It was early Autumn in southern Tasmania when Save Ralphs Bay Inc formed.  When more than 500 people raised their hands in protest at the Lauderdale Hall on March 17, 2004, the tiny Red-necked Stints who make the bay their home throughout the Tasmanian Summer months had already set off, chasing Summer to the edges of the Arctic Circle.

Since then, these minute birds (each of which weighs little more than a tablespoon of flour) have made nests in the bays and marshlands of northern Alaska and Siberia, and raised their chicks.  As the long northern days began to shorten into Winter nights, the parent birds set out again for Ralphs Bay, leaving their young behind to fatten and follow, miraculously – to point their compasses towards this distant shore.

We too have come a journey.  Not 25 000 kilometres, but the road has been long and we have learned much.  Presented with a proposal for an 800 home canal estate and 200 berth marina, a community has found its strength and taken a stand against the shameless self-interest of Sydney-based Walker Corporation.

Walker Corp has its eyes on Ralphs Bay Tasmania in part because in NSW their proposal would be ILLEGAL.  Canal estates have been found to cause the destruction of wetland and mangrove habitats, wildlife mortality, declining fisheries, poor water quality, rising acid-sulphate soils, loss of public access and the list goes on.

We have learned that money talks with brash insistence in the New Tasmania; that community groups like SRB Inc will not be given space in Premier Lennon’s diary, while Lang Walker and his business confidante, Labor’s Mr Fixit, Graham Richardson can waltz right in to that eleventh floor suite.

We have discovered that the law is a tenuous entity, so open to interpretation and exploitation that – despite its worthy intent - an instrument such as the State Coastal Policy 1996 is simply not discussed by the Lennon Government in the same breath as the words so many have come to dislike, ‘Walker Corporation’.

We know Lang Walker, Australia’s 18th richest man, boasts of selling water rather than real estate and that his footprint on the coastline is indeed heavy.  Lang Walker also has a lucrative penchant for working the law to his advantage.  On July 9 this year, the NSW Land and Environment Court ordered the Carr Government to pay Walker Corporation $60 million compensation for a failed development on harbourside land the corporation had never owned.

So, when we learned – on 14 September this year – that Environment and Planning Minister, Judy Jackson had written to the Walker Corporation on March 4, 2004, offering to “… make available the necessary Crown land at a price reflecting ‘pre-development’ market value”, we felt betrayed.  Six months earlier an ‘in-principle commitment’ had been made and it had taken a Freedom of Information request by the Greens’ Nick McKim to bring it to light.

For six months we had been saying that the Lennon Government SHOULD NOT sell the Conservation Area and Crown Land to facilitate the Walker plan.  At no stage in this process did the Minister or her office deign to inform us that an ‘in-principle commitment’ on the sale of the 120 hectare site had already been made.  As a statement of position on the protection of conservation areas and reserves, this commitment from an ENVIRONMENT Minister is jaw-dropping.

We have learned that in the New Tasmania, a conservation area is so in name only.

We know the State Coastal Policy 1996 lacks the necessary foundation of political will at a state and local level, and that it is currently under review.  The review is three years overdue, and questions remain unanswered as to why it took persistent media embarrassment about coastal development pressures to make the Lennon Government respond.  Was it bureaucratic lethargy, or political convenience in the face of a real estate boom?  Or was it, perhaps, a combination of both… designed to smooth the way for those who would buy and build in our bays, our national parks and world heritage areas?

We know, that as it stands, the State Coastal Policy should be able to put paid to the Walker plan before it takes more concrete form.  If given its full weight, the policy would rule out Tasmania’s first canal housing estate in a sensitive wetland ecosystem and coastal conservation area.  Instead, its noble provisions and intent are ignored while Premier Lennon speaks positively of the Ralphs Bay proposal before invited guests at both the May Budget ’04 breakfast, and State of the State luncheon in September.

It is difficult not to feel cynical, and experience the anger of intense frustration.  Sometimes supporters of the development accuse SRB Inc of being ‘anti-development’.  It’s a cheap shot, aimed at isolating the ‘trouble-makers’ and polarising the debate.  SRB Inc has consistently maintained that Tasmania and its people are entitled to expect good developments, in the right places.  The Walker Corporation Ralphs Bay Village project does not meet these criteria.

Announcing the commencement of the long-overdue State Coastal Policy review on 24 September 2004, Minister Jackson said, “The State Government believes that the coast belongs to all Tasmanians”, and acknowledged it is in danger of being ‘loved to death’.  The Walker ‘vision’ for Ralphs Bay at Lauderdale represents the most clear and present danger to Tasmania’s unspoiled coastline to date.  No picturesque seaside town or inlet community will be safe if these descendants of Queensland’s infamous ‘white shoe brigade’ are let loose on our coastline.  And, it is not their love that will kill it…

Bitter experience interstate tells us the development fraternity rarely takes no for an answer; their appetite for spoiling the unspoiled is notorious.  Yet, for the mess they can leave behind, they are largely unaccountable.  The insensitive developers consume chunks of the future – our beaches, our views and close-knit communities - spit out a gob of ugliness and march inexorably on to the next location, location, location.

When there are hundreds of millions to be made, it’s easy to overlook a creature like the Red-necked Stint or the critically endangered Spotted Handfish, that clings to existence in the Derwent River, in and near Ralphs Bay.  And this State Government?  Does it want as its legacy a decision to approve a toxic canal estate in an internationally significant habitat?  Unlike developers who form and reform in new guises, governments can be held accountable, and if the Lennon Government clears the way for the ultimate demise of the Spotted Handfish, future generations WILL hold it responsible.

When, for that matter, will Minister Jackson release the long-overdue Spotted Handfish Recovery Plan, and will this State Government ever allocate adequate funds to at least try to prevent the possible first extinction of a marine fish species in Australia?

The Tasmanian community will hold the Lennon Ministry accountable if it introduces canal estates to Tasmania, in full knowledge of the ban placed on these developments by the Carr Government and a growing body of evidence that canal estates are environmental poison.

If the Walker plan is unleashed into the planning system, and Ralphs Bay sold off in spite of the community’s strong opposition, the Lennon Government will be held accountable at the next State Election.  If we have to live in a construction zone and traffic chaos for the best part of a decade, robbed of our bay, birds, lifestyle, sailboarding area and a treasured view, this government will face the full wrath of a disenfranchised community.

We have said it before, and we’ll say it until the bay is safe.  We will be there – on the mudflats - if Walker ever has the chance to send the bulldozers in.  We will fight to protect Ralphs Bay every day until the threats are permanently removed by strong legislation.

The journey is a long way from over.