On radio this morning, the Premier misled Tasmanians over what is becoming a private developer feeding frenzy over public Crown Land assets.
There is a coastal land grab underway and no affected Tasmanian community will believe the Premier’s platitudes about ‘leases’ rather than sale of these public assets. The effect is the same when you have lost your treasured coastal foreshore to caravan parks, villas and luxury resorts.
Private developers have development proposals for public Crown Land foreshore at Swansea, Boat Harbour, Table Cape and Stanley. These are just the ones we have found out about, and only after it’s almost a done deal.
This is all done in a highly secretive process where all the assistance and smoothing is taken care of for developers by the Office of the Coordinator General.
Shortly after the Liberals came to office, the Office of the Coordinator General obtained lists of available Crown Land from Crown Land Services, then set about hawking these public assets to private developers.
As a result, behind closed doors, the Liberals have been trading in public assets without talking to the owners of those assets – the people of Tasmania.
They have no mandate to take these Crown Land assets away from the people. These places do not belong to the Liberals.
How much Crown Land are the Liberals proposing to ‘lease’ for decades or a century to private developers?
Instead of misleading Tasmanians over his government’s trading in their assets, the Premier needs to get over his attachment to secrecy and tell the people what the agenda is here.
If he wants to sell our priceless jewels for peanuts, he should seek a mandate to do so from the owners of these treasured public assets.
