for any boat sales, so most of the boat sheds gone. I could go on forever, saying how many businesses would be affected by this extreme green group, but I think you get the picture. The NPA wants to literally kill our town. We are a fishing village which depends on tourism and fishing. If we become a marine park,
Evans Head will become a ghost town and, quite frankly, I mean a ghost town. How many people come to holiday and fish? We have more than 12,000 visitors during the Christmas break. I can tell you now 11,000 will not be back if the marine park is introduced. The NPA is a State Government-funded organisation run by extreme greens and its only purpose in life is to make ours a misery. This body does not care how many jobs are lost or how many people lose their houses due to job loss. Tourism means people walking or having fun in areas they claim should be theirs to do as they see fit. The NPA has 5000 members and of which 400 are active members. So if you work it out 400 people can literally toss thousands of people out of work, and take billions of dollars in tourism, and work-related revenue out of the economy. How could any sane government allow this to happen? But we have to remember we are not talking about a sane Government, the Labor Government of NSW has had a golden handshake with the Greens to hold power and the extreme greens are calling in their bet. They now want 200,000 ha of prime beachfront land which you and I hold dear, and quite frankly I would be very worried as Ballina, Evans and Iluka may well be given to them. Some say this will never happen. I bloody well hope you are right, but I can remember a few years back when we said it would never happen at Byron Bay. Funny that it is now a marine park and there were 6000 submissions against and 300 for the marine park. The State Government has admitted it was a political marine park, so please don’t go thinking it can’t happen here. Down in Macquarie Street, deals have already been done and you want to hope we are not in that done deal. If you think about it, most marine parks are in non-Labor seats and guess what, we could be it.

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[squidgie]

The NPA has asked for 2000,000 ha of prime ocean and we all know that will never happen, but to appease it the Government may give it a small portion. It would be political suicide for the Government to give it any areas around Sydney, but a National Party seat is no loss to it and we know what Macquarie Street thinks of us in the bush. We are a non people. NSW stands for Newcastle, Sydney and Wollongong. We as fishers don’t like to get involved in things political, but it is time to get our heads out of the sand and fight for what is our right. I love fishing. I love letting them go. I love a feed of fish, but that could be a thing of the past unless we all stand up and have our say. The extreme greens want the whole of the East Coast of Australia made into a marine park and if we don’t get off our backsides this will happen. Time for action is now, not bloody later. Join ECOfishers and fight these Fun Police. The NPA puts up the argument that these marine parks are needed as they are on the migratory path of the whales, Green Turtles and dolphins. Funny, these were not on any Fisheries list of fish and have you ever tried to put plankton on a hook to catch a whale? These people are a joke, but should not be taken lightly and could cause grief to many a fisher family. The green extremists from the Government funded NPA advise that a new marine park in the Tweed-Moreton Bioregion (there are three there already!), Bundjalung Marine Park, would run from about ‘Snapper Point, south of the town of Evans Head and North Head, west of the town of Iluka, totalling at least 21,800 ha, be established and appropriately zoned by
2011’. The Richmond River Nature Reserve, the Ballina Nature Reserve, the Clarence Estuary Nature Reserve, Yuragir National Park and Jerusalem Creek – and all waters fronting and adjacent to these sites, be declared as ‘no-take Aquatic Reserves, equivalent to sanctuary zones’. HOW ABOUT THAT? NO RESEARCH. NO SCIENCE. NO CONSULTATION. NO DISCUSSION. NO LOCAL IN PUT (except with the local greenies). JUST LOCK IT UP, LOCK THE FISHING COMMUNITY OUT and THROW AWAY THE KEY! All this from a remote city-based bunch of greenies which has the ear of the NSW Government and for a promise of green preferences to Labor, for marine parks. And none of them are in Labor seats!
Gary (Squidgie) Palmer