Brave pilot a great loss

EDITORIAL: TASMANIA has lost a genuine hero in helicopter pilot Roger Corbin, who died in a training accident at Hobart airport on Tuesday afternoon.

Rotor-Lift Helicopters owner and chief pilot Roger Corbin.

TASMANIA has lost a genuine hero in helicopter pilot Roger Corbin, who died in a training accident at Hobart airport on Tuesday afternoon. Everyone at the Mercury extends their sincere condolences to his family and colleagues.

In his job at Rotor-Lift Aviation, Mr Corbin was a linchpin of the state’s air rescue service — earning a reputation for his courage, skill and care.

And many of those he saved during the course of his 17-year career in Tasmania lined up yesterday to pay their respects — not just for his bravery in risking his life to save theirs, but for the modest way he went about his job.

MORE: TRIBUTES FOR HELICOPTER HERO

Pat Frost and Kelvin Howe were two of them. They and two others were in a helicopter that crashed in Tasmania’s remote Great Western Tiers in 2002. Seriously injured, they lay motionless for nine hours in freezing temperatures before Mr Corbin’s rescue helicopter arrived to pluck them to safety.

“For Roger, I owe my life,” Mr Howe said yesterday. “They said we probably would have gone out in body bags the next morning.”

Mr Corbin received bravery awards for both those rescues. And in 2007 he was given an Australian Search and Rescue Award for his role in more than 700 emergency missions — including the rescue of a lone Japanese sailor from a yacht off the coast of Tasmania in treacherous conditions.

But it was not just with his rescues that Mr Corbin saved countless lives. As Police Association president Pat Allen pointed out, Mr Corbin’s contribution to the community also extended to his passion for training others.

Mr Corbin will also be remembered by the wider Hobart community for piloting the chopper that flew as part of Dark Mofo’s audio art piece the Siren Song each morning for 10 days in June this year.

Premier Will Hodgman rightly described Mr Corbin yesterday as “a really important part of the Tasmanian story”. He will be deeply missed.

Let’s talk Treasury

IT is a welcome development that the Premier says the Government has not shut the door on the potential redevelopment of Hobart’s iconic Treasury building.

After the Mercury yesterday reported exclusively Labor’s call for a “public discussion” about the future of the site, Mr Hodgman revealed he had “no aversion whatsoever to having a proper discussion about this”.

That is different language to his Treasurer Peter Gutwein, who last week said the Government had decided against doing anything with the heritage site — currently office space for about 200 bureaucrats.

The Liberals are entitled to point out — as they did yesterday — that Labor’s position on the building has changed over time, with Shadow Treasurer Scott Bacon having run an asset-sales scare campaign when the idea was first mooted several years ago.

But the important thing now is both sides are willing to see what alternative uses we could come up with for the grand Treasury building that open it up to the public. Please, send in your ideas for the building to [e-mail]