No prison break for Lyons election campaign

Sharon Webb

SIGNS THAT the Liberals would prefer the proposed prison near Westbury to be a non-issue in May’s election have been thwarted by Labor’s rejection of the project in week one of the campaign.

The prison was conspicuous in its absence from the Premier’s State of the State address to Parliament just before he called the election.

But when asked whether he was seeking a mandate for the prison at the candidates’ launch at Campbell Town, the premier said the prison was a done deal.

‘We’ve made a decision to have the prison there and it will go through the planning process’, he said.

That planning decision will be dependent on decisions made by nine Meander Valley councillors, two of whom, Susie Bower and Stephanie Cameron, have made their opinion on the prison known by standing for the Liberals in this election.

In the Lyons Liberal election vacuum on the prison, Labor has finally committed to a prison in the north, but not at Westbury or on Birralee Road.

Lyons candidate Jen Butler said, ‘It is not feasible that this development go ahead at this site, chosen by the Liberals without any community consultation, due to the unknown costs associated with that site and the risk to the taxpayer.

‘Labor will be looking at alternative sites following a full public consultation process, with all facts being released to the public before a new site is chosen.’

Prisons Minister Elise Archer responded, ‘By crabwalking away from it, Ms White is putting thousands of jobs and millions of economic activity (sic) at risk, demonstrating yet again that she is indecisive and simply can’t make decisions that will benefit our state.’

Jen Butler did not mention environmental issues as a reason for the Birralee Road site’s unsuitability.

But Premier Gutwein was full of appreciation for environment-based tourism in his State of the State speech. Just not at Birralee Road.

Spokesperson for Westbury Region Against the Prison (WRAP) Linda Poulton said Mr Gutwein’s speech was based on a report on the State’s COVID recovery.

‘Front and centre was that Tasmania’s long term recovery was entirely underpinned by our unique environment, which is critical to our future economic prosperity’, Ms Poulton said.

‘The report acknowledged Tasmania currently enjoys a competitive advantage over other parts of the globe environmentally, in part owing to the large share of our land in reserves.

‘To be frank, I think it would have been embarrassing for the premier to mention the proposed construction of a prison on Marney’s Hill nature reserve as something consistent with the report’s recommendations.’

Election prison blues for Lyons candidates

Leader of Birralee Road antiprison group Torey Taylor said, ’Despite informing us that environmental issues were rated as important to Tasmanians, there wasn’t a mention of protecting our unique and vulnerable flora and fauna.

‘I guess if they are intending on destroying a publicly owned reserve to construct the prison, it’s not good promotion to be highlighting their own incongruence when it comes to protecting our environment.’

Labor’s attack on the Liberals for weeks before the election has been the government’s seeming inability to make large infrastructure projects happen: the prison, Bridgewater Bridge, a duplicate Charles Street bridge, works on Hobart’s Southern Outlet and at Macquarie Point.

According to Shadow treasurer David O’Byrne, ‘The Gutwein government and incompetent State Growth Minister Michael Ferguson are on track to chronically under-deliver on their promise to Tasmanians to build $1 billion in infrastructure each year for five years’.

But Ms Archer said the prison ‘project team is revising the project timeline, but importantly, the project remains on track’.

She said environment consultant North Barker, appointed after EcoTas dropped out, will coordinate the assessment of the site’s natural values.

‘We expect a tender process to appoint a lead designer and sub-consultancy team to begin later this year’, Ms Archer said.

After predicting in June 2020 that a Particular Purpose Zone and development application for the prison would be submitted in December that year, Minister Archer now expects that ‘later this year’.