Rosalie Woodruff MP | Greens' Environment spokesperson
The Tasmanian Greens welcome the vision within the MONA Macquarie Point cultural plan, and the focus on Truth and Reconciliation. That level of recognition of the impact of colonisation on Aboriginal culture is an important step towards the State's healing.
However, the Liberal Government's warped priorities and petty politics risk the success of what could become an important national tourism site.
Matthew Groom's support for the MONA plan follows one day after his government revealed it also intends to export native wood chips and logs from Macquarie Wharf. There is no sense putting a divisive native wood export site right next to a cultural tourism precinct.
The Liberals can't have it both ways. They can't restart forest conflict to satisfy their own cynical election focus, and have an enduring vision for Tasmania's future.
People come to Tasmania because of its wilderness, culture and green brand. Visitors won't want to walk past an 8m high pile of native forest logs - evidence of the destruction of high conservation value, threatened species' habitat.
This is the conflict Will Hodgman and his Liberal colleagues are deliberately inflaming. Neither visitors nor locals want to be caught up in the old divisions of Tasmania's past.
If the Premier wants the exciting, world-class vision MONA have proposed for Macquarie Point to succeed, he needs to walk away from his self-made forest conflict. It will only blot Tasmania's tourism brand to the world.