Odinian Beta

As well as being a haven for koalas – which aren’t actually native to the island – Kangaroo Island has also been a haven for timber plantations in recent decades. At least, it used to be until bushfires destroyed most of them (the koalas and the plantations) in the summer of 2019-2020.

The biggest timber plantation owner on the island is ASX-listed Kangaroo Island Plantation Timbers (ASX: KPT).

Unfortunately, it had no really cost-effective way to export its timber from the island. To solve this problem, management worked diligently and openly with both locals and other timber plantation owners in recent years to obtain approval for a wharf to be constructed at Smith Bay, on the north-west of the island.

The wharf would have greatly reduced the costs of transport to and from the island, significantly benefitting businesses and the entire population of Kangaroo Island.

And given it is already a popular tourist attraction, the wharf would have further benefitted the island by allowing large cruise ships to dock off the coast. Once tourists had disembarked, they could have spent their hard-earned money, to the great benefit of Kangaroo Island’s entire population.

So the wharf would have brought lots more jobs and a better standard of living for the people on the island, with its side-effects being minor and controllable.

Selfish NIMBYism

But in the most egregious example of selfish NIMBYism I have ever seen, the wharf was resolutely opposed by some locals, led by the abalone farmer next door to where the proposed wharf was to be located.

The company spent many millions of dollars and countless hours of management time and effort trying to assuage the unreasonable demands of many, including the abovementioned abalone farmer.

To show how committed the company was to co-operating with the islanders, it even made a last-minute commitment to amend the design of the wharf – again, at the cost of millions – to further minimise any potential disruption to the abalone farmer’s business.

Yet it wasn’t enough.

The not-so Honourable Vickie Chapman MP, Minister for Planning, declined to approve the company’s development application.

It seems this so-called Liberal MP is even worse than Premier Steven Marshall, famed for locking South Australians down at each and every opportunity.

You can stop progress

This whole, sorry process has been a disgrace.

The amount of time, effort and money the company spent trying to satisfy the ridiculous planning approvals process, not to mention trying to persuade selfish, inconsiderate locals of the benefits of its plan, beggars belief.

The proposed wharf was declared as a major development on 16 February 2017. Yes, that is four and a half years ago.

The declaration as a major development is supposed to speed up the approval process so who knows how long the approval process would have taken in the absence of such a declaration!

Of course, it wasn’t helped by selfish NIMBYs who opposed the process at every turn, deliberately dragging it out in an obvious attempt to get the company to give up and try something else.

Shut the gate

In my view, if the locals don’t want the jobs and dollars that would have resulted from the construction of the wharf at Smith Bay, then they clearly don’t need further Federal and State government investment on the island.

Given the locals’ sheer bloody-mindedness and childish refusal to compromise, governments at all levels should stop spending money on the island and let the locals rot in their own backwardness.

As for the company, it has immediately pivoted to an agricultural strategy and will revert the land (formally) covered in trees to agriculture as soon as possible. This is prime agricultural land for the same reason that Kangaroo Island is a great place to grow timber plantations (i.e. lots of rain and good soil) and land prices compare well with recent sales on the mainland.

Maybe the company’s shareholders will get something out of this disgrace after all.