Are subcontractors to Clarence Property the cedar cutters of 2024?
Lets put this in economic terms. Subcontractors: you are trading the priceless capital value of the land base you live on for the privilege of working hard to degrade those assets for the benefit of someone else. Can you put a dollar value on a healthy Brunswick River? Probably, given the real estate and tourist industries.
Rich people rely on the desperation of workers and the ignorance of their representatives (thanks again, Lyon, Pugh, Hunter and Swivel) to trick you into trading yours – the incalculable common wealth (soil, trees, waterways, species, land) for a wage.
Yes we are in a cost-of-living crisis right now. Don’t listen to the excuses – it’s caused by price gouging. The cost-of-living crisis is because the Clarence Property-like owner class of Australia saw an opportunity and decided to raise prices. Right now, even though it doesn’t feel like it, the cards are in our hands. Let’s play smart. Houses are great, but not there.
Remember the sweat of the cedar cutters? Are their descendants riding high on the windfall of the eye-watering value that was extracted here? No. That wealth sits in generational palaces in Europe. The cedar cutters’ great-grandchildren were amongst those of us who lost everything when the degraded catchment spilled its guts into Lismore in 2022.
Save Wallum: an incredible, intact, functioning filter system, part of the kidneys of the Brunswick River. By the way, it’s beautiful. I’ll see you there for a swim when we’ve saved it, under the shade of the ancient banksias and scribbly gums, when we are one community again.
You, and Clarence Property, are warmly invited to join us in a vision of the future that supports everyone’s best interests
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
