Councillors only learnt of the proposal days before, although it has since been reported in The Guardian that there were senior council executives who knew but were bound to silence by commercial confidentiality agreements. The effect of this was that no organised resistance could be mounted before the mega-development received its first go-ahead from the council. That is, there was a political bias in the process. The next stage of the process requires opponents to lodge their objections to the council by next Thursday about a massive project which is still unclear in its details.

News of the mega-development broke in China three days before it broke in Tasmania. In The Mercury story, Mr Ronald Hu, the chief executive of Cambria Green Agriculture and Tourism Ltd, said, "The Tasmanian Planning Commission would be the final approval body". The report in the Chinese media did not suggest there were any possible impediments to the proposal. The proposed mega-development was reported as fact.

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I have respect for Chinese culture and its great thinkers. The Book of Tao informed my youth. I have no fear of Australia becoming, in time, a predominantly Asian country if it has democratic values. I would vote for Penny Wong as prime minister. This is not an issue of race but it is, among other things, an issue of political culture, of two very different political cultures, one immensely more powerful and wealthy than the other, and what can happen when they meet behind closed doors.

As recently as last month, Australia was told by a senior Chinese official that "it must abandon traditional thinking and take off its coloured glasses". What does that mean exactly? It seems necessary in this context to state two obvious facts. One, China is not a democracy. Two, it is a country we have indicated we may be prepared to go to war with in the event of conflict in the South China Sea.