Hamish Macdonald

The issue in my community is Brumbies, so horses, that are in the national parks, so this pristine environment.

The Brumbies have been there for a very long time after white settlement.

Farmers took them up for grazing in the summer months and this became part of the kind of identity of the place, the heritage of or at least the colonial heritage of the place, the man from Snowy River, you know, you get it.

Today it's so divided because no one can agree on how many of these horses there are and therefore what to do about it.

And the reason I tell you this example is because you need to agree on the basic facts of something to be able to then embark when there is a difference of opinion on solving a challenge.

We need to be able to sit at this table and all observe.

There are four glasses of water here, a cup of tea and a laptop.

in order to then discuss about the placement of those things or solving whatever the problem is.

If you can't see the same things or agree on what's there, then you don't even have a starting point for solving that problem.

It's become so serious in the Snowys.

There are threats that are made on these Facebook pages.

There has been security placed outside the national parks office.

Some of the national parks workers have had threats on their life.

We met a guy who runs the local cafe who ended up going to court because he delivered a severed horse's head to the front door of the National Park's office as a, as a sort of warning to them.

Oh my God.

As he says, you know, a nod to the, to the Godfather.

Um.

the local MP when I was growing up, who was a friend of my dad's, a nationals guy that's very passionate about the Brumbies.

He says, look, there's no way we could do today what we did then and have a town hall meeting because these intense feelings would bear out if everyone was in the same physical space.

He says, there's never been so much hate.