It’s a saying that has led us to ponder just who would want to fill the shoes of Infrastructure Minister and Bega MP Andrew Constance this week?

Mr Constance will need steel-capped boots if he is to survive unscathed from the storm that is brewing over proposals for not one, but two marinas in Eden.

Both sides – developers behind the Cattle Bay Eden Marina project and the Port of Eden Marina group at Snug Cove – want Mr Constance to bow to their respective requests.

What they both claim is that Eden stands to miss out of millions of dollars in associated private sector investment and a countless number of vital local jobs if they don’t get their own way. 

The losers, they both say, will be the town and the people of Eden.

Talk of marina wars will leave many people shaking their heads and declaring “not I” despite them having acted in a partisan manner.

it will be the job of government – state, federal or both – to get Eden moving. 

Governments, however, do not have a bottomless bucket of money and it is imperative that its decisions are made on the basis of what is the best for Eden and its residents.

The owners of the former cannery site at Cattle Bay site have devoted many years of work and invested many dollars into formalising their proposal for a marina and associated development.

But if a publicly-funded wave attenuator is the linchpin of their proposal going ahead, the question is why wait until now to raise it?

POEM, on the other hand, is not a developer and, as such, there is not the Joint Regional Planning Panel approval for its proposal such as the Cattle Bay proponents have successfully secured.

And so a public meeting has been called, promising a secret ballot on the future of Snug Cove and claiming that people’s votes will count. 

Just how they will “count” is hard to see when Mr Constance has made it abundantly clear where the government stands.

Eden is on a cusp – let’s hope it is the cusp of economic and social greatness and not more downturn that has been its trademark.

That task would be made considerably easier with a common goal and everyone pulling together.