‘A standard suburban scene:
Peter Petrou, 43, was digging outside the house he shares with his parents and children in Randwick on July 31 last year, searching for a leaking pipe that was causing water to gush over his front steps and footpath, when he cut into what he described as a ‘’fat root’’ belonging to an old native brush box tree.
Although the cut did not kill the tree, it had to be removed, the council said, for safety reasons.
So far, so what. But subsequently:
Mr Petrou was ordered to pay $19,000 by Waverley Local Court for breaching a tree preservation order, thought to be the largest penalty of its kind ever issued in the local government area. ‘
via Tim Blair
Tim suggests an online fundraiser to pay Mr. Petrou’s fine, but of course this fixes nothing beyond spreading the costs imposed by these petit nazis. Both the council members and the judge need to be dragged out of their offices and flogged through town while being pelted with the contents of composting toilets. Citizens getting together to pay this iniquitous fine would be no more than bending the knee to the priests of Gaia. Screw them. Time for a ratepayer revolt.
UPDATE: Nemesis, in comments, points out something the report I read didn’t mention:
“The give away in this incident is in the judges’ remark about the tree. …. ‘offsets carbon emissions’…… That tells me he holds some conviction on CO2 polluting the planet, which would place him into the ‘activist judge’ category for so called global warming, sorry, climate change. This is a huge fine that this judge has imposed on this citizen who has only had his family’s safety as uppermost. This judge has, in my opinion, set out to make an example of this person and has in the process made him a ‘victim’ of the Green fascisim that is the current trend for those who have little at all to do with the environment, and only pay lip service to its Green ideology as a social ticket to remain in good standing with the so called ‘intellectual’ chardonnay sipping class.”
Exactly. The dishonest, unprincipled bastard is turning everything our judges supposedly stand for on it’s head. The prick ought to be introduced to 2m of hemp rope and the nearest lamp post.
