A $50,000 Christmas Tree

Reported in our local Murdoch owned rag The Centralian Advocate by Daniel Burdon:

ALICE Springs Town Council is mulling over six options for a public Christmas Tree to be displayed in the central business district for the festive season.

The options for a tree — ranging from $3000 to $50,700 — will be put to the Ordinary Council meeting on June 29.  A council report outlines the following options for a Christmas tree to be erected in Todd Mall or near the Civic Centre.

• Option One: An artificial tree sourced in Australia but built in Thailand that comes in six, eight, 10 and 12 metre models.It is comprised of a metal frame with panels of hinged PVC tree branches either with or without lights, and could cost up to $50,700, and would need to be erected and removed for the festive season each year.
• Option Two: Another artificial tree, costing about $11,900 and sourced in the United States and made in Asia and Mexico…

[read more]

Now being an Atheist I have some rather obvious objections to a council wasting public money on a symbol of Christianity (albeit a co-opted pagan one).  But there are other issues some of which were raised in the letters to the editor.

1. Alice Springs has a number of internationally renowned resident artists,  how’s about keeping our rate money local?
2. How is a whopping great faux pine tree symbolic of local flora,symbolic of a Christmas in the middle of a desert at the height of Summer? What’s next an ice rink and fake snow?
3. Are we spending our tax dollars on materials being manufactured by cheap slave labour?
4. How’s about a more inclusive festival for those of us not partial to sky fairies?
5. How’s about we donate to a sister city in a poor African nation?
6. etc, etc

I suppose when we pay peanuts we get monkey’s for local aldermen- like the fruitcake that has suggested that we make Alice Springs the Capital of the NT if we became a state.

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