Comments

Sheila Newman

Thu, 2009-08-06 21:29

Hi Tigerquoll, Yes, part of my issue is the poor margin the farmer makes per head compared with the ultimate retail kilo price paid for by the consumers. Retail oligopoly and market dominance is indeed a serious problem undermining Australian retail (not just for meat). Most costs, e.g. land-costs, taxes, water costs, feed costs, fertiliser costs, and taxes, are exorbitant and have grown beyond the control of many primary producers and have also raised the cost of manufacturing and land for housing, interest rates, fees for services and things like schools, etc (which impact back on farmers). The market, to which we are all now bound, is manipulated by the big players - corporate transport, corporate retail, corporate agriculture, corporate banks etc. We are bound to this market, now international, by the need to pay taxes and fulfill commercial standards. It is now very difficult for a farmer to take control and sell locally, thus avoiding the costs to him of the profit margins required by transport, middlemen and retailers. Where once you could run cattle or grow crops to feed a family, with a little over for some basic schooling, you now have to make a far greater profit. But the costs of that profit are huge (petroleum, machinery, fertiliser, veterinary, supplementary feed, even grain feed, various licenses, plus water - which people used not to pay for if they had it on the property), rates (which increase as the city encroaches -, loans on land and plant etc.). Most farmers have to take out loans with interest rates increased partly by the competition for money caused by faster higher returns in speculative industries, such as property development. To keep up with these payments farmers try to practise economies of scale, pushing their properties and their animals and soils past their viable limit. Which means that when drought or flood or pestilence or a drop in market prices for their 'primary product' happens, they get more and more behind. In fact we have seen, until recently, a continuous trend in lower prices for food - at least when purchased in first world currencies. Any increases have tended to be marshalled by the secondary and retail industries, because those industries are corporatised (organised internationally with huge capital bases) and able to move around the world or interstate cherry-picking prices. The farmer has no such power. Big agribusiness has that power, but big agribusiness is the same business as supermarkets, major press and transport ... all one big system of affiliations. So this means that, no matter what the farmer does, his prices will fall. On occasions there will be a good year, but due to debt and a tiny margin for profit, the farmer who is not part of big agribusiness, eventually loses; his soil is destroyed; he has to sell his water to pay costs, then cannot operate without water; or he has to sell his farm. During this process the animals, subject to a variety of processes to make them grow faster with less or unusual food, to stuff more into paddocks, or fatten them standing in pens, to be slaughtered earlier, to be milked even harder (skeletons collapse in cows only a few years old when they are frequently milked); etc etc. This can also be described as 'overshoot' of carrying capacity on that farm. Multiplied by many farmers, it becomes overshoot of a region's or a country's carrying capacity, with the indicators in the ruined soils, the disaggregated water, the loss of private farms to agribusiness etc. The way out of this predicament is for the farmers to sell their product locally and to control production so that they simply charge enough for their product to be able to run herds or grow crops in a sustainable manner. The production needs to be much more modest. The indicators of production within carrying capacity are: land remains in good condition; water is not disaggregated and sold off and lost; loans are unnecessary; animals and crops grow naturally; cruelty is reduced. In fact the prices of the products may well remain less than they are in the global system because you have removed so many layers of profit that are added to the cost to the consumer and deducted from the price to the farmer. Our farmers are currently in a position where they have to produce more and faster, with a very small staff, just to stay in one place. The same can be said for most people on this planet; running to pay a bunch of profiteers who call this situation efficient. And what causes this situation? Population growth engineered to drive inflation of all resources and services. And then those resources and services are privatised, and the privateers charge 'rents' on them, just the way the nobles charged the peasants in feudal times. Naturally I agree with your solution, Tigerquoll, to "stop cheap imports, legislate against market dominance and bloody well enforce it, national investment into quality produce, best practice livestock and training, develop niche industries and markets such as organic beef, and customer focused strategies". I have, however, related the essential issue of carrying capacity at the farm gate to carrying capacity in regions, countries and the world. Much has been written about this, of course, better than I have done here, but, for the sake of discussion, it is worth sketching bits out here. I am familiar with Natural Sequence Farming, permaculture and a number of other theories, plus quite a few experimental or theoretical papers from CSIRO or other researchers. I had a quick look at two of your other links but do not have the time to devote to these specific links. Let me know if there is something in them that I obviously do not realise. Perhaps, in that case, rather than just give links - if they are really new ideas - you might copy and paste some of their statements etc onto a post here? Hope this helps. Please ask questions etc. Sheila Newman, population sociologist

Tigerquoll

Thu, 2009-08-06 14:28


..by the Australian Government's Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation:

Meat

"Australia has the potential to be an international force in organic meat production. Australia has more certified organic land than any other country, the majority of which is dedicated to extensive grazing operations. Furthermore, the fact that Australia is Foot and Mouth Disease and BSE free creates a further competitive advantage. The value of organic meat and the producers involved in meat production (Figures 2.1 and 2.2) justify meats inclusion as a priority sector.

While predominantly focused on beef and lamb, there is a fair range of organic meats produced in Australia such as veal, goat, poultry and pork. The organic meat industry is set to expand rapidly. In particular, there is growing demand in the food service sector and high-end eating establishments are featuring organic beef and lamb on their menus. Expansion is also likely in poultry and pork although organic is more problematic in intensive animal industries because of greater vulnerability to disease. The supply of organic meat fluctuates more than its conventional counterpart as a result of the availability of organic feed. Much of Australia’s organic meat is sold through organic meat cooperatives to processors but matching supply and demand is a key constraint.

Tigerquoll

Wed, 2009-08-05 15:34

Sheila, I am not sure of your arguments. 1. Overproduction? Like any industry, livestock production output must achieve a minimum volume to be economically viable. In any production process, fixed costs occur irrespective of volume, then variable costs occur as volume is increased. Volume output must be able to generate a total sales value at market rates to cover both fixed and variable costs as well as sufficient profit to make the enterprise worth the investment. Let's say 500 head of cattle is the minimum to pay for fixed and variable costs and return a profit for the farmer. Any less would not be viable. How could producing less then make the farmer better off from a business point of view? Perhaps your issue is the poor margin the farmer makes per head compared with the ultimate retail kilo price paid for by the consumers? Retail oligopoly and market dominance is a serious problem undermining Australian retail (not just for meat). Additionally, the convenience of consumers shopping for meat at the local butcher must be paid for. It costs money to get a steer transported, slaughtered, packaged and shipped to retail butchers and supermarkets. Each service provider along the way isn't in the game for charity. So how does one set up a meat trade system where the producer is viable and healthy and the consumers get what they want at a reasonable price? A few steps are to stop cheap imports, legislate against market dominance and bloody well enforce it, national investment into quality produce, best practice livestock and training, develop niche industries and markets such as organic beef, and customer focused strategies. 2. Overgrazing - yes this is Australia's colonial legacy - did you check my links?

Vivienne (not verified)

Wed, 2009-08-05 14:00

, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Support, Parliamentary Secretary for Water in an email stated that kangaroos were causing the threats to ACT's Majura's endangered ecological communities; natural temperate grasslands and yellow box red gum grassy woodlands. According to him, the kangaroos have also removed large amounts of grass biomass resulting in large areas of bare ground. Box Gum Grassy Woodland covers around 405,000 hectares of mainly wheat and sheep-producing country from southern Queensland into central Victoria, including the Lachlan Murrumbidgee region. No other sources have ever documented Eastern Grey Kangaroos as being an environmental threat! Short grass does not mean "starving" kangaroos either! How ironical that some leaders, such as Mike Kelly, have become environmental extremists, but their targets are the least environmentally impacting species - native kangaroos! The fact that many areas around Canberra were used for sheep farming that destroyed biodiversity is just conveniently ignored, and that urban sprawl continues to wreak havoc on sensitive grasslands. They would have no qualms about razing the "ecological communities" for housing estates, roads or more livestock!

Sheila Newman

Wed, 2009-08-05 13:23

I would like to add to what you have said, Tigerquoll, that it is to no pastoralist's advantage to overproduce. All farmers would be better off producing less, not more, from a business point of view. The way our economy works against primary producers is by encouraging overproduction so that prices are always low for the secondary industries - the wholesalers who purchase beef and grain at the lowest prices they can get. These secondary industries resell to retailers and both make a very hansome profit at the expense of the public - who pay enormous prices and the primary industries, who get peanuts at the farm gate. Vegetarians rightly often cite the problem of overgrazing and destruction of hinterland in Australia via hoofed animals and overstocking is a constant problem which carries more suffering for animals and farmers as well as putting farmers in a poor bargaining position. With the internet there is a chance to change so many bad practices because the internet gives primary producers the chance to organise from the bottom-up. If we can slowly get big business out of the picture, then individual producers have some hope of coordinating to downsize production, cut out middlemen sharks, contract to small transporters instead of feeding the multinational transport businesses, and organise to retail in the cities to small business rather than the few big supermarket outlets, which screw us all. Sheila Newman, population sociologist

Tigerquoll

Wed, 2009-08-05 11:52

Jeff Borg finds it convenient to generalise by criticising those opposed to kangaroo poaching and meat production as advocating vegetarianism. It is simplistic to try to herd critics into the one yard and label them as idealistic, but it doesn't help find an optimal workable solution to Australia's livestock industry.

An optimal workable solution is one that enables Australian graziers to make a viable sustainable living, while respecting Australia's unique wildlife and respecting the integrity of the land.

A sensible approach is to look at what Australia has already got and is good at, then modify that to being sustainable and more profitable. Australia is already good at beef production for instance and there is a ready local and international market. If one looks at New South Wales, over 75% of the original natural vegetation has been cleared. So rather than destroying the remaining 25%, it would make more sense to better utilise the 75% in a more sustainable way. It makes sense to look at agricultural advances that respect the land and focus on profitable niche markets like organic beef. Check the following examples. I am sure there are others.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Overgrazing is not the answer. Continuing grazing business as usual unprofitably is not the answer.

As for kangaroo poaching?

Let's start with the facts. What is your source of information claiming that kangaroo numbers are twelvefold their pre-colonial population? Where are these massive populations? If they exist, what are the root causes? What impacts is shooting having on the habitat and breeding patterns of each species of kangaroo and macropod?

According to The Department of Environment and Conservation (NSW) (DECC) before colonial exploitation "there were 21 species of macropod in NSW - now there are only 15. The smallest species, and those with special habitat requirements and restricted ranges, have suffered the most - both from predators and from the destruction of their habitats. A number of species of kangaroo and wallaby are listed as threatened in NSW."

Let's not unquestioningly rely on generalisations, myths and innuendo, and shooting the messengers. Let's get the unbiased facts and then sensibly discuss viable pragmatic options that can work.

The current co-ordinating body responsible for managing kangaroo populations in New South Wales is the within DECC. Discussion about the future of kangaroo shooting and meat trade should start with and include reference to this panel. The panel's role includes "licensing all facets of commercial kangaroo harvesting and non-commercial kangaroo culling", providing "advice on important matters relating to the NSW Commercial Kangaroo Harvest Management Plan 2007-11."

Member organisations of the panel include:
NSW Farmers Association
Rural Lands Protection Board State Council
NSW Department of Primary Industries
Pastoralists' Association of West Darling
Kangaroo Industries Association of Australia Inc
Australian Game Meat Producers Association
Australian Veterinary Association (NSW Division)
RSPCA
Dubbo Field Naturalists and Conservation Society Inc
Wildlife Preservation Society of Australia Inc
NSW Department of Environment & Climate Change
NSW Kangaroo Harversters' Association
Place held (an Aboriginal community organisation)

Tigerquoll

Wed, 2009-08-05 11:02

Jeff Borg's personal preference to choose to eat kangaroo meat over beef or lamb for instance is as relevant to this Bill as the price of fish. Argument that descends into irrelevant tangents from the central issue is . The issue here Jeff is about The Shooters Party seeking to legalise hunting of native animals in national parks. Yet repeatedly, the best arguments these cowboy shooters can come up with is such irrelevant distractions. It confirms much about their grasp of this issue and its merits. Do they sink a six pack of tinnies before shooting from the hip? I am still waiting for one of them to actually read the Bill.

Anonymous (not verified)

Tue, 2009-08-04 23:35

Yes you're right, it is a complete joke to have a premier duped by a spare parts company to hold a car race rally in national parks and sensitive wildlife areas and in pristine valleys. Not only does Rees capitulate to Repco, he finishes the Labor Party's long reign in NSW by completely denying due process and rights to his constituents and rate paying residents! Not even considering any part of the environment. The difference is we do have wildlife on our doorstep - Koalas and platypus to name a few. Why not instead rip up some tar in the city (since roads are always being improved there in Sydney),and have the cars scream around there. In a city where there are no wildlife, not even foxes just the anal smell of pollution and car fumes. The fragrance of petrol heads. One of Australia's greatest drivers Peter Brock tried rally racing and ended his life. That is the great legacy that rally racing leaves. Skill or madness, Repco couldn't care less what happened to Brock, or any drivers who meet the same fate,It is a joke to them, somewhere below residents and wildlife rights and their desire to have a peaceful long life! Repco and their foxy woxy Rees only see TV and advertising $$$$! Not the natural undisturbed rare species and beauty of Northern NSW!

Anonymous (not verified)

Tue, 2009-08-04 21:37

These "local" friends have had the fact that their rights have been taken away flown right past their heads, faster than a rally car. They say "But the rally will make money for the town". They do not realize that spectators will be locked into designated vantage points. unable to spend all that money in town at the local IGA or op shop and the one and only fish and chip shop !(Kyogle) Perhaps the bottle shop will make some dosh before the race so eskies can be stocked up and they can drink stuck in the spectators area. Once all the cars go past (each car only visible for a 30 seconds ) before they zoom round the next bend out of site, bar seen from a helicopters view and some TV only cameras coverage... The only ones who cut down trees to turn into to floor boards or burn off, are the same idiots who want the rally, but they are not greenies, yet also say they love the country peace and lifestyle! Go figure the stupidity!

Milly (not verified)

Tue, 2009-08-04 11:30

The failed bidder for Victoria's desalination plant will receive compensation from the state government. BassWater lost out to a consortium called AquaSure in the tendering process to build and operate the $3.5 billion plant near Wonthaggi in South Gippsland Victorian Water Minister, Tim Holding, says it is appropriate for BassWater to receive up to $10 million of tax-payers' money in compensation! Victoria, once green jewel of Australian for tourism and Nature's wonderland from coast to mountain, is set to become a hot and dry wasteland like Dubai, dependant on desalination plants instead of waterways and rain for water.

Menkit Prince

Tue, 2009-08-04 04:25

Thanks for the very long and thought-out article, Ted. However I would like to point out that unless we all adopt a plant-based diet I don't see how we can efficiently use the diminishing resources on our planet for 7 billion people. Such a diet would massively cut down on pollution to air, soil and water as well. The other result would be a healthier population with less hospitalisation and medication required. Truly the only really sustainable future left for humanity is to adopt a compassionate attitude to all living creatures. Einstein, Nobel Prize physicist said "Our task must be to free ourselves . . . by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." Sign the most important petition ever created to help kangaroos:

Sheila Newman

Mon, 2009-08-03 19:23

I think that whatever aborigines did at a population of well under 1 million is not comparable with the impact on native animals and plants of 21.6 million humans exporting to several billion in an extractive economy. Whilst an omnivorous ideal might be to 'eat indigenous' and spare the earth the trauma of hoofs and fertiliser, we would have to get our population right down and stop exporting in order for this to be sustainable economically, ecologically, or indeed, logically. I fell into that trap for years, feeling as if eating kangaroos was somehow doing them a good turn by reserving space for their populations by discouraging farming of hoofed immigrants, but I was really living out a fantasy of a post fossil-fuel civilisation in somewhere round the end of the 21st century! What was interesting was that I could not see that I was engaging in symbolic action rather than practical action. Whereas I think it is highly likely that Australia's population will crash by the end of 21st C to a million or less, one cannot live that scenario before it has happened. With regards to the 'embarassment' factor, I have a feeling that this factor comes from a view that kangaroos are very poorly treated in this country anyway, and that eating them is an excuse for further poor treatment. To me what happens to the body of any creature - human or other - after it dies is of little importance. I may be missing the point here as well though, so look forward to further comments here. Sheila Newman, population sociologist

Vivienne (not verified)

Mon, 2009-08-03 18:11

If you go to the (which is linked to through the 'pledge' button on the , referred to in my blog article above), they have a Pledge to sign to be sent to the Governor of Victoria, Prof. David de Kretser. If he has no power to intervene in wrong decisions by our "elected" government, then his posting is impotent and purely decorational. No offense to him as he is a caring person speaking up for climate change!

Jeff Borg (not verified)

Mon, 2009-08-03 16:26

Do you really believe that eating our own wildlife is "embarassing"? I'd be proud to put kangaroo on my family's table just as they are proud to do so in every other continent on earth! "Crikey" , If you're right mate , those terrible indigenous Australians have a lot to answer for.

S.O.S. Democracy (not verified)

Mon, 2009-08-03 14:32

Why are people even bothering to argue the pros and cons of these so-called 'water solutions'? It is obvious that the public purse is simply being raided by State governments to fund private investment which would not otherwise even get a look-in because it is not only unsustainable, but unprofitable. This is all costly technology in every way. The public are being forced to pay for something which is of net-disbenefit to them. The whole population growth phenomena which has overtaken this country, particularly in the past four years to a ludicrous, absurd and frightening extent, is nothing but an unforgivable, cruel method of enserfing us all to water, construction and agriculture barons - all funded by a corrupt . And our governments are attempting to legally lock the people in to debts to the banks funding these pathetic schemes. The public need to go to all the omsbudsmen in Australia and state that they DO NOT endorse these endebtment schemes; that they will not honour these public debts, because they never gave permission for any of this. The public need, in groups to state that the businesses which have engaged the government support purportedly on our behalf, can go to hell. We need to start printing our own money and to put our governments on trial for human rights abuses and criminal engagement of debts. The omsbudsmen will protest that there are no laws to protect us from this kind of exploitation, but we need to make these statements for the world to see. Perhaps another method of making these statements is for groups of people to donate to websites to make statements on behalf of sectors of the Australian public. That we have no faith in our governments and renounce them.

Bob (not verified)

Mon, 2009-08-03 14:24

If parents want to pay for their children to go to a Christian school and receive an education with spiritual guidance, why shouldn't the school be free to employ teachers who accept their beliefs so they can be part of the aims and ideals of the Christian faith? Why should they have to employ the person with the highest qualifications and experience, even if they don't share the faith? This idealistic part of the position description should be just, or more, valid as academic qualifications and experience. How could they join in prayers and be a role model? Parents and students, and the school, would be discriminated against for having their mission statement and ideals compromised! It is not a vilification of gays and secular people or atheists, but about having a common aim and consistency. Doctors who are idealistically opposed to abortion should not be forced to perform one! Surely this would limit their human rights to practice their faith and conscience. Our State Government is out of its depth on this one, and it is an effort to further limit the powers and the contribution of the church in society. Muslims and other religions will find this one hard to comply with too!

Jeff Borg (not verified)

Mon, 2009-08-03 14:17

You can't have it both ways. I agree with the fact that overgrazing caused by traditional domestic grazing animals (sheep and cattle) is a far greater environmental issue than over grazing by native species but are you ready to support the harvest of eastern grey kangaroos to supplement or ideally replace our traditional red meat production - you don't sound like you are despite the fact that this would be a much more environmentally sound meat producing alternative. Imagine the environmental benefits of allowing landowners to profit from leaving country to revegetate and produce native species instead of clearing for cloven hooved stock or ploughing. The Eastern Grey Kangaroo is one of the world's most abundant vertebrate grazing mammals and is at a current population approximately 12 times it's 'natural' population before white settlement. Perhaps you are more inclined to promote 100% vegetarianism to overcome the problem - an idealist approach to say the least. The problems are real and so too are the solutions required to overcome them. Australia really needs to come of age and recognise the environmental benefits of hunting, just as every other continent has.

Anonymous (not verified)

Mon, 2009-08-03 12:15

Well done, Vivienne for outlining and researching this topic. Faith communities should remain exempt from the Equal Opportunity Act with regard to their own organizations, where having the same beliefs is imperative to their not-for-profit organizations. As much as these organizations are a part of the community, the way they serve their community, say in the form of an overseas (Christian) aid organization, is often very closely tied in with their Christian, ethos - and the relationships they have with local churches, Christians, overseas Christians and groups, and each other in the workplace and organization. Of course, some jobs can be excluded from having to have Christians working them, say in an allied role... However, I know of one Christian school that in the interview for a teaching position, preluded with the interviewer inviting the interviewee to pray with him/her, of course to their Christian God. In schools such as these, teachers need to be able to assist students in the Christian faith and be witnesses of this faith. Non-christians may find this uncomfortable behaviour and nonetheless may still be hired in these roles, but at the schools'/organizations' discretion, people of their practicing faith may and should be chosen over non-Christians as they see fit. Of course, a non-Muslim will not likely be employed by a Muslim organisation! But they will want to work wherever and demand that they can carry their faith overtly maybe at their will, into a new workplace.

James Sinnamon

Mon, 2009-08-03 01:35

Unsurprisingly, Rupert Murdoch's Australian has twisted this story around to present the desal plant in the most favourable possible light. The story of Friday 31 Jul 09 has the heading (There seems to be a second seemingly identical online version of that story .)

The sum of the environmental case against the desal plant reported in the article is:

"The plant has been bitterly opposed by environmental groups and some residents in the area. The president of Watershed Victoria, Stephen Cannon, said it was unnecessary as the government could have recycled billions of litres of waste water that was pumped into the sea southeast of Melbourne."

Apart from downplaying the horrific environmental and social vandalism this project entails, the story also fails to acknowledge the idiocy of the efforts of the Victorian Government to run this as a Public Private Partnership, rather than building it and owning it outright for itself as attested to even by the facts reported in the article:

"The government has been forced to act as a lender of last resort if plans by AquaSure to syndicate about $2bn of the debt by bringing in superannuation funds and other investors do not succeed. Mr Brumby said the project was fully funded and he did not expect this to be required. If it was called upon, the money would be sourced by Treasury in debt markets and passed on to the consortium at market rates."

... and:

"Under the PPP model, the government can purchase blocks of 50, 75, 100, 125 or 150 billion litres a year depending on demand, although in the early years the plant is expected to be running at full capacity. The government will fund the payments to the consortium by increasing water bills by up to 100 per cent over fiveyears."

admin

Sun, 2009-08-02 00:10

This was sent through the feedback form. - JS Hi Ted, What you write always makes sense even though it is totally opposite to everything in 'normal society'. I have trouble knowing where to begin in this culture change so I am starting by trying to provide as much as my own food as possible. I am reading Antonio Negri at present and the capitalist/consumer way is very unjust. I feel it is all about taking advantage and exploiting. It is hard to escape it. What do say about landlords and tenants? My situation is that I was dumped from the workforce when I was about 50, as well as some of my 50 year old friends. So now I don't work and I rent homes to pay my bills. I can see my tenants are desperate to get rich. I see people who hate their jobs and are also desperate to get rich. I have an orchard and have a lot of surplus fruit. To sell the surplus fruit at a farmers market costs too much in insurance liability fees (over $600), and I might never make that money back from fruit sales. The supermarkets rip me off now and never pay a fair price anymore. I give fruit away to my relatives. But there seems to be some sort of rule that says you can't give it to others that aren't your relatives (it feels awkward). Would you give away the extra fruit to the tenants and people who hate their jobs under your new society, or is that encouraging dependence? What would you do with the extra fruit in the new society? It seems better that people grow their own fruit. Have you seen the DVD 'Ancient Futures' about Ladakh? The old Ladakh society was sustainable and it was very different and everybody worked together. But we are not like that. Negri says the consumer/capitalist system promotes indifference as a way of being so that everyone is more easily exploited and controlled. We are forced to compete against each other. The media creates a never ending craving for more. What do you think Ted? Regards ...

Vivienne (not verified)

Sat, 2009-08-01 14:54

My main point is: Employees should be able to employ people who share the similar ideals and have the same ethos. Faith communities such as churches should be able to "discriminatle" legally to employ people who share their faith and aims. Why should they not employ teachers, janitors, administrative staff and other professionals who are not like-minded? The core positions in a church or any organisation must be holistic in aims, and all parts should function together to be part of a whole. Our society is becoming more fragmented and communities will be limited in their expression of aims, and so will their functions. These laws will cause further cultural disunity and conflicts, and judges will be left to decide whose rights are greater than whose.

Tigerquoll

Fri, 2009-07-31 15:42

Pam , the ABC has been covering this topic frequently of late, reflecting either strong community interest, or is it really a series of desperate media releases by The Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia trying to regain credibility for its poaching in the wake of Russian rejection of kangaroo meat?

Check these recent programmes and note the short media release look and feel of the ABC articles, plus the number of references to the The Kangaroo Industry Association (aka author).

Pam, the ABC on this issue seems to have allowed itself to be a media outlet for free corporate image advertising by Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia.

1. - 29 Jul 2009 QLD Country Hour

2. 28 Jul 2009

6. 14 Jul 2009. QLD Country Hour.

7. - 13 Jul 2009

8. - 9 Jul 2009

10. - 6 Jul 2009

12. - 3 Jul 2009

I think the terms 'kangaroo poaching' and 'kangaroo slaughter' ring truer than some exploitationist spin trying to legitimise wildlife slaughter as an 'industry'. One has to realise that when kangaroo poachers refer to it as a "sustainable industry" they mean 'sustainable for themselves' in terms of regular sales and profit.

The term 'sustainable' is spin for profitable exploitation of nature. It has no relevance to the impacts on nature.

To learn about the dark side of this trade visit and read their language and focus. On this home page they even borrow a quote from Dr Tim Flannery to leverage his ecological authority to legitimise their poaching. It also has propgrammes to desensitise school age children by providing "curriculum ideas and teaching resources for teachers, and interactive activities and quizzes for students."

They refer to what they do as 'kangaroo harvesting', which is spin for poaching.

The word harvest applies to crop-raising, not husbandry. Kangaroos are clearly neither crops nor farm animals, yet the harvest word has been used to try to legitimise the killing. Kangaroos are native wild animals unique to Australia and there are many different species, some threatened with extinction.

In Queensland they have set up the 'Queensland Macropod and Wild Game Harvesters Association'. So here 'wild game' has been used as a pseudonym for native wild animals.

'Kangaroo harvesters' are wildlife poachers. The fact that our federal and state governments have legalised wildlife poaching says much about the morality of our federal and state governments.

Pam (not verified)

Fri, 2009-07-31 13:11

If anyone can tune in to ABC Radio National's Bush Telegraph now (31 July 09), between 11 and 12 they are discussing mulesing and also the kangaroo industry, after their stories on corals, mining and bees. They are going to be presenting the KI in a positive light and even had someone saying (in the preview) that kangaroo shooters are our 'Guardians of the Night' !! I'm betting this will be the next bit of propaganda that will be repeated so often that people will come to believe it; that they are somehow protecting kangaroos, the environment and even us from these 'monster macropods'. They will be talking about where our kangaroo market will head now that Russia has placed a ban on 'roo meat'. So if anyone wants to send them an email, which they read out on air, the form is at: They also repeat the program at 1.05am.

Tigerquoll

Fri, 2009-07-31 12:10

Ernysp76 in his comment above claims that the Repco Rally through Kyogle and Tweed shires will cause "no impact" to the environment. Otherwise, I can't see that the rest of the comment offers much more reading value. It is a bit rich for a car rally enthusiast to accuse others of "noise clang".

But let's test that unsupported claim:

Repco Rally Australia on its publishes its Environment Policy Statement (still in draft form) and states "RRA recognise that all forms of human activity impact on the environment in some form." So this admittance by RRA confirms the 'no impact' claim to be false. So ENRysp76, have a read of the RRA website, then get back to us with some real facts, rather hollow puff!

On the subject of Repco Rally Australia's environmental credentials and intent, it too seems full of hollow enviro puff. The following promises in RRA's Environment Policy Statement are dated November 2008 and how far away is this rally event?

RRA enviro claim 1: "The adoption of a robust environmental management framework within the event management structure" - where? when? what are the details?

RRA enviro claim 2: (Clause 3 'Considering the effect on the environment' "RRA intends to integrate environmental considerations into the day to day operations of the event by:
• Establishing environmental management procedures that ensure environmental considerations are part of RRA’s decision making process e.g. by appointing a senior event manager with responsibility for environmental performance to oversee the establishment of an event Environmental Management Framework and an Environmental Management Group for the event.

QUESTIONS: Has a senior event manager been appointed yet having responsibility for environmental performance and if so what are its responsibilities and scope?

Has an event Environmental Management Framework yet been established and, if so, what are the aims and content of this framework?
Has an event operational Environmental Management Group been established and if so what are its responsibilities and scope?

• Identifying, assessing and managing environmental risks as part of the overall risk management process for the event When is this going to be done? Is it to be carried out by an independent and accredited environmental scientist? Where is the report?

• Ensuring that systems are in place to provide adequate resources to manage environmental risks to achieve the performance outcomes agreed by the RRA Board" Are these systems in place? What systems?

RRA enviro claim 3: (Clause 4) Aspire to zero net harm to the environment:
"Applying sound ecological principles that recognise the importance of biodiversity conservation e.g. ensure environmental risks are assessed to take into account impacts on biodiversity." What sound ecological principles has RRA come up with?

RRA enviro claim 4: (Clause 6) Help to protect biodiversity from adverse impacts arising from our activities:
• To the extent possible areas known to be of particularly high environmental value in terms of their biodiversity will be avoided. In all cases infrastructure associated with the event will be located on brownfields sites avoiding the need to clear vegetation and away from areas likely to be associated with sensitive habitats.

• Measures will be taken to forewarn animals along the course prior to competition by traversing the course with a number of low speed course vehicles. How does RRA propose to "forewarn animals along the course?" Fly helicopters low over them? Use sirens to scare them to death? How is this consistent with applying sound ecological principles?

...having said that, I support the call by Ernysp76 to stop native vegetation clearing.

Ernysp76 (not verified)

Fri, 2009-07-31 01:27

Against the noise clang of hollow bells apposed to this rally I'd like to say that the Repco Rally will have no impact other than positive on my area. It will highlight the hypocrisy of the Green movement as they cut down trees and dig up roads endangering the lives of all of us as well as the habitat of those Koalas they are so keen to protect. Does anyone seriously thing that there will be a mass extinguish as a result of this rally.... come-on all this rally has done is galvanized a few people behind a cause so they don't have to roll up their sleeves and do the real hard work of conservation, namely, stop native vegetation clearing and planting more native species. Now if you were at all smart you might use the rally to highlight these real threats.

Vivienne (not verified)

Fri, 2009-07-31 00:23

To "halt any growth altogether and see us become a smaller, inferior and more sub-ordinate part of the world order rather than helping Australia make any majorly influential ..". You obviously believe in the "growth is good" and "bigger is better" mentality! Why should halting growth mean "inferior" or "sub-ordinate"? We could never support the population of India, Japan or China, and compete with their massive economic and industrial powers. It simply isn't sustainable. Close-knit regional communities are struggling with lack of water and drought conditions. Why would they be willing to share their limited resources any further? It might just turn out that the countries that are self-sufficient and with stable populations are the smart ones more likely to survive the erratic weather, species losses and the financial/humanitarian costs etc that will come with climate change.

Tigerquoll

Thu, 2009-07-30 23:56

Thanks Gavin for providing this predictive finding and for importantly bringing us awareness of the authors of the 'Conservation Biology' journal. The SCB, which I have just learnt is: Society for Conservation Biology 1017 O Street NW Washington, DC 20001-4229 US voice: 1-202-234-4133 fax: 703-995-4633 However, in order to access your reference article, the SCB website requires up front membership and annual membership costs $125. The SCB's report that population rises in the Pacific are set to rise substantially prompts one to ask..WHY? It sounds quite feasible that six causes driving species extinction would be linked to human activity and a burgeoning human population in the region. But it would be helpful to obtain more details on this finding. Meanwhile, I found out at that, "The Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) is an international (US)professional organization dedicated to promoting the scientific study of the phenomena that affect the maintenance, loss, and restoration of biological diversity. The Society's membership comprises a wide range of people interested in the conservation and study of biological diversity: resource managers, educators, government and private conservation workers, and students make up the more than 10,000 members world-wide What is the mission of the Society? "To advance the science and practice of conserving the Earth's biological diversity." What is the SCB Vision? "Our vision for the future takes a global perspective both in how we want the world to be and how we, as a Society want to be." In these visions we see: * A world where people understand, value, and conserve the diversity of life on Earth. * SCB as an effective, internationally respected organization of conservation professionals that is the leading voice for the study and conservation of the Earth's biodiversity."

Brian McG (not verified)

Thu, 2009-07-30 22:51

I read an interesting article in the UK Guardian newspaper yesterday (29 July, p15) about the Death of the southern hemisphere and how the Pacific region may become the extinction hotspot of the world. A report just published in the journal Conservation Biology highlights six causes driving species extinction - almost all linked to human activity and a burgeoning human population in the region. It says the population of Australia will likely rise by 30% by 2050 (I though the projection was 100% from 23m to 46m?). New Zealand's pop would rise by 25%, while New Guinea faces a 76% increase and New Caledonia 49%. Just think of all the pressure of many more islanders wanting to move to Australia and NZ. The report says the populations of many Pacific Islands have now outstripped their capacity to deal with waste. Richard Saunders, an environmental scientist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney is the lead author of the report. I hope it is making a strong splash in Australian and NZ media? Regards, Brian (MCGavin)

Tigerquoll

Thu, 2009-07-30 12:46

I wonder if Australia's now most infamous elephant trophy hunter, Robert Borsak, took the tusks home for mounting on his wall?

Trophy hunting is immoral poaching. The only difference between poaching and trophy hunting is when a country's dictator, like Robert Mugabe, proclaims poaching legal. It harks to the 19th Century when native animals were exploited as 'game' and 'vermin'. Elephants in Africa and India were colonists 'big game', so they used an 'elephant gun' - the tool of a brave hero hunter on horseback facing a charging elephant herd in the wild. Such is the nostalgic aspiration, so our hero hunter can convey thrilling African adventure stories of stalking and killing at fire side chats then point to his proud mounted trophy on his loungeroom wall.

Borsak "killed several (in Zimbabwe), including a bull elephant he shot in the head from a distance of six paces." [Andrew Clennell, SMH 21-Jul-09]. The spoils of a 'big-game safari'. I wonder if Borsak just stepped out of the 4WD, walked up to this inherently shortsighted elephant downwind; the elephant stationary and unsure of what was going on; then Borsak shot it in the head at close range. Borsak the big game hunter! In this beautiful savannah country, home of the bush elephants, what of the elephant family this bull elephant leaves behind?

Borsak couldn't care. Brutal, corrupt Mugabe couldn't care.

The African Elephant is the largest land mammal on Earth. Poaching and human encroachment since the late 1970's has decimated the 1.3 million odd numbers to around 600,000 today. Scientists had estimated in the 1980s that had no protective measures been taken, the African bush elephant and forest elephant would be extinct in the wild by 1995.

Under the 1973 conservation agreement 'The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, (CITES) the African Elephant is partially protected against poaching and over-exploitation through international trade. But the agreements are voluntary and CITES does not protect the elephant against habitat loss, nor does it explicitly address market demand, nor does it provide for ground enforcement.

"The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has listed the African elephant as near threatened, while the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) of Flora and Fauna has placed it under its Appendix I and II. CITES Appendix I includes species threatened with extinction, with trade related to these species only permitted in exceptional circumstance, while Appendix II encompasses species not necessarily threatened with extinction, but in which trade must be controlled to avoid uses incompatible with their survival."

In Chad, the African Bush Elephant officially protected, but ground enforcement of poaching is less than effective because of limited because resources, money and manpower. In southeastern Chad in 2006, aerial surveys confirmed the poaching slaughter of over 100 elephant near Zakouma National Park, a region with decades-old history of elephant poaching. [See report by conservationist J. Michael Fay and National Geographic photographer Michael Nichols highlighting the poaching threat to this - the world's largest remaining concentration of elephants." Play the video:

Trophy hunting harks back to the 19th century and continues today, thanks to demands from the Borsaks of the world. According to the World Wildlife Fund on the Status of African Elephants, Absalom Shigwedha, The Namibian, July 9, 2009, "Large quantities of African ivory are still finding their way into illegal markets in Africa and beyond, in places such as Asia.

Time is overdue for the international community, the UN with The African Union to establish strong and effective laws and funding to protect the African Elephant from poaching (illegal or dubiously otherwise), from ivory trade and from habitat loss.

Vivienne (not verified)

Thu, 2009-07-30 11:02

Under Jeff Kennett in the 1990s, Victoria embarked on the biggest privatisation program of any region in the world, selling public assets for more than $30 billion, and redirecting services valued at a further $10 billion into private hands. Public debt was cut from a crippling 30 per cent of Victoria's gross domestic product to 1 per cent. The State Government claims improvements in service, reliability and costs through its public transport deal, but consumer lobby groups and unions tell a different story - of assets run down, eroded safety standards and price increases. His sale of electricity brought in $20 billion, but Safety standards have slipped, job security is difficult to find, there are contractors everywhere and they are not training apprentices, and this has creating a skills shortage. Victoria's state debt was slashed, and history has shown the Kennett government negotiated exceptional prices for many of the assets sold. The privatisation drive of the '90s resulted in the State Electricity Commission, the Gas and Fuel Corporation and the rail and tramway networks were broken up and sold off. These giants had employed hundreds of apprentices each year, forming a de facto training ground for private industry. When they were sold, the private sector failed to pick up the slack. Now apprentices in these trades are facing unemployment! This has caused skills shortages in trades. These jobs are being outsourced by foreign investors who are not interested in serving the people of Victoria's or providing skills and experience to young people. We are competing with international interests and Victorians are facing higher unemployment, and TAFEs have introduced a HECS type of loan system with fees that will escalate! Training and education costs will cause further casualties for Victorians seeking education and qualifications, and students are finding themselves competing for places with International students! Our own interests have been subjugated in favour of globalisation.

R.N. (not verified)

Wed, 2009-07-29 22:13

This horrible human should be shot himself. I am also appalled at calls to slaughter wild camels in the desert regions of Australia. It sounds like the hunting mob is driving a lot of bad things here. If they must do something with the poor camels, then why not the far more positive industry of camel hair fabrics. The camels can be shorn. There is no need to kill them and they are not nearly as noxious for the environment as sheep. I'm sick of synthetics and camel hair coats are beautiful and camels don't get skinned for them. Also, on the subject of cruelty. Since I saw film of a goose being plucked for doona down, I cannot bring myself to use doonas. This country is going down the drain along with a lot of blood and needless suffering. R.N.

Anonymous (not verified)

Wed, 2009-07-29 17:12

A very well-expressed piece on how modern 'planning' is like a cancer. Infill and transit cities are the lymphatic nodes where the metastases start. And the cancer becomes its own raison d'etre, killing the organism it began in by sucking everything into the creation of tumours. "Feed me! Feed me!" cries the Property Council of Australia and its many little metastases in the Victorian parliament, the W.A. Parliament, the NSW parliament, the Queensland parliament, etc., say, "The tumour must grow! We will divert all our taxes to growing that tumour because it is big and impressive and uses all the blood and all the nutrients. If we don't feed it, it will eat us. Let us feed it immigrants and taxpayers and it will love us and spare us." And the tumour has now invaded the brain so that all we hear is that we must have growth! Growth is the politics and religion of cancer. Our ministers for planning sound like so many big talking tumours. The opposition sound like tumour wannabes, squeaking, "We'll do growth better, you'll see. Nothing like our tumours."

Help! It's like the invasion of the body-snatchers.

Is there anyone human left in parliament? Or are they all malignant developers?

Tigerquoll

Wed, 2009-07-29 15:40

In the pure theoretical world of economics, 'growth' is considered an increase in output or capacity and is viewed as an ideal aspiration. Growth economics studies factors that explain (justify and promulgate) economic growth. Economics, not social planning, now dominates politics and so in political decision-making the premise that 'growth is good' has become inculcated and dangerously unquestioned, to the extreme that growth has become worshipped on both sides of politics with untouchable impunity. Economic growth, industrial growth, population growth, housing growth, metro growth all seemedly can do no wrong and politicians pursue it with myopic rashness. Australian politician, Tony Abbott (Liberal Party MP), reflects in his book on the Howard government's "preference for market mechanisms because these are most conducive to maximising choice" [The Australian, 7-Jul-09, p7]. But economics is such a narrow view of our world. In the world of pathology, 'growth' is defined as 'an abnormal increase in a mass of tissue, as a tumor, tending to recur and to metastasize (transform into a dangerous form) and spread to other sites; or any evil condition or thing that spreads destructively; or simply as a 'blight'. A pathological growth is really a form of cancer - 'when normal cells go haywire and begin reproducing wildly, producing a cancer.' The growth of cities is 'metro cancer'. Steve Mouzon, founder of the New Urban Guild in Miami (United States), points out that "disease occurs in a living urbanism just as it does in living creatures. Parts of a city designed by specialists rather than generalists usually act as disease agents to a living urbanism because specialists usually create things for very narrow purposes rather than for the general welfare of the city. Streets designed by transportation engineers are a classic example of a specialist’s solution because they have a single purpose: getting as many cars as quickly as possible from point A to point B. But in doing so, they make no contribution to the overall health of the city: It doesn’t matter if the zooming traffic makes the street a terrifying place to walk, or if nobody in their right mind would even think of shopping there because those things weren’t part of the engineer’s program. A specialist, you see, is someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know absolutely everything about only one thing...they cause disease in the living urbanism of the city." "But there is something even more deadly to the living urbanism of a city, town, or village than the specialists. Since World War II, the very fabric of the city has gone haywire. Where we once built places that were compact, diverse, and walkable, we now build sprawl instead. Sprawl spreads rapidly, just like a cancer. Its parts, from the house lots to the super centers are all bloated much larger than the parts of living urbanism in a healthy city. They are super-sized just like the cells of many cancers. Sprawl eats up healthy urbanism just like cancer cells eat up a person’s body." "...And when sprawl isn’t directly attacking the living urbanism, it’s gobbling up the farmland that once fed the city and spreading wildly, sucking up the resources of the city just like cancer sucks up the resources of the body... until the life of the place is sucked out and the living urbanism dies. Sprawl is Cancer of the City." I recommend a read of 'Sprawl - Cancer_of_the_City' by Steve Mouzon 19-Dec-08 on the website

Anonymous (not verified)

Wed, 2009-07-29 14:37

Madden tried to excuse his gouging, land-speculation policies by saying that they were necessary to provide infrastructure. He asked Matthew Guy how he intended to pay for the infrastructure: by causing higher charges to home buyers? By making local councils pay the cost? or by not providing the infrastructure? Never did he admit that this infrastructure is not necessary now; it relies on importing many thousands of immigrants to Victoria. What a misleading speech! Mr Madden failed to reveal the background of our predicament, which is that the government is entirely responsible for the situation where so many people are coming to Victoria, causing high prices for housing, and destroying green spaces. Mr Madden is leading the bulldozers on all we hold dear. It was also claimed that all this building was giving Victorians jobs in a recession. What was not said was that the very same excuse was used during the times where Victoria was purportedly booming. Also not said was that the diversion of much of Victoria and the world's economy into unsustainable growth in housing is why the world economy is in such trouble. I object to having my taxes go to subsidise more bullying of the public by greedy developers and the banks that finance them. Object is too weak a word. I am absolutely FURIOUS. I want to see an end to this nightmare. Mr Guy should have lambasted Mr Madden for continuing this cycle. It has to stop somewhere, but Mr Madden is accelerating this downward spiral, with all its terrible social, democratic and environmental damage. Don't forget that you and I are being forced to contribute taxes to this inexcusable, malignant bungle, which can only make almost every aspect of our current predicament worse. There was also a speech from a collegue of Madden's to the effect that Victorian home buyers are out there in greater numbers than ever before. Record numbers. Incentivised by Commonwealth and state grants. Vic is one quarter of the pop of Aust [but] has one third of new homes applications. This is important for three reasons: 1. provides homes for people who would otherwise not have homes 2. The pressure comes off rentals (where there is rising pressure) 3. Jobs - a quarter of these new entires are buying newly constructed homes. This is alleged to provide jobs. The speaker failed to provide the important background - that more and more people are being encouraged to come to this state. He failed completely to acknowledge the costs - social, moral, environmental, democratic - of these pretended pluses.

Tigerquoll

Wed, 2009-07-29 12:36

Ilan, the Indian (Common) Myna as your reference confirms allows both names. Clearly though, 'Common Myna' is more appropriate because this bird species has now colonised many countries - it has become 'common'. Also, the term,'Common Myna' as my metaphoric example for 'deculturation' is also more appropriate because it does not seek to target any specific ethicity. Instead, my message is to highlight the inherent problems of encouraging cultural pluralism (by any cultural group), not to target any one ethnic/cultural group. To do otherwise would be to divert to a quite different ethnic biased position, which is not my intent. Perhaps you could add real value by commenting on the 'cultural pluralism' issue, rather than nit picking the example.

Tigerquoll

Wed, 2009-07-29 12:20

If the Telstra Rally in Dwellingup south of Perth was so good, why did WA's Tourism Minister Mr Mark McGowan in 2005 express "concerns over the economic viability of the event" and then get rid of it? According to Mr McGowan, "In 2003 and 2004 Rally Australia cost taxpayers $5.9 million. It was the biggest event on the EventsCorp calendar in terms of cost, and that cost was predicted to grow because insurance costs were increasing and some competitors were dropping out." In addition, the rally sponsors, Telstra, pulled out because of rising costs, declining crowd attendances and international television coverage was poor. Repco looks like being a similar extravagant white elephant that Telstra and WA abandoned. Yet Repco seems set to bugger the Tweed Kyogle shires in its selfish PR quest. Repco products should be the ire of Tweed and Kyogle car owners. An anti-Repco campaign should be in the offing. Perhaps Repco's competitors should differentiate themselves from this rally sending a message that they are responsible corporate citizens - Autobarn, Ozeparts, Supercheap Auto, AutoSpares Australia for instance. Meanwhile, what's stopping the rally event being staged at the existing Willow Bank Raceway, just 55 minutes drive from Brisbane CBD? Brisbane is probably the main spectator catchment to justify why this event would be so close to the Queensland border anyway. Check out:
Tony Boys's picture

Tony Boys

Wed, 2009-07-29 09:31

Hi Sheila,

Thank you very much for your long and interesting reply. I think you have many of the elements that could help to stabilize the global population. Unfortunately, the established elites are running hell-for-leather in the opposite direction. I may reply again at some point, but for the time being I need to take time to assimilate your comments and then see if we can develop this discussion in some way (also hoping that others will take part too).

As for my stuff on Japan and Korea, as well as the chapters in The Final Energy Crisis, Pluto Press, UK, 2008, please visit:

for a menu of past papers and so on. For Japan, with food self-sufficiency at 40%, a sudden food/energy crisis would be a nightmare of horrific proportions. If world transportation of food breaks down, almost 100% of the Japanese people will 'be hungry' and 1/3 to 1/2 of the population will be in danger of starvation. The government seems to think that an average of 2020 kcal/cap/day can be provided domestically (that will keep you alive, but not 'happy'), but internal distribution is likely to be as bad as global distribution, so despite the people who tell me 'Japan isn't North Korea' I still think that what is happening in that country is a big warning sign for the Japanese. Personally, I think the conditions for avoiding this kind of disaster are the five I set out in my comment on "Surely these are the "inconvenient truths", livestock industries and population blow-out!" ().

For material on the Karen, please visit:

where you will find the novel by Francis Ferguson that you mention, a book translated from Thai (but written by a Karen) on Karen rotational swidden farming, as well as two photo albums to back these up.

The Karen in N Thailand are just about hanging on and their own efforts to keep their culture alive are growing. Things are not wonderful, but there is a little glimmer of optimism. The government is not, of course, about to allow them to return to traditional lifeways, which would include rehabilitation of their rotational swidden farming.

You mention writing. In fact they did not have an extensively used writing system until the US missionaries found them in eastern Burma and adopted the Burmese alphabet in order to translate the bible into Karen ('Skaw' Karen). Most Karens now use this writing system, but the Roman Catholics in N Thailand have a system that uses the Roman (English) alphabet. It is actually quite good and they published a very useful dictionary two years ago.

Best wishes,

Tony

Vivienne (not verified)

Wed, 2009-07-29 00:00

Will Brown - there are some selfish and ego-centred people in this world who think that the planet and the millions of species that we "share" it with (mostly struggle to exist is more accurate) are a resource for humans, and exists purely for their own benefit and enjoyment! Car racing is totally contrary to, and incompatible with, national parks. They protect native plants and animals, offer recreational opportunities and preserve sites of cultural significance. However, "recreational opportunities" means respectfully and silently observing, walking and listening to the natural surroundings and breathing in fresh air! It means leaving no impact on the flora and fauna. The "petrol heads" have no place and no right to impose and threaten the environment and native animals with the idiocy of speed, noise, and pollution of this hoonish "sport". This should be done in a race track. We must make sure that this sacrilege it never is repeated.

D. Uriad (not verified)

Tue, 2009-07-28 23:19

A few things in response to 'joke'. Foxes are an introduced species here, which predate on the indigenous species. We are not talking about 'just some field'. We are talking about an area where there are 7 national parks. Not the European variety of national Parks, but volcanic wildernesses filled with rainforest and alive with thousands of species that exist nowhere else in the world, some of which are extraordinarily beautiful. Your remark shows that you know very little about Australia or the area in question, also that you have no interest in wildlife. It is clear that racing cars seems to you a very exciting thing. Consider, however, that people have opportunities to see cars absolutely all over the place, day and night. They are not exactly rare phenomena. But very few and increasingly few have the opportunity to enjoy the enormous variety and beauty of wild places in situations where the animals not only have not been killed or chased out, but where they are not afraid. You might as well advocate racing a car through the Garden of Eden. Finally, if there are a few people out there who really want to see cars race, why not use the roads somewhere else? We are not exactly short of roads and tarmac. This country is ringbarked by roads, criss crossing everything lovely. They are everywhere, like new suburbs. Why not just race through some of those horrible new suburbs that have replaced beautiful wild places. Why not race along a straight desert road or up down and around some big open-cut mine? Why race through high biodiversity rainforest, against the will of the people who live in the area and of most Australians, when you don't even like rainforest? What is the point? You don't like it and the residents don't like your sport. Go somewhere where you are welcome. I know that once I had very little feeling either way about REPCO. Perhaps the tires on my car are made by REPCO. But you know, after this, I know a lot about REPCO and I don't like any of it. You can be sure that the next time I buy car tyres or anything for my car and there is a choice between something made by REPCO and something not made by REPCO, I will not choose the REPCO item. REPCO is behaving badly and ignorantly. It has paid for democracy to be perverted in an Australian state to force its motor race. I cannot see why it would continue to advertise this race which it seems to me is a monument to poor business, bad environmentalism and stands for cruelty to animals and for treating people like serfs with no rights to self-government.

will brown (not verified)

Tue, 2009-07-28 20:48

this is a joke how can any one prefer watching foxy woxy in some feild over watching the worlds greatest drivers the best cars and you are extremely lucky to have one of the best motor sport events in the world on your door step just realise that the voice of petrol heads around the world will drown out the environmentalists and the anal people

Starphire (not verified)

Tue, 2009-07-28 20:03

Kevin Rudd has a blog, perhaps this might reach him. I'm horrified by the blatant law breaking and overriding of proper governmental procedures at all levels. What is this, the dark ages? Really concerned, not just about the implications for local wildlife, but what about all our livestock in this area? Most horses will be terrified by helicopters close to them, especially with sirens, etc. This is a very populated area - human, domestic and wild creatures all trying to exist. The affect on cattle, smaller animals, pets, etc., is of extreme concern. Many people do not have alternative paddocks. Consider terrified horses, cattle, dogs, cats, etc., trying to escape the noise and havoc. Injuries and deaths are very likely. Also, please be so kind as to note I am not an 'unemployed druggo', as has been alleged No Rally protesters must be, but a genuinely concerned resident in the path of this nightmare.

Tigerquoll

Tue, 2009-07-28 19:22

Hello Ben, your comment is encouraging. May I suggest that the organisation would seem to be a good place to start towards best practice bushfire bunker solutions.

I note however that the latest report from the Bushfire CRC, does not mention the word 'bunker' once, which perhaps suggests that the knowledge in this specialised sub-field is still lacking.

So, yes, this suggests a window of opportunity for your specialised organisation to discuss the requirements testing and standard setting with Bushfire CRC. It would sound like an excellent partnership and I would think that governments would be willing to support ongoing research, given the many public calls for this strategy to be seriously explored. All the best and let us know how you go.

Ben Johnson (not verified)

Tue, 2009-07-28 13:28

Dear fellow bloggers, i was made of aware of this forum discussion via Google Alerts. I represent a company called MineARC Systems - for the last 15 years we have been the world's leading supplier of underground refuges (or bunkers) to the mining and tunnelling industries, based in Perth WA. Our experience and expertise in this field led us naturally to the development of a refuge chamber specifically designed for bush/forrest fires. Our design, together with independant test data and recomendations on the establishment of an offical Australian 'standard' for bushfire chambers/bunkers (as there is for the mining industry), was sent to the Royal Commission a little over a month ago. At this stage we haven't contacted CSIRO but we agree they may be a suitable organsiation to conduct potential investigations. For further info on MineARC Systems, updates on our progress with the Commission, and to view our offical submission please visit (and head to Latest News/Media and Downloads) Kind Regards Ben Johnson Communications

Tigerquoll

Tue, 2009-07-28 12:32

A key driver for this Pallas Link could well be the Port of Hastings Corporation (PoHC), which plans to double its capacity.

Read this article from 16-Apr-09 extracted from the shipping publication 'Lloyd's List DCN'.
PoHC ahs for yeasr been lobbying for federal and state infrastructure spending, plus eyeing freight opportunities for:

* Vehicle trade
* Bass Strait trade
* Gippsland forests products export (logs and woodchips?)

Sheila Newman

Tue, 2009-07-28 00:35

Actually, it's even worse than that, because they are planning huge increases in freight on the railway line down to Frankston, to be extended down to Hastings, where they intend - "There is no plan B" (Mr Madden Min for Planning) - to intensively develop 400 ha for heavy industry. Foremost in their minds appears to be the transport of cars from Hastings which they anticipate will grow enormously. We might as well entrust our government to garden gnomes, for all the knowledge these card carrying fools in government seem to have of trends and possibilities in energy supply impacting on car use. No-one wants this, of course, except big business. Sheila Newman, population sociologist

Tigerquoll

Mon, 2009-07-27 23:35

Well, so Ports Minister Tim Pallas wants Melbourne sprawl to link to the slums of Portsea? A tollway from Portsea straight into Southbank. How convenient for commuters? A six lane link will let thousands pack the backbeaches and bay views of Sorrento and Portsea. Can we expect housing estates sprout up over the peninsula and highrise Mornington? This will enable many new home owners to finally afford that 'seachange' retreat near the sea and yet still commute to the big smoke using the Pallas peninsula link! Harvey Norman, Westfield and Stockland can move into Mornington and Gold Coast town planners can set up shop on the Peninsula. Cape Schank can become a convenient weekend golf course for the thousands now commuting from Peninsula-ville. And Brumby's government calls it "delivering". It's the Brumby car-centric Los Angeles vision for conurbation of the Peninsula. But for beachside summer holidays where do we go to get away? May be the spin doctors will promote this as the beach get away coming to you! An urbane utopia! (contributed by one who recalls beach holidays at Blairgowrie in the 1970s)

Anonymous (not verified)

Mon, 2009-07-27 14:46

People wanting to tell SEITA, now renamed, "Linking Melbourne Authority", can go to this site and comment. Please let these environmental vandals hear about your disgust. What is with all these 'authorities'? Whenever I see the term these days I know that it is bad news. It is a way for the government to disguise that it is subsidising private business with our taxes for undemocratic works. These people actually have the hide to show photos of the Pines Flora and Fauna Reserve under the heading "Peninsula Link Area" I disapprove of the renaming of this hated organisation because it is a way for them to impede the public from keeping track of what they do and holding them accountable. They say that they are looking for tenders for the next part of their rotten project. And, of course, they expect us taxpayers to fund their destructive frolics. Damn them to Hell!

Anonymous (not verified)

Mon, 2009-07-27 14:28

What an awful council. Members of a functioning democracy would have locked the car race mongers and the multi-unit developers up in the local jail to cool off. Your councilors are off on a frolic of their own. You should make them respect you. Poor koalas, rotten council!

Tigerquoll

Mon, 2009-07-27 10:49

Diana,

Thank you for highlighting this important Australian issue. If one looks at the federal agency responsible for Australia's natural environment and then each respective state agency responsible, one quickly realises the fragmented approach by our governments on wildlife research. See main list below. I am sure there are others.

A key problem is that much faunal research stops at the planning and recommendation stage.
In NSW we have many so-called 'recovery plans' for threatened species which gather dust.

Another key problem is that there is no legal compulsion for other agencies of government at all levels to consult with their respective environmental agencies on a place-based basis when it comes to development and activities that can impact on wildlife and their habitat. So these environmental agencies operate in a silo mentality, which undermines their usefulness and as you say 'efficacy'.

Federal
Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (portfolio bucket)
http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/abrs/index.html
http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/hotspots/index.html
http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/abrs/funding-and-research/index.html

CSIRO
http://www.csiro.au/science/Animals.html

NSW:
Department of Environment and Climate Change
(server down...again!)
Taronga Zoo & Western Plains Zoo (Dubbo)
http://www.taronga.org.au/tcsa/conservation-programs.aspx

ACT:
Department of the Environment, Climate Change, Energy and Water (bucket portfolio)
http://www.environment.act.gov.au/environment

VIC:
Department of Sustainability and Environment
DSE http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/DSE/nrenpa.nsf/childdocs/-A59F5093F6D6511D4A2567D600824A61?open
Arthur Rylah Institute
http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/DSE/nrenari.nsf/LinkView/FC5FBA8F699F8BFBCA256DB8002DF98F9648BCFAC8675B00CA256DD300024CC6
Zoos Victoria - Melbourne Zoo, Healesville Sanctuary, Werribee Open Range Zoo
http://www.zoo.org.au/Conservation

University of Melbourne (Dept of Zoology)
CESAR
http://www.zoology.unimelb.edu.au/research/centres/cesar/index.php

ARC Centre of Excellence for Kangaroo Genomics
http://www.zoology.unimelb.edu.au/research/centres/kango/index.php

SA:
Department of Environment and Heritage
http://www.environment.sa.gov.au/biodiversity/research-knowledge/research.html
http://www.environment.sa.gov.au/biodiversity/ecological-communities/biosurveys.html

QLD:
Queensland Environment and Resource Management
http://www.epa.qld.gov.au/nature_conservation/index.html

WA:
Department of Environment and Conservation
http://www.dec.wa.gov.au/science-and-research/animal-research/index.html
http://www.dec.wa.gov.au/programs/saving-our-species/index.html

NT:
Northern Territory Natural Resources, Environment, The Arts and Sport
http://www.nt.gov.au/nreta/wildlife/programs/index.html
http://www.nt.gov.au/nreta/wildlife/animals/threatened/index.html
http://www.nt.gov.au/nreta/parks/masterplan/publications/index.html

TAS:
Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment (tagged on the end of portfolio)
http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/ThemeNodes/LBUN-5362MH?open
http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/WebPages/LJEM-6A2VYG?open
http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/WebPages/LJEM-79T3DP?open
http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/WebPages/LBUN-6R2826?open
http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/index.aspx?base=430

I think the generic umbrella category for this issue is 'Zoology'. Within zoology as an academic study at say the University of Melbourne, is the specialisation in 'Australian Wildlife Biology' which is described as follows:

"This subject will introduce students to the biology of Australia's vertebrate fauna with an emphasis on frogs, reptiles, birds and mammals. There will be particular focus on the adaptations of the fauna to the unique and uncertain nature of the Australian environment. A variety of topics will be discussed including diversity of Australian vertebrate groups in comparison to other parts of the world; the impact of human activities and introduced animals on native fauna; wildlife diseases; venomous fauna; and the ethics associated with research and experimentation on animals.

It would be more useful and more effective for Australian governments to talk to each other and co-ordinate and jointly fund such research in Australian Wildlife Biology. Kangaroos don't stop at political borders.

Sheila Newman

Mon, 2009-07-27 03:45

This is a response to Tony Boys' post of July 26th on "Stable and sustainable populations" Hi Tony, (Readers interested in the background to this exchange should read Tony's articles on Japan and Korea in Sheila Newman, The Final Energy Crisis, Pluto Press, UK, 2008. Please let us know where we can also read that book on the Karen that your friend Ferguson wrote, Tony.) Good to hear from you. I note that there are many visitors still to your articles on Japan. Let us have some more please! Response to your questions: Indeed, there is a difference between: 'these societies had stable populations because they had reached the limit of their carrying capacity for the food producing technology available to the people there at that time, thus maintaining the population at a stable maximum for the given endowments/technology, but somehow not degrading the environment so as to cause a population crash' and 'These societies, because of their land-tenure systems, had stable populations AND lived well within their carrying capacities'. The first could mean survival on the edge of limits, with degradation always a possibility in times of environmental change, for instance. The second could mean survival at optimum levels for all species concerned. I think that the extreme richness of biodiversity, including massive energy intensive herbivores like elephants, rhinos, hippos as well as a remarkably wide range of carnivorous cats and bears, plus a huge variety of different human societies, in environments maintaining very rich soils over many centuries (India particularly) is incontrovertibly an indication that these societies, because of their land-tenure systems, had stable populations AND lived will within their carrying capacities. There can be no doubt that India is an extremely rich country in terms of soil endowment and water. I think that Africa's endowment was more varied, with many more deserts, but still extremely rich in many places – and, of course, Africa is much bigger than India. These qualities of soil and water richness are reflected in the traditional population carrying capacities of India and Africa, both quite high. Modern agriculture and reorganisation from the 18th Century caused population blow-outs and broke features of the natural systems and the carrying capacity of these lands is being affected downwards. For a time this was patchily masked by industrial agriculture and imports paid for through loans, but the draw-down on wells and the destruction of forests for firewood and building materials and to clear for new fields, shows that those apparent gains were transitory. When oil runs down and the prospect of an international growth economy fails, the carrying capacity of India and Africa will not return to what it was before the advent of the industrial revolution. [Tony Boys wrote:] "If so we need to know a lot more about these societies, and I hope you are going to do this for us in your upcoming book." Yes, I started with neolithic times and Pacific Islander societies, then looked at the Roman and then the Germanic land-tenure and inheritance systems. At the moment I am doing a detailed examination of the French Revolution in comparison with the British revolution and restoration and changes to laws. I believe that I have identified some elements of land-tenure and inheritance which allow some societies more control over numbers and consumption than others and also favour democracy. "This will be interesting, and in a sense earth-shattering (if true)." The information was well-known to anthropologists before the 1970s. But it was suppressed. Every so often someone discovers it and writes about it, but the matter does not get a wide reception. I may publish my book but the chances are that only a few will read it and the people who currently run economies and populations from a distance will not be motivated to allow us all to relocalise and regain control. For instance, in Australia, the current system needs to break down and for people to build sustainable communities around it. The government needs to be treated as an irrelevance, but that will require people to start talking to each other and having a look outside instead of reading the papers and watching American sit-coms. Widespread unemployment will probably do the trick. That will remove the government's tax base and give people more time. Hopefully they will quickly learn to share what is available. As people move back with their relatives in tough times, organic patterns of social organisation, from family up through clan, may naturally reassert, no matter what governments and vestigial big business may do. Sooner rather than later, I hope because the bigger the population the smaller the scope for survival. "The 'establishment' still wants everyone to believe that food production increases through ever more sophisticated technology are necessary to 'keep up with the rising population.'" That's right. There is a lot of money tied up in perpetuating the mass production system and constantly increasing product. If people relocalised their politics and production they would also quickly adapt their populations to the local visible realities which are so much easier to identify for you and me on the ground than the total carrying capacity of a continent or a planet. They would not need the global economy. Constantly increasing crop production for profit needs to perpetuate the problem of run-away population growth to justify itself. So we are constantly lied to about the inevitabilty of growth. "I think you have done a lot to demolish this myth and to show the economic and political forces that are still trying to push it. I have 'assumed' for a long time that, contrary to the 'establishment' notions, population increase was driven by food availability - the more food available, the more the population will rise. Thus the stupidity of calling for food production increases." It is actually very interesting. Population numbers (of mice and humans) probably ultimately respond to food availability, but not to the point where they uses up every available calory. The setting point is somewhat below total uptake of resources available over a relatively extended period in a given area. It is not true to assert that in the past and in other species, everyone is living on the edge of survival. That is really naive and ill-supported. It relies on the ahistorical normalisation of colonial and ex-colonial population overshoots. A problem arises where a population is misinformed of what is available in a situation where they do not have the means to work out the situation for themselves. Australia is a case in point. A farmer can look at the dam level falling and the grass wearing down in his dry paddocks and immediately know that he should not increase his flock. The flock also realise this. The signs are obvious. But how does the population in North Melbourne know if they are close or far away from starvation? They get their information from the newspaper and the television. They assume that they will be told if the situation warrants alarm. They are told by people promoted as 'authorities' - church, politicians, Bernard Salt, the Pope, the Property Council of Australia, etc - that Australia needs a much bigger population, that we are rich and selfish. How would they work out that this is not true? No-one is visibly starving in their street and the media and government always have always other explanations than a stretched economy for the increasing number of homeless, buskers and thieves. There is one thing that will, however, indicate to the people of North Melbourne that supply is getting dangerously low, and that is increasing costs for necessities like water and food. A declining standard of living will reduce their reproduction. The Growth lobby has a way of overcoming these signals though. The public can be strung along for a while with the illusion that borrowing money will take care of these rising costs and that the water crisis will be overcome with investment, technology and higher charges to make us less selfish. And as marginalised people begin to suffer visibly, the public will be told that this is because they are lazy or have brought it upon themselves in some way. There is no way that the growth lobby could con people to this extent if they could verify what was happening locally with their own eyes and by comparing their perceptions with other local people. Manipulation of populations requires disorientation, a complex system, and propaganda from distant sources sources of 'authority' - the high priests in banking, talk circuits, media and government etc, talking the garbage-jargon of the religion of global economics. There is another way to stimulate population growth in a country where people are instinctively limiting it, and that is via high immigration, preferably from countries with denser populations with lesser incomes than the receiving country. The immigrant is even more disoriented and dependent on the manufactured reality of the growth merchants. They may be told, for instance, that Australians are too lazy to work, so there is plenty of work here. If Australians are unemployed it is their fault that they don't want to 'work hard'. Likewise, they may hear that Australians don't have large families because they are selfish, so the immigrant may easily be made to believe that it is quite okay to go ahead and have large families in this country. And the immigrant may hear that the water shortage will be taken care of by technology and higher prices. Well that's okay, isn't it, since there are lots of well-paid jobs etc etc. And, oh yes, they may be told that Australians are racists, so don't pay attention if they tell you that the population is growing too fast and they don't want immigrants. Australia needs immigrants and a much bigger population! So that's okay, don't listen to the locals; the government doesn't. "But you seem to be saying that this is too simplistic, and that there have historically been many cultures over large areas of the world (India and Africa) for which this has not been so. Although there are bound to be many cultural differences, how, basically, did these societies suppress their fertility?" I think it was a random evolutionary option. The societies that preserved certain patterns of land-tenure survived and the ones that used other patterns did not survive. Those patterns, to do with restrictions on marriage (meaning mating with view to procreating) and procreation with near relatives, seem to be present in most or all animals. Once upon a time you had to walk a very long way to find someone who either wasn't already married and wasn't closely related to you. The opportunities for marriage/having legitimate children were low. And no-one would marry you and have your children if you couldn't show that you had land to support children, because without land they would not survive. So people without land did not get married and did not have children. At times, events, particularly climate events causing seas to rise, probably pushed distant populations together, bringing more opportunities for meeting non-relatives. Technologies evolved from necessity to serve denser populations, but people still could see the limits to the carrying capacity in their local area. Sometimes one people invaded and subjugated another and made them work as slaves and servants, with the ruling caste living a high quality of life and the lower castes living in very reduced circumstances. The ruling castes learned to preserve and aggregate land among themselves by intermarrying, but their rate of reproduction was slow due to their social organisation which ruled out marriage with anyone outside their own caste and kept their population small and sparse therefore few opportunities for marriage. (Think of how long it takes a member of a royal family to find a spouse because of the limited number of suitable royals in the world. ) Marriage or 'fertility opportunity' for the lower castes, however, could go two ways. In France, for instance, prior to the Revolution, the lower castes - the serfs - were often not allowed to marry anyone outside the manor lands they were born to. Incest avoidance and the Westermarck Effect (which makes us sexually unattractive to people we are brought up with in infancy) meant that these serfs in France had a low marriage and birth rate. In Britain, however, the serfs were dispossessed early and turned into land-less labour. These landless laborers moved all around the country and had many opportunities to have children with other landless laborers whom they had not grown up with. Furthermore they were encouraged to do so by the fact that parishes and local governments paid more to a woman with children and the man who married that woman derived benefit from this. And child labour (Queen Elizabeth made laws that forced children as young as 7 years old to be sent to work on farms) meant that children brought in an income. The British were brutalised for centuries in this way. "Were they just 'clever' because they knew roughly what their carrying capacity was and consciously decided to stay well within it (by having fewer offspring than they were capable of) because life was sure to be more comfortable that way? Or was there some other mechanism(s) working to keep the population in check at some optimum level well below the carrying capacity?" Yes, the mechanism, as I said above, was incest avoidance and the Westermarck effect plus the fact that their familiarity with the territory and their reliance on a local economy meant that the limits to carrying capacity were obvious. Folktales and memory of old people of what their parents and grandparents had described would have given them knowledge of variations over time. "Or is it possible (as in the areas of N Thailand, N Burma and N Laos up until at least the second half of the 19th century) that populations in these areas simply had not reached their limits for the carrying capacity of the land?" I don't think that a population that has self government and local control over its economy and is not subjugated by an enslaving caste gets out of control. The only reason that it would is if it starts very small in conditions of isolation. Then, if the population does not override incest avoidance and the Westermarck Effect, it will die out. But if it does override these built in brakes on multiplication, it will theoretically multiply to infinite numbers. Another cause would be a sudden change for the better in the productivity of the environment, causing an influx of immigrants and more opportunities for marriage, followed by an exhaustion of the windfall resource, leaving a larger population suddenly overwhelming the available resources - as with discoveries of minerals or changes in sea-level increasing or decreasing land-supply. "We 'know' this is true for the 'Golden Triangle' region because it was still possible to carry out semi-nomadic (periodic relocation of villages) swidden (slash and burn) cultivation up to that time. The population does seem to have been increasing, though. The land horizon (the ability to relocate villages or establish sister villages) seems to have disappeared by about the 1930s, but this is at least partly (largely?) due to pressure from lowland populations seeking new farmland in relatively mountainous areas." Ah yes, but I have, of course, read your anthropological notes and we know that the land-tenure arrangements and inheritance conditions have changed. :-) Once the women controlled the land and married late. They were not obliged to find a husband to keep them and they had other roles besides the role of mother and wife to occupy them. I think that land was not bought and sold, so it remained in the hands of the same families. Money was not necessary, even though the Karen you describe had a complex society with beautiful art and clothing and their own writing - does my memory serve me in this last detail? It was the usual traditional thing of having to go a long way to find people not related to you to marry and you needed to have land in order to marry. Furthermore you would marry within the Karen culture, which had a limited number of members. You didn't consider the neighboring tribe that spoke a different language and wore strange rings around its neck, and it didn't consider the Karen suitable either, marrying within its own people. Oh, there was always a certain amount of immigration, but it required the consent of the receiving community which might be granted if for some reason there was a greater lack than usual of marriage opportunities within the tribe. But, in the situation you are talking about, with the encroachment of the industrial economy of mass production, land speculation and travel for education and work brought more and more people in contact. People were pushed off their land by the military who claimed to be able to manage it more efficiently. The military were often preceded by the church, which had the job of softening up the traditions by giving people new expectations and making them unhappy with themselves and dissatisfied with their lifestyle. The rules about needing land before you married were relaxed. Married couples cohabited where perhaps they did not before, (this was a factor in the population explosion of Pacific Islanders after the missionaries interfered) and you only needed a wage to marry, and maybe a credit card. Phut! Along with the land and the old communities the social organisation was lost. And the knowledge of contraception. The same thing happens to kangaroos and mice when they are disorganised. "Hope you have time to reply, even if briefly, to the above and look forward to your answer, and in the (near?) future to reading your book." Thanks. Obviously I've left a lot out - like all my sources. I have to publish first. Hope you may answer by talking more about the Karen, maybe quoting that book about them and from your chapter on the Edo period of Japan and the Industrialisation of Japan, and also from your chapter on how the Koreans starved when the could no longer afford to purchase enough oil on the world market. How are things with the Karen at the moment? Last time I heard from you things were going terribly badly. I have come to feel deeply for those people. Best wishes, Sheila Newman, population sociologist

Menkit Prince

Mon, 2009-07-27 03:29

Excellent article Diana, thought-provoking and well written. If any readers can sign the petition at that would help call for a moratorium on all kangaroo killing until they do an accurate counting as kangaroos are on track to extinction at present (along with everything else). Also please sign the petition urgently to stop Repco Rally going through the most biodiverse part of australia in September this year and every alternate year for the next 20 yrs - the Tweed/Kyogle Shire - where 2/3rds of the animals are already threatened with extinction I so wish Australians were not so apathetic towards our wonderful and unique native animals. "It’s embarrassing for Australia that we eat our own wildlife ....I’m here to tell you it’s just not right. Simply do not buy, use or eat kangaroo products” ~ Steve Irwin Sign the most important petition ever created to help kangar

Sheila Newman

Mon, 2009-07-27 01:22

Tigerquoll wrote:

"It is as if Australians had no status beyond the British convict colony and remain a dumping ground."

Legally that is how we are treated. Our 'citizenship' contains few enshrined rights. For instance, in Victoria non-residents and non-citizens may vote in council elections if they own property. And, whereas once built property was protected from being bought up by overseas buyers, and ditto Australian companies and resources, now there is little or nothing to protect those and we actually encourage, through lower conveyancing charges in some cases, foreign property buyers.

"After 220 years of Australia's struggle into a nation (not withstanding the colonist genocide of its Aborigines), why then do we leave the flood gates open and worse, encourage immigrants to have rights to dictate their social standards?"

I think this is a purposeful technique to keep us disempowered like colonials so that a financially powerful clique may continue to run things for its own profit.

"When 300,000 foreigners arrive in Australian airports yearly, are Australians too complacent about their values and way of life for their own good?"

A real part of the problem is that this continuous influx combined with the constant reorganisation of suburbs, transport and roads, and the need to travel to work and frequently change jobs, plus the increasing demand that work makes on time, disorganises us. We cannot organise. People generally organise locally first, but our local governments have been purposefully disempowered. Try organising through a state government and you will realise how distant those politicians are and how little they do on the 'citizen's' behalf. Another thing which disorganises us is the general reliance on and trust in the mainstream press. The problem is that the mainstream press does not report matters of concern if they counter the corporate ability to continue to profit from Australia as a colony. So people may have concerns, but they do not see them mirrored anywhere else. They are not able to identify people with similar concerns in distant suburbs or even across the road or even in government. Actually, we would do better to read Hansard daily than the Age or the Herald-Sun or the Australian, since politicians do sometimes communicate there in a valuable way which is generally not reported in the newspapers or on tv.

"The majority of Australians seem too busy with their own lives to detect a noticeable change and pressure on established Australian values, so therefore don't detect immigration calls for foreign values to be a threat. Australians need a wake up call! Mass immigration with encouraged ethnic segregation ('multiculturalism' with the spin removed) brings all sort of foreign values with it. Some of those foreign values clash with 'Australian values' and are indeed foreign to Australians."

I think that a lot of Australians on every level are very concerned but, disorganised, they find it hard to recognise each other and assemble or unite in their own defense. The people organising this buy-out of our land for housing and influx of job applicants, students and business financers, are making lots of money out of it and are well organised in lobby-groups.

And the government and corporate press representing the lobby-group interests have skilfully normalised a fear in Australians of express themselves politically outside the mainstream. Look at what happens to new political parties if they try to question immigration on any or all grounds. If they object on environmental grounds they are not reported, or, if they object for cultural reasons, their members are harassed and attacked as racists. The press lead the cry and groups with no interest in democracy infiltrate groups concerned about what is happening to democracy and intimidate and isolate their main activists. And wedge politics keep people from straying away from the established parties.

If an effective challenge were led against the ruling clique (Liberal and Labour combined) that manipulates population growth for its own profit, some fear that the dirty laws brought in against terrorism would be used against us.

Joe Toscano of Anarchist Network was reviewing this situation recently , describing how

Three ministers of the crown can call out the Australian armed forces if they believe that commonwealth interests are threatened. If members of the armed forces are called out to restore order, for instance, in the face of mass strikes, or peaceful protests in the streets, once the armed forces are called out, if they maim or kill or damage property, they are legally indemnified by legislation passed within this decade, and supported by every major political party in parliament, including the Greens."

"The Federal attorney general can at any time ban any organisation, jail its members, confiscate its property, and jail anyone assisting them in their legal defense for up to 25 years because he or she has been advised by the Federal police that they may pose a threat to the Commonwealth."

"These are laws which have been passed in the last decade.
People in Aust can be legally detained, secretly, and questioned for weeks because the authorities believe thye may hva info inadvertantly which may asssist investigations. And if you refuse, you may be jailed for up to 7 years."

"It is a misguided premise that the majority of Australians and their values are not discriminated against."

Yes, we are unable to defend our property from infilling and our surroundings from being carved up and sold off. Australian citizenship carries few real rights. Mostly you defend yourself with money. No money and where are your rights? The government will not see that you are housed or fed.

"Meanwhile, in a power struggle to achieve equal status, without compromising foreign values, many new Australians bring their baggage and do not seek assimilation into their new home but want a little (insert ethnic name) and to associate with their own."

What is fascinating is the way the press seize on such minority movements and keep them alive so that they really can become a threat because any objection then makes a martyr of a person who may simply have been clinging onto a symbol for personal or idiosyncratic rather than political reasons.

Then, when 5,500 new immigrants (sometimes predominantly from one country) are suddenly settled in a growth corridor in a blow-out of city boundaries, spilling into what was once the country, no-one dares to point this out because, gee, those people are new-Australians and to say that they should not be there will be cast as racism, even though it is a protest against the intensification of settlement.

It also suits the political numbers business to be able to polarise and divide communities so that they identify in blochs. You then craft your spin to appeal to the bloch's focus in the hope that they will vote for you on this emotional issue. This used to be called 'balkanisation' and was a specialty of the Labor Party, but John Howard took it up in a big way.

"So the scarfed or burkha'd woman on the bus can seek to rely on this clause to override Australian values."

One or a few people dressing in a uniform that symbolises values antithetical to women brought up in a tradition of franchise is no big deal; it is the prospect of large blocks accumulating and undermining established rights by failing to defend them.

The government and press spin against the fear of this prospect is that we must embrace change, but it is always the incumbents who are supposed to embrace change, not the newcomers. The majority are supposed to adapt to the minority. That is not democratic. This is how Colonialism works.

"To try to debate this one is immediately dismissed as racist."

Yes, it seems totally twisted to say that a woman trying to defend the common symbols of political franchise and personal freedom - the right to show one's face in public and to wear light cool clothing in summer or shorts that free one to run or work in - is racist because she criticises the burka as a symbol of gender oppression. The burka is a symbol of gender oppression. In the middle ages europeans wore the equivalent of burkas and nuns in traditional clothing still wear habits covering their faces partially, but they are defined as a special religious class; it is not expected anymore that all women will conform to this dress or be branded or stoned in this country.

On the other hand, the coverall clothing seems to occur in places where few men have enough money to marry and those who are wealthy marry more than one woman. Women are thus status symbols and objects of jealousy by the males who do not have access to women. Although it is a symbol of oppression (and of being an object) it has also had the function of protecting women from being singled out as desirable objects worth stealing. Although they have value as status symbols and may often have personal value in the home, the women in the burkas almost always have little value publicly in terms of citizenship. I suppose that, for people who come from such cultures, it could be extremely difficult to believe that the same threats that are used to justify the burka do not exist in our culture (well, not to nearly the same degree.) At a psychological level it may be difficult to discuard a kind of clothing which has become necessary for social survival in the country of origin, in which case the retention of the burka may not be a political statement, just an artefact of foreign social conditions.

Anti-Australian is a useful expression. Maybe we need to start talking more about examples of anti-Australianism?

Sheila Newman

Andrew McKenzie (not verified)

Sun, 2009-07-26 21:03

Just briefly reading this website I notice a heavy emphasis on "Sustainable Population" etc. I have a particually strong interest in this topic and would like to take this oppourtunity to share them with you and perhaps the wider community in the future. Through maturing views I have established that the priorities in summary for Victoria should be a continuing strong but realistic growth for Victoria's population as a whole but for this population growth to instead be centered on the regional cities which at present are far in disparity in size to Melbourne as I am sure you well know. Government stimulus packages rather than furthering growth in a city that could easily sustain itself (but chooses to neglect in this regard) should be to instead spread this proven growth strategy (albeit more disciplined) to the regional cities who in turn could act as great service centres to their sorrounding regions, a role Melbourne cannot serve for the obvious distance reasons. Having briefly read the history of Victoria and how it has developed over the past couple of centuries there seems to of just being a lazy and simplistic (what seems to define Australian political policy) attitude and this has resulted in taking for granted that a strong Melbourne means a strong state. Also the "lazy and simplistic" attitude has resulted in us only adopting effecient production strategies when its conveniant and necessary rather than fulfilling any realistic or emotional ambition to make Victoria a state to be proud of and for this to in turn assist Australia's development into a strong and independant country. Sporting prowess is entirely seperate and cannot count towards this. If I believed that Australia was in such a position that it was doing the best it could with what it had then I may well not be making this reply or even have much of a care for this matter, but there appears to be a desire from both sides of the fence for the under-disciplined and naive per capita consumption to continue. In this theory someone else must always be compromised so the individual can have more than their fair share. The two sides of this debate seem to be either see Victoria continue revolving around Melbourne and letting the rest of the state fend for itself or halt any growth altogether and see us become a smaller, inferior and more sub-ordinate part of the world order rather than helping Australia make any majorly influential and/or take any positive part in such a thing. If Australia were a person it would be a naive spoilted brat that has little to no ambition for itself and instead wants to rely on the virtues of others as a substitute for belief in itself.

Tigerquoll

Sun, 2009-07-26 18:57

This shows Robert Borsak's 19th Century mindset and his true colours. This photo deserves to be exposed on the front page of each Australian mainstream newspaper so that the general public is aware of this extremist poacher. Does the Game Council run poaching and lynching parties back in Australia? For all enquiries please contact this poachers rights party at its 52 Hill Street headquarters in Orange NSW - tel: (02) 6360 5100. Email:

Tigerquoll

Sun, 2009-07-26 18:21

Why do Australians repeatedly refer to their sense of 'Australian values' when Australian values are not clearly and formally defined and enshrined in legislation in Australia? So why do Australian values remain taken for granted and not enshrined as Australian's fundamental legal rights? Why do Australians keep referring to 'Australian values' when no government boldly protects these in law nor enshrines these into our Constitution? So this allows Australian core social mores to be relegated to token notions with no legitimacy. It is as if Australia had no status beyond the British convict colony and remains a dumping ground. After 220 years of Australia's struggle into a nation (not withstanding the colonist genocide of its Aborigines), why then do we leave the flood gates open and worse, encourage immigrants to have rights to dictate their social standards? When 300,000 foreigners arrive in Australian airports yearly, are Ausralians too complacent about their values and way of life for their own good? The majority of Australians seem too busy with their own lives to detect a noticeable change and pressure on established Australian values, so therefore don't detect immigration calls for foreign values to be a threat. Australians need a wake up call! Mass immigration with encouraged ethnic segregation ('multiculturalism' with the spin removed) brings all sort of foreign values with it. Some of those foreign values clash with 'Australian values' and are indeed foreign to Australians. It is a misguided premise is that the majority of Australians and their values are not discriminated against. Australians are generally accommodating of diversity and have a deep sense of fair play and giving people a fair go. Australians are told that they are one of the most tolerant peoples of others and should be proud of it - more multicultural spin. Public discussion is needed into what constitutes Australian core values. Ideally these should then be enshrined into the highest of laws, the Australian Constititution. Meanwhile, in a power struggle to achieve equal status, without compromising their own foreign values, many new arrivals bring their baggage with them and do not seek assimilation into their new home but want a little (insert ethnic name) and to associate with their own. Thus emerges the ghetto and a minority political action group calling for (insert ethnic name) rights. Politicians pass legislation to protect ethnic rights. The problem is that racial discrimination is allowed to label those foreign values that are contrary to Australian values. To try to debate this one is immediately dismissed as 'racist'. Have a read of the NSW ANTI-DISCRIMINATION ACT 1977 - SECT 7: "What constitutes discrimination on the ground of race" (1) A person ( "the perpetrator") discriminates against another person ( "the aggrieved person") on the ground of race if, on the ground of the aggrieved person’s race or the race of a relative or associate of the aggrieved person, the perpetrator: (a) treats the aggrieved person less favourably than in the same circumstances, or in circumstances which are not materially different, the perpetrator treats or would treat a person of a different race or who has such a relative or associate of a different race, or (b) segregates the aggrieved person from persons of a different race or from persons who have such a relative or associate of a different race, or (c) requires the aggrieved person to comply with a requirement or condition with which a substantially higher proportion of persons not of that race, or who have such a relative or associate not of that race, comply or are able to comply, being a requirement which is not reasonable having regard to the circumstances of the case and with which the aggrieved person does not or is not able to comply. (2) For the purposes of subsection (1) (a) and (b), something is done on the ground of a person’s race if it is done on the ground of the person’s race, a characteristic that appertains generally to persons of that race or a characteristic that is generally imputed to persons of that race. So the scarfed or burkha'd woman on the bus can seek to rely on this clause to override Australian values. Message: Foreign values are overriding Australian values in legislation. Where is this leading Australia? I like the term anti-Australian in much the same way that anti-Semetic has worked very effectively.
Tony Boys's picture

Tony Boys

Sun, 2009-07-26 17:12

Hi Sheila,

I'm quite surprised that no one has added a comment here since this really seems to be one of THE central issues of what is happening in the world today. I think you are about 95% right, so this is not an "aggressive" comment - I just want to check that I understand what you have said in the way you meant to say it. You say:

The problems began with loss of land-tenure as entire peoples were disorganised and disoriented by having their traditional land removed from their control. Africa and India, for instance, had many stable populations for centuries, as testified by their high biodiversity and healthy natural systems at time of colonisation.

The first sentence I agree with. The second sentence needs a lot more explanation, clarification and verification. Are you saying that 'these societies had stable populations because they had reached the limit of their carrying capacity for the food producing technology available to the people there at that time, thus maintaining the population at a stable maximum for the given endowments/technology, but somehow not degrading the environment so as to cause a population crash'? There are examples of this: Japan in the Edo Period (1603-1868) had a more or less stable population (30-33 million) but regular famines due to poor harvests. Some (Polynesian?) island cultures are/were like this, or were somehow able to hold their population to within carrying capacity through some forms of contraception, infanticide, outmigration or premature death of older people (ubasute in Japan). Other island cultures (Easter Island) did not do this and degraded their environment until their populations crashed. There are plenty of examples of this too; the population of ancient Egypt went up and down like a yo-yo, apparently. The early civilisations of the Middle East crashed when they deforested their lands and overworked their soils or ruined the fields through salt damage caused by irrigation.

OR are you saying something different: "These societies, because of their land-tenure systems, had stable populations AND lived well within their carrying capacities"? If so we need to know a lot more about these societies, and I hope you are going to do this for us in your upcoming book. This will be interesting, and in a sense earth-shattering (if true). The 'establishment' still wants everyone to believe that food production increases through ever more sophisticated technology are necessary to 'keep up with the rising population.' I think you have done a lot to demolish this myth and to show the economic and political forces that are still trying to push it. I have 'assumed' for a long time that, contrary to the 'establishment' notions, population increase was driven by food availability - the more food available, the more the population will rise. Thus the stupidity of calling for food production increases. But you seem to be saying that this is too simplistic, and that there have historically been many cultures over large areas of the world (India and Africa) for which this has not been so. Although there are bound to be many cultural differences, how, basically, did these societies suppress their fertility? Were they just 'clever' because they knew roughly what their carrying capacity was and consciously decided to stay well within it (by having fewer offspring than they were capable of) because life was sure to be more comfortable that way? Or was there some other mechanism(s) working to keep the population in check at some optimum level well below the carrying capacity?

Or is it possible (as in the areas of N Thailand, N Burma and N Laos up until at least the second half of the 19th century) that populations in these areas simply had not reached their limits for the carrying capacity of the land? We 'know' this is true for the 'Golden Triangle' region because it was still possible to carry out semi-nomadic (periodic relocation of villages) swidden (slash and burn) cultivation up to that time. The population does seem to have been increasing, though. The land horizon (the ability to relocate villages or establish sister villages) seems to have disappeared by about the 1930s, but this is at least partly (largely?) due to pressure from lowland populations seeking new farmland in relatively mountainous areas.

Hope you have time to reply, even if briefly, to the above and look forward to your answer, and in the (near?) future to reading your book.

Best wishes,

Tony

Anonymous (not verified)

Sun, 2009-07-26 10:44

Bus driver 'told woman to remove headscarf': The Sydney busdriver told the woman to take off her "mask", not headscarf! We used to encourage assimilation when newcomers arrived to live in Australia, then is was multiculturalism! Now we have so many diverse cultures living in Australia, and any questions about our population numbers, or customs that are un-Australian or biased against women, are silenced by "racist" accusations! If the passenger was wearing a helmet, mask or balaclava, surely the reaction would have been the same? Our faces are part of who we are, our identities, and a way of being open and communicative. Covering ones face, especially when using public facilities, needs to be made illegal. It is not only impolite, but threatening! Women can wear their headscarves, but faces should be recognisable for security reasons and for respect for Australian values.

Vivienne (not verified)

Sun, 2009-07-26 01:12

Dear Mr Thomson MP I have read your statements on the website (We)candobetter.org I thoroughly agree that our population growth is out of control. Nothing is achieved by adding more people to Melbourne, or Victoria, or Australia. Any problem is exacerbated by adding more people and not one problem will be solved! The Labor Party under Mr Brumby has become an estate agent, an agent for land developers and builders, the mortgage industry, and part of the pro-growth lobby. This is NOT in the interests of most of Victorians. Our population growth is not something imposed on us that our government is forced to manage! It is orchestrated by our historically high immigration program, by people flooding into Victoria, and by the number of international students lured here to then apply for PR. Our tertiary education institutions, including public ones, have become back-door immigration entrances to Australia, a sham export industry that is denying our own youth jobs, course places, funded public education and housing. Any criticisms of our population growth is being clouded by "racism" when it purely about numbers, not country of origin. How can we, genuinely, send delegates to the climate change conference in Copenhagen while we are deliberately adding people at our rate? Haven't our leaders read Ian McPhail's "State of the Environment Report" (last year)? We are already well over the boundaries of sustainable growth. Our wildlife are being eradicated, our forests are drying, and native animals will continue to lose their homes while green corridors and wedges are buried under concrete. We can't have a viable biodiversity while housing density and infrastructures continue to destroy our ecology and natural resources. Thank you for speaking out!

Sheila Newman

Sat, 2009-07-25 21:31

Firstly, I think the moral and practical issue is not 'justice' between the different peoples here - born or imported - but justice to the land, which is what nurtures us and gives us independence from each other as well as uniting us. If we pay attention to the particularities of this country and its regions first, we will be in harmony. Secondly, for a society to function democratically there has to be self-governance. Those living here have to have precedence over those who may one day come here. It is problematic when governments pretend to make policies for international social justice, since they are actually elected to make policies for their constituents. It is also problematic when governments impose a 'multicultural' policy on us if that deprives us of the primacy of identifying together with this actual land that nurtures us. I think that most people confuse 'culture' with 'symbol' in this ... um... debate. A culture is something that grows out of a particular soil and environment. It reflects the local environment. That is what makes it special. So, people who live in cold places - such as eskimos - would wear furs and live in igloos. They would speak an Innuit language which would probably take on regional clan-based specifics. If those eskimos emigrated to the Northern Territory in Australia, one would not expect them to try to build igloos out of ice blocks and wear thick furs. They would probably continue to speak Innuit but that innuit would probably lose its regional specificity as they fraternised with other immigrant innuits from different regions, and the Northern Territory Innuits would probably begin to speak English, since that is the principle common language in the NT. Maybe the Innuit families, every Christmas, to remind themselves of where they came from, would, in the absence of ice, build a Christmas igloo on the beach out of polystyrene. Maybe they would wear some partial furry hat as well, since the full eskimo regalia would be unbearable. They might eat something to remind them of their origins - imported whale strips or some such -and they might exchange snowy Xmas cards and sing Innuit Xmas carols. Now, I would maintain that the polystyrene and the snowy Xmas cards (and even the idea of Xmas in December) are only symbols (parts to represent a greater thing). The real Innuit culture still requires Innuit traditional territory with snow and ice. I don't say that there could never be an Innuit Australian culture, but that would not be an Innuit culture; it would be something that grew up in response to the Australian conditions and the Innuit symbols, i.e. culture divorced from its material source or from its real function in time and space. Thus you might find that, in 20 years, a thriving Innuit NT community had developed where the idea of little round houses built out of polystyrene caught on and become some part of permanent NT culture for beach houses. Maybe some of the Innuit songs would become a part of NT childrens' repertoire with choruses in N.T. Wagiman (aboriginal language). Are these people still practising the Innuit culture? Some might argue that, because they are Innuit, whatever they do is part of Innuit culture - that seems to be the logic behind the definition of culture as symbols rather than real interaction with an environment. So what part of what the Innuits do in the NT is Australian? I would suggest that the polystyrene beach houses are Australian culture, with an Innuit influence. If they last it is because they work in this environment. What if a family of NT Innuits were to emigrate to Alaska and build polystyrene igloos? Would that work? Would those be Innuit houses with an Australian influence or would they be International polystyrene houses? I think that it is fine for people to keep their symbols but it is crazy to keep symbols if they interfere with your healthy interaction with the environment. It is psychotic to behave as if you are living in a snowy igloo when you actually dwell in a humpy. Having Xmas cards with snow on them in December and eggs in Autumn in Australia is actually a pretty mad and empty thing to do. Consider that the Easter eggs symbolise the coming of Spring with new life, but in Australia, we break open eggs at near the beginning of winter. What are we doing? We are engaging in some artefactual activity which actually obscures the very nature of our true environment, depriving us of skills, insights and connection. Same with white Xmases, when we really should be thinking about bushfires. Those Easter and Xmas festivals served a purpose in their original environment, but they actually get in the way of all Australians by obscuring the need to plan for seasonal changes. I don't know about you, but the Xmas I celebrate isn't Christian. It's more a family day where you eat cold colations, and exchange cards with Australian animals on them. The practise of giving chocolate bilbies at Easter is a response to something we need to think about here. Of course it would make even more sense to have Easter in Spring and maybe call it Bilby day or something. If you were a Christian, then I would still suggest the cold collation and bilby route. Peace on earth is a political value that adapts to different climates. Our northern hemisphere styled symbols of Winter in our summer and Spring in our Autumn are dysfunctional. Humans, because of language, are able to carry complex symbols for long distances. However they do not survive if they assign the old symbols more importance than the real landscape, climate and biota around them, failing to get in touch with the land that is their new mother now. As our slow, sprawling rivers dry up due to the stress of demands made on them for northern hemisphere productivity and our thin soils blow away as we plough them and our native plants and animals die as we over fertilise them, how many of us will continue not to see our land as it really is? If we keep burning our forests because we believe that aboriginals once did this, instead of adapting to the reality that we need to try to make the forests moister to foster repair of climate, isn't helpful. Culture is also a vehicle of power and social organisation. It can be imported and exported like some strange harness to be worn in a new place to keep people in a position and doing things that they would naturally have done in the place where the harness was made. The way our governments talk down to us and tell us that whatever we have learned about Australia has no more importance than polystyrene igloos and chocolate eggs, is a way of making us wear a kind of frankenstein suite made up of bits and pieces from other places, other times. Politically it is as if Australians have been held captive to a virtual reality, continually resubscribed by our government, medias and churches, which control us with a 'reality' manufactured from bits, inculcated in us in school, church and via the media. It is a struggle to communicate about important things in this Frankenstein culture because it doesn't really work. It doesn't reflect the local reality in a coherent way. We have been educated to behave like low class serfs who act as if this life is some kind of bizarre test where we are to recite silly catechisms and seek advice from self-appointed priests and take our laws from unpleasant politicians who want to make us subservient to a growth economy. We struggle to have real lives, real interaction with our land. Our cities and supermarkets are anonymous international artificial environments. Many of us own nothing, just exist from payment to payment, job to job in this anonymous prosthetic cultural desert. Even the Australian Aboriginal culture has been skillfully marketed down to displaced corroborees and inscrutable face-painting and mandatory bushfires as the bill of exchange for real dancing within real societies each forged by its own unique real landscape. The Frankenstein culture is an existential blind deaf and dumb alley that not only produces a degraded, impoverished environment subjugated to the demands of overpopulated cities alienated from nature, but it also produces an impoverished, disempowered people, who, not knowing their land, do not know each other. We risk being a captive herd guided as we are by exiguous symbols of distant places and times long past that belonged to other people. Our culture should be guided foremost by our mutual experiences of our local reality - not by tv, not by politicians' slogans, not by distant people, places, things. Of course every place has things in common with other places. We all breath the same atmosphere. Human cultures have their basic topologies and templates and a child born in one land will be moulded by the land and the human culture and language of that land, and it should not matter where that child's parents came from. And there is nothing wrong with knowing a second culture and another language, but only if you can still see the place where you are actually standing. I speak two languages and know two cultures and two lands, but when I am in this land, this culture has primacy, and when I am in that land, that culture has primacy, because the cultures come with the land and the society that inhabits that land; elsewhere they are just a memory or a translation. Sheila Newman, population sociologist

RD (not verified)

Fri, 2009-07-24 20:51

Then we have the others who choose to bring their baggage with them they do not wish to assimilate, they do not wish to become our friends, they choose to wear full Birka's in public. The problem is compounded by the state-sanctioned policy of multiculturalism. In previous times, immigrants were encouraged to assimilate into Australia's Anglo-based core culture. However, this approach was turned on its head in the 1970s with the advent of multiculturalism. Since then, immigrants have been encouraged to retain their old cultures, languages, ethnic allegiances, and even national loyalties. Worse still, this radical shift away from assimilation toward multiculturalism coincided with the advent of large-scale immigration from non-Western sources. Up until the 1970s, the overwhelming majority of immigrants to Australia came from Europe and shared a common Western heritage with Australians. Today's immigrants, in contrast, are far more diverse, being noticeably different to the existing Australian population in terms of ethnicity and culture. Moreover, since the start of this decade, they have been coming in greater numbers than ever before. The predictable outcome has been the formation of non-assimilating diasporic communities in Australia. The only realistic way for Australia to reverse this worrying trend would be to scrap the policy of multiculturalism and drastically reduce immigration levels. Unfortunately, both sides of politics in this country are addicted to sustained mass immigration and seem incapable of looking at the long-term costs of immigration, only focusing narrowly on the short-term economic "benefits" of immigration (most of which are, in fact, nugatory).

Alison (not verified)

Fri, 2009-07-24 20:30

What many people do not realise in that the Essentail Services Commission is nothing but a rubber stamp for water price increases. Basically Melbourne Water increases its spending projections (such as through desalination plants and pipelines) - then the ESC has no option but to approve the increase. Everyone then gets a higher bill. So the government can point to the ESC and say an independent body increased the fees - when in fact the ESC is totally tied down and can't do anything but increase prices if the Government and Melbourne Water want to. However, spare a though for 55,000 of us poor country folk who last year received a bill from Melbourne Water. I personally live without being connected to any services, and get my water from a tank. I am no where near any water, sewerage or drainage infrastructure, there is no Melbourne Water infrastructure for more than 10km, and the water from my place runs via a local creek into a reservoir owned by Southern Rural Water. I received a bill from Melbourne Water for "Waterway Services". Melbourne Water has failed to tell me what I am supposedly paying for. Worst of all I traced back through the legislation and found that the charge was imposed by declaring large parts of Victoria eg Macedon Ranges, Yarra Valley and Phillip Island as being in the "Metropolis" of Melbourne (that is within the "city" of Melbourne). No one in their right mind could make such a declaration. I suspect this was quite illegal. However, because Melbourne Water (formerly the MMBW) could only operate in Melbourne, and they wanted to get some money from country people as well - why not corrupt the legislative process and issue a totally false declaration.? Brumby will stop at nothing to impose "stealth" water taxes on everyone in the State - even those who live sustainably and don't use any water they themselves don't collect. Its obvious this has nothing to do with sustainability - if they were serious about sustainability they would switch to water volume only charges and abolish the disproportionally high service fees. No I suspect this is once again about helping those good old developers who will be building all that infrastructure at our expense.

Tigerquoll

Fri, 2009-07-24 17:40

I draw Cowboy's attention to the message and not the messenger. My Message above is in respect to the NSW Feral Animal Cntrl Amedment Bill 2009 to: 'exclude all native animals as 'game' and prohibit the use of dogs in all hunting and shooting and you will have me starting to listen to proposals by The Shooters Party to control feral animals. But as for controlling feral animals in National Parks in NSW, this is an ecological management matter for DECC to be held accountable for.'

This issue is all about the Feral Animal Control Amendment Bill 2009 before the NSW Legislative Council, so the debate ought remain centred around the facts of the Bill.

Cowboy’s comment above is big on denials, inferences and personal attack but short on facts to support his (her) claims; a bit like Chris, but more feral. Cowboy's labelling of 'hoplophobia' (the fear of firearms) is a typical defence used by gun rights advocates as a derogatory term against anyone critical of them. Personally, I have trained on the L1A1 SLR and have great respect for professionals expertly and legally weapons trained. Cowboy shooters give the professional a bad name. But there is no benefit in descending to personal attacks (argument 'ad hominem').

Back to this so-called Feral Control Bill:

Where is the substantiation to support this Bill?

1. If the Bill is one of targeting ferals, why does it include native animals in National Parks?
2. If the Bill is one of targeting ferals, why is it limited to shooting and not other control means?
3. Why are the government authorities most qualified to control feral animals not granted the delegated responsibility for this Bill?
4. Where in this Bill does it specify controls on the time of day that shooting can take place? (i.e. it is 24/7)
5. Where in this Bill does it specify how shooting is to be independently policed? It doesn't.
6. Where in this Bill does it specify that only qualified marksman trained in species identification will be permitted to engage in feral hunting in national parks? Why are recreational hunters permitted without the high standards of marksmanship and species recognition training?
7. Where in the Bill are inexperienced recreational hunters prohibited from such shooting? These are the 'weekend warriors' that give the contract professionals a bad name, yet the The Game Council is not going out of its way to distinguish these two extremes.
8. Who will be monitor, police and breath test the shooters?
9. Who will watchdog those monitoring the shooters to ensure legal, environmental and ethical standards are complied with?

Shooters an "elite segment of society"? - come on
I question firearms owners being a labelled an "elite segment of society”
All it takes is to be cleared of a criminal record and paying a licence fee. Even a 12 year old can get a Minors Firearms Permit! A Personal Firearm Licence can be paid at any RTA office with a photo ID. No need to walk into a police station to apply like in the old days.

Under The (NSW) Fireams Act 1996 Part 2, Division 1, Clause 10 'Applications for Licences, all that is required to be granted a firearms licence is:

* be over 18,
* show proof of ID,
* be someone who has not been convicted of an offence within the past 10 years,
* not subject to an apprehended violence order,
* not subject to a good behaviour bond,
* not deemed not a risk to public safety.
* pay the licence fee

Convicted backbacker murderer, Ivan Milat, was a legally licenced shooter and got through these stringent 'elite' tests and he owned multiple longarm firearms.
How does this reflect upon the test standards for firearm owners?

Since 18 August 2008, the Firearms Amendment Act 2008 has required unlicenced persons seeking a licence for longarms undertake and pass an approved Firearms Safety Qualification (Long-arms) Course. This is admittedly a step in the right direction.
SOURCE:

Lack of professional controls for shooters
Under Firearms Regulation 2006 (NSW) clause 28 ‘Recreational hunting/vermin control—persons who are not members of approved hunting clubs’, an applicant can obtain a firearm licence without being a member of an approved hunting club in order to engage in recreational hunting/vermin control so long as they obtain and hold written proof of permission to shoot on rural land by the landholder which must describe the land to which the permission relates and the type of game to be shot.

But there is nothing in the legislation to enable a firearm holder to have a licence suspended or revoked as a result of shooting protected wildlife.

The NSW Department of Environment and Conservation, not the Game Council should be the prescribed authority for all vertebrate pest animal control.

Poor Species identification training
It is quite obvious that a feral animal is not synonymous with a native animal. One would hope that a shooter can distinguish a rabbit from a wombat, but what training exists to ensure natives are not mistakenly shot. Where is the policing to ensure that natives are not shot intentionally?

"Conservation Hunters"?
Suerly, this is oxymoronic spin. The term 'professional contract shooter' ought to be distinguisged from recreational shooter. If this Bill is to genuinely seek a professional approach to feral animal control it must specifically exclude recreational shooters and the weekend warrior element.

"Ancestral & cultural right to hunt"?
The loose premise of some "ancestral & cultural right to hunt" - may apply to traditional Aborigines using traditional methods on traditional lands away from populated areas, but to quote the Game Council's NSW Hunter eduication Handbook.. "in today's world, hunting is no longer a necessity for most of us, but is something we are never the less driven to the associations with our past." (p4.1.5). So this rather dubious argument says hunting is justified by some nostalgic notion of being connected to early colonists.

Cowboy, I draw your attention to the following extracts taken from recent specific research
and experience in feral animal control in Tasmania dealing with foxes:

'FOXES IN TASMANIA: A REPORT ON AN INCURSION BY AN INVASIVE SPECIES [June 2006] by the Invasive Animals Cooperative Research Centre.

7.4.3 Shooting

“The shooting of foxes has been a popular control technique used particularly by the agricultural community. It is ineffective in significantly reducing fox population numbers, is highly biased towards naïve juveniles and sub-adults and not suitable where dense cover is available for foxes (Coman 1988, Saunders et al. 1995). Shooting is usually done at night from a vehicle with the aid of a spotlight. This method relies on the ability of the shooter to approach the animal until it is in shooting range. Some shooters try and lure animals into range by using whistles. Coman (1988) reported that as the season progressed, fewer foxes could be shot due to either the removal of naïve foxes or learned avoidance of shooters.

Shooting has the advantage of producing evidence of the kill. Shooting is often promoted as an effective control technique to perpetuate access to lands for the purpose of hunting. Debating the merits or disadvantages of using shooters to remove foxes from Tasmania is probably counterproductive. Examination of historical attempts at fox bounty systems is sufficient to realise that shooting alone is not an eradication tool. Where used opportunistically and in association with normal recreational activities, the removal of individual foxes, as seen, may be appropriate. This would particularly apply in remote areas where a rapid follow-up response will be difficult. However, reliance on shooting as the
primary technique, either by professional or recreational hunters will fail.

Responding to individual reliable sightings of foxes by hunting alone should also be discouraged. Baiting should always be the primary strategy. The risk of a failed shot and subsequent change in the behaviour of the fortunate fox will also make subsequent efforts to kill it even more difficult.”

SOURCE:

And The Game Council of NSW is proposing to the government a wild open season on ferals and natives alike, entrusting it to any tom dick recreational shooter from 12 years old and upwards? Contract professional shooters and feral vertebrate animal controllers should feel damn right insulted.

Tigerquoll

Fri, 2009-07-24 16:31

Chris in his comment (above) 'Shooters Party Bill' (26-Jun-09) has made a number of unsubstantiated claims about "errors" in my above lead article, to which I took the trouble of answering, but also challenged Chris same day seeking explanation of his claims. Chris falsely claims the Bill would not give anyone the right to shoot native animals, falsely that rules for killing native animals are not being changed and falsely that there is no shooting of native animals in national Parks proposed in the bill. In my reply, I referred Chris back to the online access to Feral Control Bill itself, since it negates Chris' claims. But Chris' follow up comment 'Feral Animals Bill' (26 Jun 09) again avoids reference to this Bill. Had Chris took the trouble to actualy read this Bill he would be able to reference the facts, rather be making false assertions. So Chris, please refer to the facts of the Bill. Chris seems to support a key introduction of the Feral Control Bill push to classify native animals as game animals. Chris makes additional unsubstantiated claims of what he "believes", like: Claim A: "native animals listed as game animals are commonly shot on NPWS native animal control permits" Claim B: "Shooting is a way of reducing pest numbers. No method is available which will eliminate these animals." Chris, I suggest getting local Australian facts to support these claims. If "South Australia has been very successful in controlling goats in the Flinders ranges using hunters" what is your source? But are feral goats the prime feral pest. Are not cats, foxes and rabbits more a problem? Chris digresses on a tangent about rural land holders being allowed to shoot animals on the permit and all animals shot are not allowed to be moved. This Bill is not about what feral animals rural property owners can shoot on their land. They already can! The Bill is about adding native animals in National Parks to a definition of 'game animals' for what cn only be assumed exploitation recreational shooters. Why recreational shooters? What do they know? To be genuine about feral control, this Bill must specifically exclude: (1) native animals, (2) national parks and (3) recreational shooters. The intent then of The Shooters Party to help control ferals will starts becoming more genuine.

Anonymous (not verified)

Fri, 2009-07-24 10:14

Many years ago while visiting Hong Kong a Chines business man asked me about coming to Australia.

He said, "If I was to come to Australia to live how would I be received being of Chinese background"
I replied " any one qualifying to migrate to Australia from where I live would be very welcome providing they respect our customs and laws and come as friends. they will be treated the same way.

Well of course since then we have people coming from all over the world who do just this and in fact they make a great contribution to the Australian way of life. Then we have the others who choose to bring their baggage with them they do not wish to assimilate, they do not wish to become our friends, they choose to wear full Birka's in public.

Can anyone explain to me how can you get to know someone who wishes to hide behind a mask. This practice should be outlawed in this country as it has been in France If they do not wish to become one of us they have no place in this country and it is obvious what their long term goal is. To bring Sharia law in when they eventually obtain a total majority in this country,and the way they breed you do not have to be Einstein to work it out,give them 30 years and they will have the numbers.

Is it any wonder they wish to practice polygamy and have two or three wives. we will have racial unrest in this great land such as you have never seen.

So, I say to our Muslim friends If you wish to come and assimilate like all of the other beautiful people of the world come and be our friends ,take off your masks and be one of us otherwise go home we don't want you.

It is time our Government stopped pussy footing about and Banned the Birka.

Cowboy (not verified)

Fri, 2009-07-24 01:30

Tigerquoll writes, "This proposal is nothing to do with noble gesture of taking on the task of the government's culling feral animals in National Parks. "The Game Council in this self-interested set of demands, simply wants to give its weekend warrior member base open slather access to shoot almost anything and everything in the bush. It would be 24/7 open season on wildlife perpetually across NSW every day of the year. Every weekend would be weekend warrior party time in the ute with the spotties and the beers and the guns." It its bewildering how such a someone so full of self importance and hubris can be so ignorant about the facts. Legal firearm owners are by definition an elite segment of society. They have undergone police checks and testing before qualifying for a licence. I wonder how many Greenies could qualify? A feral animal is not synonymous with a native animal, if you are going to mount an argument please do not be intentionally obtuse. For example, we will shoot a rabbit and photograph a wombat. "Weekend warrior", outright prejudice and bigotry. Sorry to bust your bubble but LAFOs (law abiding firearm owners) are not all homicidal maniacs as your graphic insinuates. Such an adolescent, puerile and paranoid view can not be part of a serious discussion. I know teachers, accountants, nurses, primary teachers (female), police, business owners who hunt and own firearms. Using your psychological shortcomings and then projecting them onto others is an indication of poor mental health. "Open Slather" more irrational bleating. Conservation hunters register online before heading into a forest. They possess a letter of permission that lists the target feral animals they are allowed to pursue. "24/7 open season on wildlife". Wrong again . Hunting at night i.e. spotlighting with a rifle is not allowed and you have once again intentionally mixed up feral and native wildlife. Spotlighting could occur with special permission, but would be a rare occurrence. Refer to above paragraph. "the beers and the guns". Wrong again . When a LAFO is in possession of his/her firearm a zero blood alcohol level must be maintained according to the NSW Firearm legislation. I have been told that L Rhiannon had a hand in writing this portion of the legislation as one can apparently smoke as much pot as they wish and hunt at the same time. Now that is what I would call politically correct legislation! Conservation Hunters donate time and money to help control feral animals. The State benefits and so do hunters. They are able to exercise their ancestral & cultural right to hunt, commune with nature while promoting good mental health. The rabid anti-everything lefty always wants someone else to do something so that they can feel better within their neurotic super ego. Time for bed. No more time to go over all the delusional lies that are posted here. Since when does paranoia, hoplophobia and hyperbole provide a basis for forming public policy? Cowboy, I have cut out the worst of the personal abuse in the above post. Next time, please just focus on your case and forget about personal attacks. - JS

Sheila Newman

Thu, 2009-07-23 13:09

Very well said, Tigerquoll. The mainstream media-owners currently do influence perception for political and economic ends to suit their other interests. They are therefore very anxious to get in control of the internet so that they can somehow grab back what they are losing through blogs like this. We have to be extremely vigilant. Some ways in which they could seek to do this is by marketing devices for internet access or agreements to internet access where it may cost more to go outside the provider's portal or it may simply become difficult and complicated to do so. Also, secondary software can be made to automatically stream people in particular directions or to particular languages. For instance, it is really hard and used to be harder for me to get any radio shows that were not in English, using RealPlayer. I was constantly directed to US music. And, of course, there is the government's attempt to ban certain sites without letting the public know which sites these are and what the reasons for the bans are. Basically we should never trust any 'provider' or government that says, 'Trust us' to connect you or protect you, as if they were our parents and we were little children. As for us becoming a 'think tank', that is like articulating what is already happening. We serve at the moment to attract people of like minds and concerns to publish. In that way they become known to a wider community, who may live next door to them or may live on the other side of the world or of Australia. Once people can get in touch they can organise. So we serve to organise. I think that as a publishing community we can also do other things and I am looking forward to working with you on this. Sheila Newman, population sociologist Copyright to the author. Please contact sheila [AT] candobetter org or if you wish to make substantial reproduction or republish.

Tigerquoll

Thu, 2009-07-23 12:23

RD, The Independent Australian looks worthy of the same genre. I like the motto: 'a politically incorrect magazine of ideas and comment outside the mainstream.'

Looking again at 'News Weekly', this publication is clearly a publication outlet for The National Civic Council (NCC) which "seeks to shape public policy on cultural, family, social, political, economic and international issues of concern to Australia." Whether one agrees or disagrees with the philosophy, policies and principles of the NCC, the concept of seeking to shape public policy takes journalism that next step from simple reporting to social and political influencing.

Actually, I personally disagree with some of the NCC's philosophies, policies and principles, but irrespective of that I consider its focus on shaping public policy quite worthy.

The reason for me highlighting these alternative online media options is to point out that CanDoBetter operates within this online political analysis journalism genre. Call it 'citizen journalism', 'participatory journalism', 'political blogging' or whatever, this online medium is evolving from an infancy phase to a growth phase.

A threat to the mainstream media
Now the mainstream media have finally become alerted to this. They are seeing their traditional readership decline away from print and to online and to these alternative online media channels. Fairfax now charges for access to some of its articles for a nominal $2 fee. The Fairfax yet to be launched online 'The National Times' threatens to be Fairfax's reactive attempt to claw back its political analytic readership. It is important that we are all aware of the market place for political comment and analysis and watch it as it changes and evolves.

Citizen Journalism
Wikipedia explains that 'citizen journalism' "(also known as "public", "participatory", "democratic"[1] or "street journalism"[2]) is the concept of members of the public "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information," according to the seminal 2003 report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information.[3] Authors Bowman and Willis say: "The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires."

CanDoBetter: where to from here?
Noting the mission of candobetter.org is "to encourage ordinary people to engage themselves with the political processes that determine the course of our society," so CanDoBetter would seem to fit within this realm and has real opportunities to establish its presence and influence.

But the real value add in this genre for participating websites is being more accessible to its target readership (user-friendly/feature rich) and to take issues beyond a skin deep reporting/opinion level towards building an insightful 'think tank' influencing approach on political issues - in a sense provide influence and leadership direction rather than just opinion. Of course this is up to the owners of this website.

The traditional media criticise citizen journalism as not being objective, but in reality who is purely objective when it comes to journalistic opinion?

This new approach to journalistic analysis will leave the mainstream media for dead and instead of other independent journalistic sites being regarded as competion, competing for the same readership, these site will be complimentary to the debate and analysis. The beneficiaries will be the contributors, the readers and society as knowledge and analysis is shared. It is a consistent benefit of free exchange as that provided by the Internet itself.

This heralds a paradigm shift in journalistic analysis. A shift not suited to commercial profit making and so a real threat to traditional mainstream media, and they know it. Yet, the rise of citizen journalism (of people who omnce were the audience) it is indeed suited to developing sophisticated insights and policies to deal effectively with complex issues and so enable 'ordinary people to determine the course of our society'.

Vivienne (not verified)

Thu, 2009-07-23 10:45

It is not a problem of having to produce MORE crops and grains, it is about re-distributing it! Much of our crops now go to livestock, and thus for the more wealthy in the world. This is gross inefficiency as a way of food production, land and water usage. The addiction to meat and dairy is due to ingrained conditioning and tradition and also as a symbol of affluence and ego - of being on top of the food-chain. Meat inevitably comes from animals. Wealthy Indians are suffering from an "epidemic" of diabetes due to Western foods after being on subsistence plant-based diets for generations. Processed foods and diabetes amongst our indigenous peoples is no doubt due to the same excesses. Changing people's mindset about foods is no doubt the hardest part of convincing people about diets and health! We are heading towards increasing "food miles" due to urbanisation and population growth, and thus more food industries rather than "real" locally grown food.

Sheila Newman

Thu, 2009-07-23 07:17

It sounds like a very 'managed' environmental conference and 'managed' environmental conferences generally turn into entertainment festivals with sponsors, professional speakers or speakers from outside the community, and only very general environmental messages, so as not to discourage immigration, property development, big garden stores and supermarkets by allowing locals to have a voice.

Menkit has a political position which is different from mine but we are a long way away from a head-on collision.
My political position says that, vegan or (less) meat-eating, if our economy is organised centrally and distantly, we are doomed to biological, economic and social impoverishment and slavery.

I think we are on the road to insufficient calories per capita on a global level because we are destroying our soils and water, and the fossil fuels to make our industrial food production and distribution systems work are becoming scarcer, but we have already arrived at ambient malnutrition and pockets of starvation in many places. If we distributed food according to need, rather than according to capacity to pay, probably no-one would go hungry ... for a while. In North America, Australia, Canada and Europe, and even among the elite of some third world countries, some people are having fat sucked out of them via machines (liposuction) whereas the poor of the world do not get enough fat to eat.

This situation coincided, however, with internationalisation of economies, where local power to produce food and participate politically in an effective manner, and to adjust population to the local carrying capacity, were abrogated and confused by the removal of power and production to distant places and large industrially based systems.

I am worried that a plan to feed the world using grains would run into the same problem of internationalised, profit-based economies. I imagine, for instance, corporations destroying all the wild biodiversity in the richest regions in order to produce the grain to 'feed the world'.

What would then happen to the marginal lands, where you cannot grow crops? My understanding is that farmers will always grow crops where they can because they can get a far higher return for them. On marginal lands they run grazing animals because those animals can move over a very wide area to sustain themselves.

So what would happen to people who live in marginal areas, if we all went vegan? I don't think they would be able to produce enough food for themselves. Perhaps then, we should abandon the marginal lands and only live where crops and food trees can be grown?

Would that mean that more of us would crowd into the hot biodiversity spots (that occur on the richest land)?

One would hope that big business would not stop us, as it tries to now, from allowing our populations to diminish to adjust to more biodiversity and socially friendly small-scale societies.

One would hope that big business would not stop us from occupying those rich areas in small populations, harmonious with the local fauna, as it is trying to do now because it wants to develop those areas for real-estate and crop-growing.

Another thing in Menkit's speech was the statement that we would all die in four years if bees became extinct. Is she allowing for the transport of pollen by flower wasps and other insects and animals, which might take over the task if bees were not around? What about the fact that most members of the grass family (including wheat, barley, rye, rice, bamboo and corn) are wind pollinated and non-dependant on bees? See, for instance, I feel a bit bad about using Dr Kameswara's article because it appears on a biotech industry blog which informs an industry that wants to take over more biodiverse land to produce crops on an industrial scale using artificial methods, with the excuse of 'feeding the world'.

I have read that the grass family feeds, directly or indirectly over 90% of the World's population. Statements in this would support that view.

The problem of grain-cropping marginal or range lands (which, merging with hot desert, comprise 75% of Australian land) is raised in this article, .

"Another suggestion is a return to grazing beef, a very real alternative as long as you accept the psychologically difficult and politically unpopular notion of eating less of it. That’s because grazing could never produce as many cattle as feedlots do. Still, said Michael Pollan, author of the recent book “In Defense of Food,” “In places where you can’t grow grain, fattening cows on grass is always going to make more sense.”"

The statement appears in an article on a Prout website. Prout is an organisation with a non-denominational religious base that promotes, "Economy of the People, For the People and By the People! Put Economic Power in the Hands of the People!"

The article is interesting because it shows an awareness that human social organisation on a local scale permits a variety of lifestyles in tune with much lower carrying capacity. One such lifestyle is the semi-nomadic one of following grazing animals around their range. (When the Somalis still supplemented local grain economies with semi-nomadic herding economies, they had stable populations that could survive droughts. When they got wells and turned to intensified agriculture, their societies produced landless people who could not survive droughts. That's what western 'food-aid and agriculture' does.)

The Prout article also makes this statement:

"Though some 800 million people on the planet now suffer from hunger or malnutrition, the majority of corn and soy grown in the world feeds cattle, pigs and chickens. This despite the inherent inefficiencies: about two to five times more grain is required to produce the same amount of calories through livestock as through direct grain consumption, according to Rosamond Naylor, an associate professor of economics at Stanford University. It is as much as 10 times more in the case of grain-fed beef in the United States."

The use of grain to feed cattle on the scale it happens in America is a recent development.

The economics professor's use of the term 'efficiency' is skewed here to mean 'most direct route to human stomachs'. Biological efficiency would mean allowing the world to return to a functionally biodiverse state and that would certainly not mean a population of 6.6 or 9 or 11 billion humans. Financial efficiency simply means cornering the most production for paying humans, meanwhile throwing us socially and ecologically into chaos - half of us starving and the rest of us needing liposuction. So many questions arise. For instance, why would we increase crop production just to feed more humans when we already have enough food to feed them? There is an even greater need to question the belief that human populations must continue to grow when humans, on a local basis, had long been able to control their populations down to the local carrying capacity, well before the invention of the pill.

Another big question of our time is, why do we see so often versions of , also by Dr Dr. C Kameswara Rao, "I am not a scientist, but rummage around in the scientific research about GM and a clear picture emerges: if we want to reduce starvation and “feed the world”, as Sir Bob Geldof et al tell us every Christmas, we must go GM. The argument in favour of GM crops begins with a simple one: the world is growing fast."

The answer that comes to my mind is that GM and agriculture with and without GM are big business and big business does not like local economic and political empowerment because the case for massive GM crop production does not exist in local economies run well within their local carrying capacity. Global GM mass crop production for profit needs run-away population growth to survive. The human population could survive quite well without GM as long as it did not continue to grow or to provide massive profits for a few shareholders in a globalised economy.

So, for me, the problems of preserving rich plant and animal biodiversity, reducing carbon gas emissions, decreasing wealth and increasing political empowerment seem to lie in the relocalisation of our economies. That may give people the choice of eating vegan in some societies but not in others. I am open to argument here.

The Prout organisation put out a film some while back about Venezuela. It was done by the same person who made No Woolies in Maleny. I found the organisation's use of religion interesting because, as I recollect, it was felt that it is easier to communicate ideas as beliefs than as systems to be learned... maybe we need an article by Prout here. On a local level when the religion itself is local and functions to preserve the environment and local working systems, religion seems to work. Where a religion is generalised into an overarching abstract set of rules and applied over a wide variety of locations, peoples and systems, then it dictates absurd behaviour and prevents people from acting on their own behalf from local information - in much the same way as does the global economic growth economy - which, come to think of it, is really a religion.

The arguments Menkit alludes to about cruelty to animals are particularly convincing when you look at our industrial processing of other species as food. The scale of cruelty, of deprivation of liberty far exceeds, but ressembles in its systematic pseudo-efficiency (to feed the world) the nazi concentration camp system.

This is yet another argument for relocalisation with view to allowing our populations to reduce naturally.

Would the quality of food available to most of us in our industrialised overdrawn system be adequate to lead vegan lifestyles, especially if we don't have access to land to grow our own food on? The rate of obesity seems indicative of some decline in food vitality. Menkit, in her Essential Oils cookbook (which communicates fabulous recipes and useful technologies), talks as if finely ground flour can cause diabetes. Although I do not know her source for this, I do know that there is a lot of evidence that many people cannot cope with low GI foods and that the introduction of flour and sugar to Australian aborigines and other indigenous people coincided with high rates of diabetes and obesity. But low GI industrially produced foods are more and more the only ones available to many people. And big business and a government near you are pushing for this situation to expand.

In conclusion, I don't think that all of Menkit's claims were right, but I don't think that she should be stopped from talking at a conservation festival. James Sinnamon, who comments on this article as well, often makes the point that so many political rallies, including conservation festivals, consist of talking heads standing up there as if they were the ultimate authority. Audiences are allowed a short 'question period', when really a discussion should open, involving all those with something to say.

I note that Menkit previously spoke every year. Perhaps the problem is, once again, partly due to the breaking down of the local society where she lives, in favour of bringing in outside 'authorities'. In a localised society of comfortable size, everyone gets a voice and no-one is a comprehensive expert.

Cut the Menkits from a small town and suddenly you have a bunch of newcomer ignoramuses racing cars through national parks and building blocks of flats on local farmland with the rest of the population completely sidelined like so many suburbanites in Sydney or Melbourne, sitting in front of t.v. watching the 'real people'.

None of us is a complete authority when you get right down to it. But big populations hierarchialise and specialise, creating illusions of authority either through credentialism, professional politics, religion, and big bucks. So, if you have a professorship or a profession, you can get up there and make claims about kangaroo populations and a judge or a politician will take your claims seriously even if they are wrong. Likewise, if you have a lot of money, you can get up and say what you like about growing our population being a good thing. The recently deceased Mr Richard Pratt's self-serving performance at the Melbourne Population summit of 2002 was an example of this.

For me the big issue is that big societies remove the choice of going vegan or not to some decision way above our individual heads. And that decision is likely to be made by someone whose reasons would not stand up on a local basis but who we will never be able to question.

Sheila Newman, population sociologist

James Sinnamon

Thu, 2009-07-23 03:04

I think the Tweed Shire World Environment Day organisers owe an apology both to you and to the broader public for having treated you in this way. Is it any wonder that the Environmental movement has gone so far backwards, when the most dedicated, talented and passionate environmental activists are treated this way? I thought your (so far unpublished) reply to that conceited fool was also very good and should also be included as an addendum. It seems that you are right that we have no choice but to adopt veganism if we are to emerge out of the hole into which humankind has dug itself. If it is possible to conclusively show that we would actually be healthier if we were to adopt veganism, that would help immensely. This web site would be a good place to explore that question.

RD (not verified)

Wed, 2009-07-22 20:51

Another independent current affairs journal:

- "Socially and culturally conservative, conservationist, and above all, proud to be Australian."

If you enjoy a bit of political incorrectness, sticking a pin into the puffery of the self proclaimed intellectual elites, as well as some serious analysis of current issues which the mainstream media is too PC or scared to print, dip into this website (still under construction). It will give you an insight into the contents of The Independent Australian magazine.

We are at the forefront of questioning conventional wisdom; for example, right from the start we have opposed Multiculturalism. Now we find that commentators, even from the bleeding heart and soft left-liberal elites, are starting to question the very basis of this State sponsored religion. Similarly we have long advocated tightening up eligibility laws for citizenship.

Our Green Pages do not rabbit on endlessly about old growth forests (important as they are), rather we tackle the basic issues of reconciling population growth with sustainability, look realistically at alternative power supplies and transport modes. The establishment environmental groups, the Greens and the Australian Conservation Foundation, are more concerned with ideological social issues than sustainability.

Nowhere else will you find support for giving more power to the people via Citizen Initiated Referenda, an idea abhorrent to the Left and Right power brokers. And we are right behind those who support freedom of speech and the right to publish, including views diametrically opposed to us.

Conservative does not mean we support economic policies such as handing over natural monopolies to private enterprise and signing 'free' (but not fair) trade agreements with centrally controlled economies like China. Nor did we like some of the Coalition Industrial Relations proposals.

We hope that the website will inspire you to subscribe. If you would like to see before you buy, you can get a complimentary copy free.

Background Information
The Independent Australian magazine grew from discussions among people of independent views, especially Davydd Williams. Some must remain anonymous, because they are still in employment. The fate of the vocally politically incorrect is exclusion from employment or promotion.

The Independent Australian is published by Independent Australian Publications Pty Ltd. The editor is Peter Wilkinson. A company is the most convenient vehicle to handle the business aspects, but the venture is about dissemination of ideas, not profit-making. Any success will be ploughed back into improvement of content, presentation and circulation.

Vivienne (not verified)

Wed, 2009-07-22 20:45

Do the numbers of international students who are granted permanent residency appear in our annual immigration total? The education export industry is a sham! Due to the globalisation of public tertiary institutions, our own citizens are paying exorbitant and prohibitive fees, competing at an international level. Young people today must start their careers with thousands of dollars in fees, which continue to rise even if they are unemployed! Youth Allowance has been further restricted. We are not short of hairdressers and hospitality skills in Australia. These jobs are not well paid generally! Now they can't be used towards PR points, maybe the numbers of hopeful international students will level out? Education is being considered a commercial asset, an industry, rather than as a way of improving our level of competency, knowledge and skills. Our Federal government head-hunts the educated from overseas due to our “skills shortages” while tertiary education continues to become prohibitively expensive for Australians! It is disgraceful that in a wealthy country such as Australia we need students from relatively poor countries to subsidise our tertiary education system. Student are now asking for food donations to help them survive! Tertiary education should be properly funded, and be primarily to educate our citizens, not an export industry!

Sheila Newman

Wed, 2009-07-22 16:25

Whoa! Fairfax Press is wed to land-speculation and the whole growth ideology. Advertising always influences content and often provides articles which pass for journalism. Look at who is on the board of Fairfax. Not too long ago one of the editors of Fairfax press had a 'fellowship' from OzPop (APop's little cousin). OzPop was auspiced in part by Steve Vizard, Pratt, and the New America Foundation. OzPop awarded fellowships for journos who wrote about how great big populations are. The most corrupt media sometimes allow real investigations - usually because they benefit by the downfall of one government or another, or as an exception to the rule. The best men and women are brought down by the need to obey their masters. Perhaps the bottom line must be to uphold non-professional journalism as truly free political expression. Most of us have other jobs and know that we cannot express ourselves freely in those. I'll consider what you say more carefully later. If you have received independent intelligence of some real independence entering the mainstream I'll be reassured, but hard to have faith in the idea of editorial freedom in these hoary old monoliths. Usually the price of blogging on a commercial media site is giving up personal information to commercial interests. Personally I would not want to give any support or strength to the commercial media, since, to date, it runs our elections and our governments and thus seems to be the enemy of democracy. Sheila Newman, population sociologist

Tigerquoll

Wed, 2009-07-22 12:44

The following, while not all strictly 'independent', offer some alternative reading and analysis of current affairs issues in Australia. I am sure there are others. Notably, the fact that Fairfax is about to launch a dedicated online political analysis magazine 'The National Times' in August 2009 indicates corporate recognition of the healthy growth in Australian online journalism and blogging. The media landscape is changing. Feedback welcome.


'The Monthly (is) a national magazine of politics, society and the arts, arrived in 2005. It is published by the people who bring you Black Inc. books and the Quarterly Essay. It is unlike any Australian publication that has come and gone before.
The Monthly is intelligent and inquisitive, witty and wise. It doesn’t dumb down or suck up. The Monthly is rooted in simple but powerful storytelling. It doesn’t moan, or earbash, or take itself too seriously. The Monthly gives space to long essays and thoughtful reviews, to investigative journalism and zingy reportage, to bold photography and a brash design. It doesn’t get bogged down in bloated columns by boring hacks. The Monthly is human.

Only Australia’s best writers light up The Monthly’s stage: Helen Garner, Don Watson, John Birmingham, Mungo MacCallum, Shane Maloney, Ashley Hay, Drusilla Modjeska, Clive James, Gideon Haigh, Amanda Lohrey, Chloe Hooper, Malcolm Knox, Robert Manne. The Monthly dares them to get mud on their laptops. If Australia’s existing magazines are stuck in a rut, growing fatter yet thinner, then The Monthly is like a free-spirited friend who comes to visit, full of stories, insight, wit and surprise.'


'Crikey is Australian for independent journalism.
There are two arms to Crikey: our website and the Crikey Daily Mail, a daily subscription email service.

The website: This is where we??present a selection of Crikey’s original content along with links to stories from all corners of the web. Crikey editors are across thousands of online sources, from the most earnest to the most eclectic. If it’s interesting and newsworthy, chances are it’ll be on crikey.com.au.

Crikey Daily Mail: Around lunchtime every weekday, the Crikey Daily Mail hits the inboxes of thousands of subscribers. This email edition of 25 or more original stories is crammed with news, analysis, insider gossip, reviews and prescient tips about politics, media, business, the law, culture and national and international affairs.

Crikey’s aim is to bring its readers the inside word on what’s really going on in politics, government, media, business, the arts, sport and other aspects of public life in Australia. Crikey reveals how the powerful operate behind the scenes, and it tackles the stories insiders are talking about but other media can’t or won’t cover.

Crikey sees its role as part of the so-called fourth estate that acts as a vital check and balance on the activities of government, the political system and the judiciary. In addition, Crikey believes the performance and activities of business, the media, PR and other important sectors are worthy of public scrutiny.'


'Launched in August 2004, newmatilda.com is an independent Australian website of news, analysis and satire. Believing that robust media is fundamental to a healthy democracy, newmatilda.com aims to provide non-partisan information ? it has no association with any political party or media organisation.

newmatilda.com provides intelligent coverage of Australian politics, business, consumerism, civil society, international affairs, media and culture for a global audience. As well as offering an understanding of current events against a broad historical and political backdrop, it features issues and ideas often left untouched by the mainstream media.
newmatilda.com publishes the work of writers from a wide range of backgrounds. They are journalists, current and former politicians, lawyers, critical and creative thinkers, bloggers, policy-wonks and satirists. Unsolicited submissions are welcome.

Registered readers (free) can choose to receive notice of the latest content by favourite writers or of topics of interest. They are also encouraged to participate in debates on the issues we cover through the comments section that follows each article.'


['the Age', 13th June, 2009] 'FAIRFAX Media is set to relaunch one of Australia's historic newspaper brands, The National Times, as an opinion and editorial website covering the nation's political and national affairs debates.

The online revival as Nationaltimes.com.au comes more than two decades after the paper and its short-term successor, the Times on Sunday, were forced to fold in the wake of the 1987 October share crash and Warwick Fairfax's failed takeover of the publisher.

"The National Times brand was synonymous with intelligent and thought-provoking journalism," Fairfax Media chief executive Brian McCarthy said.
"It informed and encouraged debate on the important issues of the day and that will be the commitment of our new online site."

Incurring public wrath from powerbrokers such as former NSW Premier Neville Wran, and prime ministers Paul Keating and Bob Hawke, The National Times won praise and notoriety for its independent and confronting journalism.

Under editors such as Max Suich, David Marr and Brian Toohey, several of its stories prompted the establishment of royal commissions.

The website will replace the opinion section on news sites including theage.com.au and will feature the best of Fairfax's opinion writing, commentary and analysis, coupled with guest commentaries from politicians, academics and other public figures, the publisher said in a statement.

Fairfax Digital chief Jack Matthews said the advertising-funded site, which had been months in the planning, would include interactive features such as blogging tools, forums and polls to engage readers in debates. The new site will go online in August.'

Another one is :

Sheila Newman

Wed, 2009-07-22 04:13

Plenty of people are shouting, but they do not get reported by the Murdoch and Fairfax Press. Why? Because the Murdoch and Fairfax Press are heavily involved in promoting the very problems they then bemoan. Why? Because they have a direct interest in marketing real-estate globally via and and, as corporate press, represent a host of other commercial interests which more and more rely on subsidy by taxpayers. If you want the government to use taxes to bail out banks and other corporations, with funds for more 'development', it doesn't do to report that the whole thing is a scam. A similar set up prevails in the tv stations with their lifestyle programs - marketing, marketing - and the ABC seems to be quite hamstrung in its ability to criticise these trends as well - perhaps because of political pressure, perhaps because of the interests that sit on its boards. (Okay, there are some good programs, such as 4Corners). There is, as has been pointed out elsewhere on this site, a growing trend to draw ABC journos from the Murdoch stable. And the corporations and their lobby groups supply a lot of articles to the mainstream, and even supply writers - e.g. Bernard Salt. So, people are shouting, but the press is not reporting them properly. That is why candobetter.org exists - to report the shouting! Sheila Newman, population sociologist

Tigerquoll

Tue, 2009-07-21 11:50

Indeed, logging, thinning and frequent burning (forest practices) over Australia's 220 year colonial history have and continue to destroy the integrity of our native forests and force our native fauna closer to extinction. Colonial 'clearing' for agriculture and building materials destroyed most of south eastern Australia's natural landscape. Neo-colonial practices including unchecked urban invasion and prescribed burning continue to do destroy what's left.

Australia's original natural landscape is characterised by varied topography and varied mosaics of different vegetation types. Broad scale destruction of native vegetation across south eastern Australia has reduced the remnant forest and heath habitat into fragmented and isolated islands. Many specific habitat types are now threatened and endangered as a consequence. Wet schelophyll has being transformed into dry schlerophyll. Note the fire resistent species that return after a fire - Acacias (wattles), tea tree and Eucalypts. These then dominate the new growth and when the next fire occurs they burn more intensely and exacerbate the wildfire. Frequent prescribed burning makes our remnant forests more susceptible to wildfire. Frequent prescribed burning and uncontrolled broadscale bushfire are by area and impact are responsible for the loss of our remaining biodiversity and ecological values across south eastern Australia.

This is even though prescribed burning has been found not to prevent ember attack - the main cause of wildfire spread in extreme bushfire weather conditions! Frequent broadacre burning policies have limited effectiveness at mitigating wildfire risk (its intended aim). The previous "NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner, Phil Koperberg, echoed similar sentiments when faced with criticism after the 2002 fires: ‘Unless you’re going to keep all of New South Wales hazard reduced to a point where there is no fuel on the ground…we’re going to have fires’ (McKey 2002)." SOURCE: http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2003/02/brandes.html

The Australian Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) at Monash University has made a submission to Teague Commission on Victoria's 2009 Bushfires, and addresses the fundamental question: 'Can fire and land management practices and policies be modified to minimise the future risk of similarly catastrophic bushfires without compromising Victoria's native ecosystems and the biodiversity that they support?'

ACB in its submission, has offered the following warnings of how broadscale frequent burning threatens our native forests:

"Natural fire is a complex physical process that affects organisms, communities, and landscapes in various ways. The spatial and temporal variability of these impacts depends on the intensity and frequency of fires in an area, that is, the fire regime."

"Inevitably, after a major bushfire, there are calls to increase the amount and frequency of fuel reduction burns. However, increasing the rate of fuel-reduction burns is, in effect, changing the fire regime in an ecosystem and may have substantial ecological implications.

"The application of fuel-reduction burning to mitigate fire risk, therefore, needs to be critically questioned on two fronts.
First, will increasing the frequency and amount of prescribed burning reduce fire risks at the landscape scale?
Second, how will changing the fire regime through increased fuel-reduction burning impact on native ecosystems? Will increasing fuel-reduction burning lower fire risks?

"Theoretical studies have also shown that fuel-reduction burning at the landscape scale can reduce the risk of large, catastrophic fires. However, these studies make important assumptions about the other point of the fire triangle: climate. Under most reasonable climatic conditions, fuel reduction burns done sufficiently frequently may reduce the risk of large fires. However, under extreme climatic conditions, such as those that preceded Black Saturday, this may not hold. As of Friday, 6 February 2009, approximately one-third of Victoria’s public lands had been subjected to fuel-reduction burns since 2003; that is, ~5% of public lands were subjected to fuel-reduction burns each year. This was the target set in an earlier Parliamentary Enquiry and clearly did not prevent the Black Saturday fires. Modeling studies suggest that the amount of fuel reduction burns would need to be doubled, at least, to have any potential for avoiding similarly catastrophic fires if conditions of such extreme fire danger re-occur in the future."

"Increasing fuel-reduction burning to proposed levels (10-15% of public lands per year) would reduce habitat diversity by homogenizing the regional fire regime. The diversity of habitats and their mosaic distribution across the Victorian landscape is a critical component in maintaining local and regional biodiversity. The interdigitation of sites differing in their susceptibility to fire provides temporary refuges for animals that can move away from fires and later recolonise their original sites. More frequent fuel-reduction burning will change the structure and composition of the understorey vegetation. While many animals may be better able to survive the low-intensity fuelreduction, the resultant vegetation may be poor-quality habitat."

"Applying a single prescribed burning policy to Victoria’s public lands will disadvantage a large proportion of the native biodiversity and reduce local and regional habitat diversity. Shifting
toward more homogeneous landscapes through increased prescribed burning will be detrimental to the long-term conservation of biodiversity in Victoria."

"Increased prescribed burning may reduce fire risks in some years, but is unlikely to have any effect in those years with extreme climatic conditions similar to those of 2009."

"A uniform and widespread increase in fuel-reduction burning across Victoria’s public lands will likely have negative long-term impacts on the native flora and fauna."

ACB's recommendation:

"We recommend that the State government consider a more nuanced policy that acknowledges the spatial complexity of Victoria’s landscapes and the values associated with them. We recommend that increased prescribed burning be focused in high-risk areas directly surrounding towns to minimize threats to people and property. However, for more remote, unpopulated areas, where the primary values are biodiversity and timber, we believe that fire management plans should be based on the best available science, that they should be consistent with the appropriate historical fire regimes, and that they provide an integrated, long-term vision for Victoria’s natural heritage."

SOURCE:

Anonymous (not verified)

Tue, 2009-07-21 00:18

By "managing" our forests and clearing native vegetation, along with the conditions of drought and climate change, we are actually making them drier and less dense, and thus adding to the risk of mega-fires.

While our State government continues to permit the logging and thinning of our native forests and water catchment areas, the public can do little to prevent further mega fires.

The dry conditions means that trees suffer and compete for water. They lose their leaves, or die, thus exacerbating the dry undergrowth problem. Instead of moisture, forests continue to become more vulnerable. It is then a cycle downwards to damaged ecosystems, and thus more fire dangers.

Tigerquoll

Tue, 2009-07-21 00:01

Mosaic prescribed burns immediately around built assets (aka Asset Protection Zones) would seem sustainable. Building approvals only in low bushfire risk areas would seem sustainable. Permitting building construction out of non-combustible and fire retardant material would seem sustainable. But the 'bushphobic' culture has pushed the boundaries and scale well beyond immediate protection of buildings. The scale of bush burning into remote wild parts of Victoria by DSE and the CFA is broadscale and massive and causing local faunal extinctions. Take a look at the Take also one small example of a CFA fire district in Victoria. The Yarram Fire District in South Gippsland in its DSE Approved Fire Operations Plan [2008/09 to 2010/11] for 2500 hectares of bush to be deliberately burned. The issue of burning the bush is indeed complex, yet the ecological complexity and impact is not understood or appreciated by DSE or CFA. How do you know that "DSE activities "allows animals to continue to flourish in the wider area" Where are your statistics Artemis? Why are not independent zoologists with experts in Australia's native fauna providing independent public reports supporting each Proposed Plan Burn by the DSE and CFA across Victoria? Too embarrassing, especially when these get out of control 1 in every 2? It is because the DSE and CFA have cumulatively destroyed more native habitat that any other threatened process? Look at Wilsons Promontory in 2009 and 2005! Default prescribed burning from the convenience of lightning. No building threatened so let the bastard - saves us the work anyway on the Fire Plan and we can always argue the old "it was burning in inaccessible country" excuse - works every time, guaranteed! Controlled limited 'mosaic' burning that excludes flora species and ecological systems vulnerable or intolerant to fire is the PR spin. But on the ground prescribed burning is not an exact science. It is not undertaken scientifically nor supervised scientifically or able to be independently verified as compliant. The DSE or CFA have no independent public watchdog. They are a law under themselves and they know it. Weekend warriors end up torching most of the prescribed burns - "this'll do!" If it gets out of control, we'll deal with it but actually it will save us bother next time and minimise the fire risk next summer. The Aboriginal firestick burning is another excuse used to justify deliberate arson of wild landscapes remote from buildings is another old school fire management myth, lacking scientific merit. Since when did ancient Aborigines drop aerial incendiaries over vast inaccessible areas every year? The Armageddon myth is another bushphobic alarmist excuse to try to justify slashing and burning as much bush as possible 'before it burns' every seven years or so. This way no bush is ever allowed to live beyond seven years. The main reason huge deadly wildfires occur is because the fire authorities take too long to detect the ignitions take too long to respond, don’t have the right tools to suppress remote ignitions fast and effectively. The DSE and the CFA are both committed to perpetuating the status quo, let alone give a toss about the natural environment.

Anonymous (not verified)

Mon, 2009-07-20 22:24

"So the Property councils wants more growth beyond Melbourne's urban growth boundary and reducing of restrictions for development in existing suburbs, what a surprise!" This is typical tactic used by the housing and real estate industries. They lobby the government for higher immigration levels and then turn around and moan and complain that not enough land for housing is available to accommodate the resultant population explosion. Benefiting from the housing crisis they helped create, they cry crocodile tears for all those adversely affected by the housing shortage, pressuring governments to open up more land on the urban fringe for extra houses. And, amazingly, nobody ever bothers to point out that it was these same vested interest groups who created this pressure-cooker situation in the first place.

Anonymous (not verified)

Mon, 2009-07-20 20:18

Look im just a layman but if a cocky puts dams or pumps water to areas on his property that historically has no water would this not increase the carrying capacity of both catlle/sheep, roos/wallabies and bridlife. Not scientific but if there is food and no water = no animals add water = more animals???

artemis (not verified)

Mon, 2009-07-20 14:55

No offence, but your comments appear only half-educated. A prescribed burn is done in pockets, so that an entire area is not burned off all at one time. This allows animals to continue to flourish in the wider area. This is what is called a "mosaic" effect. Which is why you see the DSE have burnt a little each year over the last few years. This is not "bush phobic" but takes into account the fact that the Australian bush has a complex and necessary relationship with fire for propagation and the DSE tries to work with the bush to encourage it at its natural state as best as possible without injuring or harming the humans that now inhabit it so profusely. In fact you will find that when prescribed burns as the Aboriginals carried them out stopped, certain species of animals that thrived and lived in the edges of them became extinct. As fire is the natural state of the Australian bush, you will never stop it, the best we can do in our situation, is learn to harmoniously work with the land and manage it. If you understand it from this angle you will understand that prescribed burns cause no where near the damage to flora, fauna, the environment and humans as the huge deadly wildfires that occur if we don't prescribe burn. The DSE and the CFA are both committed to working to save the environment as much as possible, unfortunately too many people see them as the enemy - humans love to have a tangible enemy to attack, even if that means turning on one another when convenient. It will be nice when people finally realize that prescribed burns are much more green than they first understood.

Vivienne (not verified)

Mon, 2009-07-20 10:46

Premier Brumby says that the rising violence in Melbourne is "un-Victorian". This impotent and feeble protest is a way of objecting but doing nothing! Australia's cities are becoming more and more violent. We are living in pressure-cooker conditions, due to human densities without a culture to unify people. Diversity is celebrated and encouraged, but the reality is that we are not a conforming culture like in Japan or China. We are not a monolith! We lack leadership in Australia, and without a unifying and adhesive "glue", such as a faith or some ideals, violence and discord will continue. Add alcohol and drugs to this mix, and organised crime, there is mayhem! We have secularism, materialism, ramped population growth, greed and diversions of all kinds, each of us with selfish aims and directions. We can't have police everywhere, and this would offend the supporters of civil libertarians! Our cities are centres of violence and vice, but without leadership and ideals, our society will decline into further anarchy and crime.

Sheila Newman

Mon, 2009-07-20 02:11

Peter McDonald's work for the ANU and contracts from growth lobby foundations has had a lot to do with marketing Australia's overpopulation. Concerned Australians should all make themselves aware of some related influences. See: Sheila Newman, population sociologist

Sheila Newman

Mon, 2009-07-20 01:48

On Wednesday I had this tentative thumbs up from Glenn Dewhurst about the cockatoos:

"Sheila,
I think we had a win last night. We are able to keep all the aviaries on site under conditions set by the council.
I am unsure what conditions have been put upon us.
They said the minutes will be released Today at 12pm on the below link.
I will email tonight the results once I get to have a look.
Thanks again for all your support and that of your friends; I can say that they were over whelmed with the level of support.

Here is the link: http://www.gosnells.wa.gov.au/default-gosnells.asp

The minutes of the meeting are to be found here:http://www.gosnells.wa.gov.au/upload/gosnells/3BE3CF7EAAB64C4EBAADC8588B8BD715.pdf

My reading of the minutes is also cautiously optimistic although it looks like a lot of work and expense for Glenn over a short period of time. My main qualm is this requirement, "That the number of birds housed on the property be limited to the extent that the noise generated does not exceed the Environmental Protection (noise abatement regulations)." In view of the admission by the noise expert that wild cockatoos contribute to the noise from the caged cockatoos (in rehab, due to be freed) how would the 'appropriate' number of birds be estimated? Would there be any implication for the wild birds?

I have cut and pasted the bulk of the council decision below, minus some formatting:

"CONCLUSION
The proposal to retain the eight outbuildings already constructed with the exception of Outbuilding E, is supported for the following reasons:
• The as of right requirements of Town Planning Scheme No. 6 and Local Planning Policy 6.2.3 – Outbuildings – Rural and Residential Areas have not been met, however any negative impacts can be addressed through conditions
of approval.

• Noise emitted from the aviaries would comply with the Environmental Protection (Noise) Regulations 1997 if the existing Outbuilding E is relocated and modified in accordance with the recommendations of the noise consultant.

• The outbuildings are not considered to have a detrimental impact on the visual
amenity of the local area.

Item 17.1 Continued
23 of 115
The proposal to construct an additional outbuilding is not supported for the following reasons:

• The proposed outbuilding would result in an aggregate outbuilding floor area on the subject property of 885m², which is considered to be excessive within the Rural zone.

• Noise emitted from the part of the proposed outbuilding to be used for the care of sick and injured birds is likely to have a detrimental impact on the amenity of the adjoining property.

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS
Nil.
STATUTORY IMPLICATIONS
• Town Planning Scheme No. 6 Clause 9.2 and 11.2.
• Local Planning Policy 6.2.3 – Outbuildings – Rural and Residential Areas
• The Environmental Protection (Noise) Regulations 1997 – Regulation 5 (2)(b)
VOTING REQUIREMENTS
Simple majority required.
STAFF RECOMMENDATION (1 of 4)
Moved Cr PM Morris Seconded Cr R Mitchell
That Council grant retrospective approval for seven outbuildings with an
aggregate floor area of 451m² at 49 (Lot 100) Douglas Road, Martin,
identified as Outbuildings A, B, C, F, G, J and K as contained in
Attachment A, subject to the following conditions:
1. A landscaping plan for the development site is to be submitted in accordance with the City’s development landscaping policy and approved by the City’s Technical Landscape Officer. The plan is to show how all outbuildings are to be screened from the view of Lot 101 Douglas Road. Such Landscaping is to be installed within 3 months of the date of this approval and maintained by the owner/occupier to the satisfaction of the City’s Landscape Technical Officer.

2. The submission of a lighting plan for the subject property, which is to be approved by the City’s Manager of Technical Services, prior to the issue of a Building Licence.

3. The approved outbuildings are not to be used for habitation, commercial or industrial purposes.

4. Stormwater drainage from the outbuildings is to be contained on site.

5. A Demolition Licence is to be obtained for the removal of the existing unauthorised outbuilding in the general location of Outbuilding D as contained in Attachment A to the satisfaction of the City’s Manager Building Services.

STAFF RECOMMENDATION (2 of 4)
Moved Cr PM Morris Seconded Cr R Mitchell That Council refuse to grant approval to the proposed outbuilding of
256m2 depicted in the location of Outbuilding D on the plan contained in Attachment A at 49 (Lot 100) Douglas Road, Martin and as submitted in revised plans received on 25 May 2009, for the following reasons:

1. The proposed floor area of 256m² would result in an aggregate outbuilding floor area on the property of 885m², which is considered to be excessive within the Special Rural zone.

2. The proposed outbuilding is proposed to be used for the keeping of birds, but has not been included within the noise assessment conducted on the property. Given that the proposed outbuilding is closer to the dwelling on the adjacent Lot 101 Douglas Road than the existing aviary, which has been identified as requiring relocation or remediation measures to reduce noise impacts, it is considered that the proposed outbuilding has potential to
adversely impact on the amenity of the neighbouring property

STAFF RECOMMENDATION (3 of 4)

Moved Cr PM Morris Seconded Cr R Mitchell

That Council refuse to grant retrospective approval to the 10m2 outbuilding identified as Outbuilding E on the plan contained in Attachment A at 49 (Lot 100) Douglas Road, Martin and require the following actions to be undertaken within 90 days:

1. Relocate the outbuilding to the north-western side of the subject property to the satisfaction of the Manager Planning Implementation.

2. The outbuilding to be reorientated so that only its enclosed sides are facing south.

3. The outbuilding is to be enclosed with Colorbond cladding on two sides and the roof.

4. The outbuilding is to be insulated to the satisfaction of the Manager Health Services.

STAFF RECOMMENDATION (4 of 4)

Moved Cr PM Morris Seconded Cr R Mitchell

That Council advise the applicant that a Building Application is to be lodged providing scaled drawings of each of the buildings for which retrospective planning approval has been granted and of the relocated Outbuilding E, to the satisfaction of the Manager Building Services.

Amendment
During debate Cr R Hoffman moved the following amendment to staff recommendation (4 of 4):

“That staff recommendation (4 of 4) be amended by inserting after the word “services” where it appears in the last line, the following:

“with such application to be lodged, along with the relevant application fees, with the City within 60 days of this meeting”.

Cr R Hoffman provided the following written reason for the proposed amendment:

“To provide clear guidance to the applicant as to when the application is to be lodged.”

Cr J Brown Seconded Cr R Hoffman’s proposed amendment.

The Mayor put Cr R Hoffman’s proposed amendment, which reads:

Moved Cr R Hoffman Seconded Cr J Brown

That staff recommendation (4 of 4) be amended by inserting after the word “services” where it appears in the last line, the following:

“with such application to be lodged, along with the relevant application fees, with the City within 60 days of this meeting”.

with the amended recommendation to read:

“That Council advise the applicant that a Building Application is to be lodged providing scaled drawings of each of the buildings for which retrospective planning approval has been granted and of the relocated Outbuilding E, to the satisfaction of the Manager Building Services, with such application to be lodged, along with the relevant application fees, with the City within 60 days of this meeting”.

CARRIED 10/0

FOR: Cr B Wiffen, Cr S Iwanyk, Cr J Brown, Cr R Hoffman, Cr C Fernandez,
Cr W Barrett, Cr P Morris, Cr T Brown, Cr R Mitchell, and Cr O Searle.

AGAINST: Nil.
The amendment was put and carried with the amendment becoming the substantive motion. The Mayor then put the substantive motion, which reads:

COUNCIL RESOLUTION
313 Moved Cr R Hoffman Seconded Cr J Brown

That Council advise the applicant that a Building Application is to be lodged providing scaled drawings of each of the buildings for which retrospective planning approval has been granted and of the relocated Outbuilding E, to the satisfaction of the Manager Building Services, with such application to be lodged, along with the relevant application fees, with the City within 60 days of this meeting.

CARRIED 10/0
FOR: Cr B Wiffen, Cr S Iwanyk, Cr J Brown, Cr R Hoffman, Cr C Fernandez,
Cr W Barrett, Cr P Morris, Cr T Brown, Cr R Mitchell, and Cr O Searle.
AGAINST: Nil.

Additional Motion

During debate Cr R Hoffman moved the following additional motion to the staff recommendations:

“That the number of birds housed on the property be limited to the extent that the noise generated does not exceed the Environmental Protection (noise abatement regulations).”

Cr R Hoffman provided the following reason for the motion:

“Key issue of concern is the noise generated from the keeping of these birds on the property”.

Cr B Wiffen seconded Cr R Hoffman’s additional motion.

The Mayor then put the staff recommendations which read:

STAFF RECOMMENDATION (1 of 4) AND COUNCIL RESOLUTION 314 Moved Cr PM Morris Seconded Cr R Mitchell

That Council grant retrospective approval for seven outbuildings with an aggregate floor area of 451m² at 49 (Lot 100) Douglas Road, Martin, identified as Outbuildings A, B, C, F, G, J and K as contained in Attachment A, subject to the following conditions:
1. A landscaping plan for the development site is to be submitted in accordance with the City’s development landscaping policy and approved by the City’s Technical Landscape Officer. The plan is to show how all outbuildings are to be screened from the view of Lot 101 Douglas Road. Such Landscaping is to be installed within 3 months of the date of this approval and maintained by the owner/occupier to the satisfaction of the City’s Landscape Technical Officer.

2. The submission of a lighting plan for the subject property, which is to be approved by the City’s Manager of Technical Services, prior to the issue of a Building Licence.

3. The approved outbuildings are not to be used for habitation, commercial or industrial purposes.

4. Stormwater drainage from the outbuildings is to be contained on site.

5. A Demolition Licence is to be obtained for the removal of the existing unauthorised outbuilding in the general location of Outbuilding D as contained in Attachment A to the satisfaction of the City’s Manager Building Services.

CARRIED 10/0
FOR: Cr B Wiffen, Cr S Iwanyk, Cr J Brown, Cr R Hoffman, Cr C Fernandez,
Cr W Barrett, Cr P Morris, Cr T Brown, Cr R Mitchell, and Cr O Searle.
AGAINST: Nil.
STAFF RECOMMENDATION (2 of 4) AND COUNCIL RESOLUTION 315 Moved Cr PM Morris Seconded Cr R Mitchell

That Council refuse to grant approval to the proposed outbuilding of 256m2 depicted in the location of Outbuilding D on the plan contained in Attachment A at 49 (Lot 100) Douglas Road, Martin and as submitted in revised plans received on 25 May 2009, for the following reasons:

3. The proposed floor area of 256m² would result in an aggregate outbuilding floor area on the property of 885m², which is considered to be excessive within the Special Rural zone.

4. The proposed outbuilding is proposed to be used for the keeping of birds, but has not been included within the noise assessment conducted on the property. Given that the proposed outbuilding is closer to the dwelling on the adjacent Lot 101 Douglas Road than the existing aviary, which has been identified as requiring relocation or remediation measures to reduce noise impacts, it is considered that the proposed outbuilding has potential to
adversely impact on the amenity of the neighbouring property

CARRIED 10/0

FOR: Cr B Wiffen, Cr S Iwanyk, Cr J Brown, Cr R Hoffman, Cr C Fernandez, Cr W Barrett, Cr P Morris, Cr T Brown, Cr R Mitchell, and Cr O Searle.
AGAINST: Nil.

STAFF RECOMMENDATION (3 of 4) AND COUNCIL RESOLUTION 316 Moved Cr PM Morris Seconded Cr R Mitchell

That Council refuse to grant retrospective approval to the 10m2 outbuilding identified as Outbuilding E on the plan contained in Attachment A at 49 (Lot 100) Douglas Road, Martin and require the following actions to be undertaken within 90 days:

1. Relocate the outbuilding to the north-western side of the subject property to the satisfaction of the Manager Planning Implementation.

2. The outbuilding to be reorientated so that only its enclosed sides are facing south.

3. The outbuilding is to be enclosed with Colorbond cladding on two sides and the roof.

4. The outbuilding is to be insulated to the satisfaction of the Manager Health Services.

CARRIED 10/0
FOR: Cr B Wiffen, Cr S Iwanyk, Cr J Brown, Cr R Hoffman, Cr C Fernandez, Cr W Barrett, Cr P Morris, Cr T Brown, Cr R Mitchell, and Cr O Searle.
AGAINST: Nil.
The Mayor then put Cr R Hoffman’s additional motion, which reads:

COUNCIL RESOLUTION
317 Moved Cr R Hoffman Seconded Cr B Wiffen
That the number of birds housed on the property be limited to the extent that the noise generated does not exceed the Environmental Protection (noise abatement regulations).

CARRIED 10/0
FOR: Cr B Wiffen, Cr S Iwanyk, Cr J Brown, Cr R Hoffman, Cr C Fernandez,
Cr W Barrett, Cr P Morris, Cr T Brown, Cr R Mitchell, and Cr O Searle.
AGAINST: Nil.
8:54 pm - Cr D Griffiths returned to the meeting.
The Mayor, upon the return of Cr D Griffiths to the meeting, advised that Council had endorsed the staff recommendations as contained in the Report.

8:55pm – Cr B Wiffen left the meeting.
8:56 pm - Cr B Wiffen returned to the meeting.

James Sinnamon

Mon, 2009-07-20 01:15

Very good questions, Tigerquoll. What kind of political leaders would deliberately set about to harm the interests of the current residents of this country in the way that this Government is? From the standpoint or our society as a whole anybody should be able can see that cramming ever more people into this continent cannot possibly be in its best interests. Clearly they have calculated that they, and that tiny minority whose interests they serve, stand to benefit from this. However, the cost to be paid by the rest of us must necessarily be huge and, in total, far in excess of what they can hope to gain, in total. As a means of transferring wealth from the poor to the rich, population growth is hugely wasteful and inefficient, because of the following factors: 1. each of us on average having a smaller share of the pie; 2. the growing inefficiencies of scale that are inevitable once populations have exceeded their optimum population size as Australia did a long time ago; 3. economic activity that is socially useless, but necessary for the growth lobby to prosper. Surely those of us who stand to lose would be better if we simply agreed to give them an equivalent amount outright? Of course such an agreement is unlikely to ever occur. For the growth lobby even to acknowledge this reality, would immediately make their malignant and parasitic relationship to the rest of us undeniable. However, should it prove impossible to stop the Growth Lobby, then when it eventually and inevitably becomes impossible to deny that population growth is harmful and was avoidable, then we must be resolved to make them pay, more than the rest of us, the price for what they are now doing. Why they should feel entitled to hold on to their ill-gotten wealth whilst the rest of us struggle to repair the damage they are now willingly causing to our environment, to our economy and to our society? For further information, see my article

James Sinnamon

Sun, 2009-07-19 19:14

Only earlier this year I heard Phillip Adams state that the second of the World Trade Centre (WTC) towers decided to collapse after the first collapsed on 9/11 , because it could not bear to stand there on its own. Whilst of course, Adams an avowed atheist and scientific sceptic, could not have been altogether serious in what he said, it is striking that he is only willing to discuss the collapse of Twin Towers in such mystical terms whilst refusing to consider the hard scientific evidence that the Twin Towers could not have been brought down merely as a consequence of the impacts of the planes and resultant fires. My misplaced trust in Phillip Adams' integrity and judgement caused me from the early 1990's to dismiss the evidence presented in Oliver Stone's monumental JFK, in spite of my having been immensely moved and persuaded by it at the time I saw it in 1991 . About roughly a year after I saw JFK, during an interview with a guest, whose name escapes me Adams put to his guest that Jim Garrison, who was featured in JFK and who heroically, to the end of his life, tried to bring the murderers of JFK to justice, was a fraud and that Oliver Stone had been duped by him. He never explained why to his audience, as far as I know, but as I trusted Adams, I came to the conclusion that I must have been duped in turn by Oliver Stone and for well over a decade discounted the valuable knowledge that Stone had made available about that critical event of late 20th century world history. Over the last two years as I have become aware that the official 9/11 story was a lie, I have also been made to look again at the JFK issue and have learnt that Stone and others, who questioned the JFK single-crazed-gunman myth, had been telling the truth all along. By smearing Jim Garrison and Oliver Stone in the way he did, I consider that Phillip Adams has, like Chomsky, done immense harm to the progressive causes he claims to support. Whether he did so intentionally or simply because he placed unwarranted trust in others not deserving of that trust, I cannot say. I include below two e-mails, I sent to Phillip Adams concerning this issue. He replied to neither. 1. E-mail sent 13 Oct 08 Hi Phillip, ... I note that you dismiss the (alternative as opposed to official US Government) 9/11 conspiracy theories as 'utter nonsense', 'bullshit' and 'nuts'.  (See ) As you cited Noam Chomsky's authority amongst others to justify that view, could you tell me also, do you share Chomsky's view that “it doesn’t have any significance” if it was indeed the Bush administration that planned the 9/11 attacks? ) If you agree with Chomksy, would you extend that view to the Reichstag fire of 1933?  If you had lived in Germany in the 1930's would you also have argued that “it doesn’t have any significance” whether or not Hitler was behind the Reichstag fire? The reason I ask is that you do wield enormous influence over a sizable section of Australian public opinion and it seems to me that, largely because of such influence, those demanding a proper investigation into the 9/11 attacks have been marginalised, at least up until now, in Australia. An example of your influence was your pronouncement of Jim Garrison as a fraud and Oliver Stone as his dupe some years ago.   I still don't know the basis of that allegation, however, up until that point I had found Oliver Stone's "JFK" to have been a very persuasive and moving film. Was it because Chomsky believes that Oswald acted alone in killing JFK that you dismissed Stone's movie, or where there other more substantive reasons? I note that Chomsky also stated that he doesn't believe it is of any great consequence it the lone gunman theory turns out not to be true.  Do you also agree that it is of no consequence? Also, could I have your permission to publish any response to this and other e-mails? Thank you. sincerely, James Sinnamon 2. E-mail sent 14 Oct 08 Dear Phillip Adams, Further to yesterday's e-mail concerning Oliver Stone's JFK, Canadian Journalist Barrie Zwicker author of "Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-up of 9/11", wrote to me the following of Oliver Stone's "JFK": "Olive Stone's JFK not only has not been comprehensively debunked, it has not been debunked in the slightest. The brilliant monologue of J. Fletcher Prouty (played by Donald Sutherland in the movie) has the whole DNA of Kennedy's assassination and who was behind it, in a couple of minutes. No one could read Garrison's book On The Trail of The Assassins (I can't recommend it too highly) and come away without admiration for Garrison, or solid belief in the whole story he tells (and tells so well) in that book." So, could I ask you again, why did you pronounce Jim Garrison to be a fraud all those years ago (some time in the mid to early 1990's), and why did you pronounce Oliver Stone to be a dupe of Jim Garrison?  Why did you choose in a subsequent program, as I recall, to liken Oliver Stone to gallstones? And, again, can I ask do you agree with Noam Chomsky that it is of no consequence whether or not senior US Government officials and legislators were complicit in JFK's murder? I would like, with your permission, to be able to publish your responses to this and other e-mails. yours sincerely, James Sinnamon
Tony Boys's picture

Tony Boys

Sun, 2009-07-19 11:45

Quite right Vivienne... Not only from the global warming perspective. The world has approximately 1.5 GHa of crop farmland. 1/3 is used for livestock feed and then some is used for biofuels and non-food crops. If we can feed 5 to 7.5 people on one hectare (not counting the animal-derived foods now) that's a world population of 5 to 7.5 billion. Since world population is now roughly 6.7 or 6.8 billion and we will likely reach 7.5 billion around 2020, we are either now in overshoot or will be in about 10 years' time, so it's time to start thinking about: 1) reducing livestock feed crop areas (reducing animal foods to what can be sustainably produced in other ways), 2) shifting to equitable distribution of food, 3) reducing world population growth to zero and then reducing the world population itself. While I'm about it, I'm adding a couple more inconvenient tasks, just to be a little more complete: 4) Halt deforestation and rehabilitate the forests, 5) Halt the destruction of farmland and rehabilitate the soil through 'organic' (permaculture, non-chemical, etc) soil husbandry techniques. This means the end of industrial agriculture and the industrialized food system (who needs it?). If all of humanity were really 'serious' about making meaningful inroads into GHG emissions, this is one large step we could take which would be beneficial for everyone (health, let's not even talk about making money by making others sick) and could be carried out in a way that would not even need to have very much of an effect on other aspects of our highly industrialized/materialistic lifestyles. However, if we were really 'serious' about reducing emissions of GHGs, wouldn't we be talking about major lifestyle change? I don't hear Al Gore and the other politician-experts ever mentioning that possibility. I wonder why not... Inconvenient tasks to go with the inconvenient truths. I saw a nice cartoon of a fat Al Gore munching a chicken leg. The caption was "Too chicken to go Vegetarian/Vegan?" Just about sums it up. Best wishes, Tony

Anonymous (not verified)

Sun, 2009-07-19 01:06

I have personally encountered resistance from Phillip Adams when it comes to looking at the issue of 9/11. Adams' claims he accepts the Official Conspiracy Theory and disparages those who question it. He does not seem to have any interest at all in the research that has been done over the last eight years. He likes to characterize all who doubt the official story as "conspiracy nutters" and he has no time for anyone who does not support the Official Conspiracy Theory. I see troubling signs here.

Vivienne (not verified)

Sat, 2009-07-18 15:16

If building of thousands homes on Melbourne's fringes will cost Victorians around $40 billion more than if they were built in existing suburbs, why is it being justified except for a grab at short term gains at the expense of long term sustainability? Eventually if we destroy the ecology that supports our livelihoods, and compromise and stretch natural our biodiversity "services" beyond the point of no return, costs of compensating and repairing will soar! There is no economic sense in utilising our green wedges, our coastlines, our semi-rural fringe areas for housing developments if our wealth depends on continual population growth. Peak oil, lack of water and food-miles means that "sustainable growth" is an oxymoron! Developing existing suburbs is not always desirable or feasible. There is not one problem our society can solve by adding more people! On the contrary, urban growth and the growth lobby's political power will ensure that we the public will continue to have our pockets raided to pay for the necessary infrastructure to satisfy the greed of the developers, the media, real estate and building industries. The cost of repairing Victoria's ultimate eco-destruction will be massive, and maybe impossible!

Sheila Newman

Sat, 2009-07-18 01:08

Hi Rob, Thanks for your polite and considered comments on a highly conflicted subject. There is an article on this site by John Auty - - which goes into the records of kangaroo numbers pre-European settlement and finds that the assertion that kangaroos are denser because there is more biomasse doesn't stand up. Then there is another, , which I wrote myself, citing data in a thesis by a 'kangaroo authority' Don Fletcher, which contradicts his own pronouncements on what is sustainable and looking at various other completely half-baked 'authorative' statements. It is quite astonishing really, how unanalytic and unscientific the basis for government policies is in this country.. Sheila N Sheila Newman, population sociologist

aime

Fri, 2009-07-17 16:50

Tigerquoll, you said ....."However, no information can be found about bushfire bunkers on the Bushfire CRC website. Perhaps there should be." I was informed by a gentleman that some time ago, someone then working for the CSIRO went on ABC radio and spoke about research into fire bunkers. Eg: What construction methods were most suitable, how far they should be built from the house (too far and you get lost in heavy smoke or die from exposure to radiant heat), that they should have a ramp into them rather than steps (less likelihood of a harmful fall) and which direction they should face in relation to other structures. Both this gentleman and myself searched vigorously the CSIRO site, but could find no mention of either the ABC radio story or any related research, although my friend is adamant he heard it there and at the time listened intently. I emailed the CSIRO asking for information about this matter and a reply stated only that "the CSIRO is currently not investigating fire bunkers." The thing they failed to mention is that they did at one time investigate fire bunkers. I had intended to reply and request information on the radio lecture and earlier research into the effectiveness if fire bunkers, but quickly realised that they'd probably deny such an investigation ever took place or of any knowledge of the radio show. Why would they do this? Possibly because if their findings were made known, people would use their research as a basis for building a fire bunker and if a tragedy occurred as a result of someone dying in one of these bunkers, then they may fear litigation. It's the only explanation I can come up with.

aime

Fri, 2009-07-17 16:04

Following the tragic February bush fires, I was desperate to build a fire bunker. It was a brief period of 'loss of logical thinking' since this home was originally built 16 years ago with the threat of fire in mind, even to the point of simple metal fire shutters for days of potential fire threat, slab, sprinklers, etc. Up until Feb this year, I knew little about the Victorian Native Vegetation Act and how it applied to my area until I rang my local council's planning department concerning another matter and was told in no uncertain terms that I was not allowed to cut or lop a single tree on my property without first putting in a planning application which would cost $99 (money grab) and if that application didn't involve a building, dam or other necessary improvement, then the application probably wouldn't be allowed if the only purpose was to remove native vegetation. In other words, I could wave goodbye to my $99 and remain surrounded by acres of miserable, stunted re-growth forest. I now fully agree with the above author concerning potential fire bunker money being better directed towards greater fire protection for the home, but am increasingly frustrated by the Victorian Government's unwillingness to consider applying the law to require a buffer zone (for those that want it) around their homes in bush settings. Now before anybody sees red over my comments and calls me an eco-vandal, let me point out that I love the bush. It's the appeal of the bush, the tranquillity and distance that brought me out here all those years ago, but there's bush and there's bush. Back in the 1800's and early 1900's, my area was barren of trees. What the old miners hadn't cut down, the local wood cutters had in their quest to keep local homes in the Ballarat and surrounding areas warm in winter. Natural gas and the widespread use of gas for heating didn't occur until the late 60's. Everything called a tree around here at present is the result of overwhelming regrowth. The Eucalypt has a cunning defence against other competing species. The rotting leaves of the Eucalypt release a 'poison' that effectively prevents many other species from encroaching on it's territory. It's why veggies gardens won't grow well near Eucalyptus. The regrowth is so prolific that the trees themselves compete for sunlight which results in acres of stunted and useless native vegetation that I refer to as "woody weeds." Were I allowed to thin them, many of those trees would grow to become majestic specimens, but sadly, under current legislation, they'll be left to struggle, fall and rot creating even more mess on the forest floor. Because of current drought conditions, these spindly trees compete with each other for water, which is lacking to the degree that the trees become stressed and dump tons of leaves and fine fuel around my home each year and as I get older, I struggle to clean up the massive amounts of debris that collects and find a place to dispose of it. As the author asks "Isn't it cheaper and better all round for specific funding to be provided to municipal councils to help less able householders put their properties in a safe state before summer?" The answer is yes, but wouldn't it be cheaper again to allow those occupying bush properties to thin the bush which in turn would allow landowners to better keep the area clean? The Government is only too willing to pander to the developers who open up these vast areas of bushland to housing estates, but they're not so willing to provide money to help clean up the debris around such areas. Money flows only one way where Governments are concerned and that includes local Government. Just over five months have passed since those terrible and devastating February fires. For many people living in large cities or well away from the affected areas, life has returned to normal. The loss of life at the time made newspaper selling headlines and glued horrified viewers to the small screen. Unfortunately, many non connected people who bought those newspapers or watched the horror each night on the television news week after tragic week have largely forgotten the plight of those left to pick up the pieces. If this sounds harsh, it's not meant as a condemnation. Life is life and for some who were not affected at a personal level, it quickly returns to the mundane. For those who suffered horrendous loss of life , pets, animals and property, my heart goes out to you. You'll never fully recover from that terrible and unimaginable ordeal. You've suffered the worst that could be imagined, yet there is another group of people who continue to suffer, albeit not as badly. It's those who continue to live in bush settings hoping in vein that someone in Government will have the foresight and common sense to revisit the Native Vegetation Act and change it so that those whom the fire missed this time don't have to face the devastation that occurred earlier this year when the next blast of hot summer wind breathes down their necks. My biggest fear is that this issue won't be address by the Royal Commission, or if it is, then it's recommendations will go the same way as have past Royal Commissions into loss of life during bush fire events. I'm not a praying person, but this is one time I pray that I'll be proven wrong.

Tigerquoll

Fri, 2009-07-17 16:00

Given the inherent risks of the Australian Eucalypt landscape, surely the concept 'Complete Bushfire Safety' can only be an ideal, less so when state planning legislation allows houses to be built in high bushfire prone areas, and at the same time that same state government under-resources its bushfire management. Bushfire Management should not descend to one of desperate wildfire fighting with inadequate resources. Any wonder, bush residents are considering personal last ditch defences. But is this last ditch focus where our prime bushfire management strategy and resources should go? Once we start focusing on bunkers, aren't we being defeatist by assuming that all the lead up causes of bushfire cannot be dealt with? Thinking outside the square is one problem solving approach. People that build in bushfire prone areas could always not. That would be thinking outside the square. But perhaps a better approach to protecting Victorians from the risks of bushfire (the problem defined) is the approach of Root Cause Analysis (RCA). This problem solving approach recognises that there is usually more than one potential root cause for any given problem. It looks at investigating the known causal relationships between the root causes and the defined problem. Significantly, RCA involves identifying which causes if removed or changed will prevent recurrence. Recommendations are implemented and tested. If bunkers are to be one of the recommendations, then the Victorian government ought to commission research to the organisation best qualified to research and evaluate the design options and merits of considering a bunker strategy. The CSIRO's Co-operative Research Centre [Bushfire CRC] is arguable the best placed. "Co-operative Research Centres (CRC) bring together researchers from universities, CSIRO and other government organisations, and private industry or public sector agencies in long-term collaborative arrangements that support research and development and education activities to achieve real outcomes of national economic and social significance." Under its Bushfire Research Fund, it undertakes research on bushfire research projects. However, no information can be found about bushfire bunkers on the . Perhaps there should be, but then what government would publicly guarantee any bunker in the event of a bushfire?

Tigerquoll

Fri, 2009-07-17 14:49

Rob's unsubtantiated comments above makes the following claims without evidence, so one must question their truth and validity: (Claim 1) 'There may be a looming problem with roo numbers' - where Rob? What is sparking any 'looming'? (Claim 2) 'The vast majority of roos are living on grazing country' - which grazing country Rob? Where were the roos before and here are they now..sme place except for having to contend with barbed wire fence skin tears? (Claim 3) 'Agricultural land management practices have modified the kangaroo's natural rangeland beyond what they evolved to cope with' - So what can kangaroos cope with? What does Rob mean by 'what they evolved to cope with'? Has Australia's unsustainable colonial farming modified or indeed fenced in the kangaroo's natural homerange? (Claim 4) 'There is a kangaroo population explosion' - Where is this so-called "explosion" Rob? Is this where Kangaroos have been fenced in to a confined area by barbed wire by our Defence Department - for example on Duntroon's Majura Range? What was the scale of these kangaroo's natural free home range prior to them being fence in? Facts Rob! Rob's above assertions are without foundation, source or evidence. Thus they are merel baseless, false assertions. Perhaps Rob has fabricated them from undisclosed ulterior self-motivation. Rob's inference that farming has caused Kangaroo numbers to explode must be rejected as absurd. Rob should consider the following qualified assessment of the plight of macroped reality across Australia: "has identified 83 species of macropods, of which nine have become extinct since European settlement and 28 are threatened. The main threats to macropods in Australia are habitat loss, altered fire regimes, introduced predators and now climate change. These are the main drivers of decline affecting many mammals in Australia and have resulted in this continent having the worst rate of mammal extinctions worldwide. "Macropods live in a variety of habitat types and, with European settlement, much of this land was cleared of native bush to accommodate agricultural and grazing land. Developing land for human needs reduces the amount of natural space available to wildlife. As natural space diminishes, so does habitat diversity - the great variety of forests, bushlands, grasslands, wetlands and deserts that exist in nature. The result is both a decline in the number of species and even fewer individuals of those populations survive." For Rob to draw his conclusion of a kangaroo population explosion caused by his above premises, is to make bold falsehoods and baseless circular argument. Perhaps Rob can provide evidence of a kangaroo population explosion where they are free to roam over a natural home range without any fences or modified habitat? As kangaroo native habitat is reduced to islands, those islands get crowded by the survivers. Do we then shoot the survivers because we have forced them into inescapable and desperate congestion. What is the definition of ethnic cleansing? What is the definition of genocide? Sounds like what the Sulhanese did to the Tamils in northeast Sri Lanka last May.

Anonymous (not verified)

Fri, 2009-07-17 10:40

As long as big business, including the corporate press, make so much money out of resource, housing and service scarcity, selling less for more, published arguments against high immigration will be a mere drop in the ocean compared to advertisements and stories promoting it, excusing it, or stigmatising people who complain about it. Democracy has become paralysed by profit motives and the result is a selfish plutocracy which controls the press and manufactures a false consent.

Vivienne (not verified)

Thu, 2009-07-16 20:33

Rob said: "However, now that the export market has collapsed, I believe there may be a looming problem with roo numbers". Why should there be a "problem" with roo numbers? The "improved" lands from grazing is about "improving" income, not the land! Kangaroos have lived and evolved in Australia for millions of years without causing damage or destruction. This "pest" status of kangaroos is being propagated by the industry and pseudo-scientists to justify the massacres. Their soft paws do not damage pasture, like livestock, and they have only a fraction of the grazing pressure of sheep! They help fertilise the soils with their urine and excrement, and they do not destroy grasslands when they eat. They should be left to do their job - protect our biodiversity and add value to our landscape. Farmers should be outlawed from shooting native animals that come on their property. They need to value kangaroos and their contribution to our ecology. If they really need to keep out the roos, they should install fences. Kangaroos are natural and well-refined indigenous Australians, not a looming threat!

James Sinnamon

Thu, 2009-07-16 16:45

Firstly, I thank Menkit for yet another thoughtful, informative and helpful article. Still, I am sceptical of some of the claims made in the article, however, as Menkit tells me that what is said by Masuru Emoto about the effects of human emotion upon water and other matter strongly conforms to her own personal experience, I feel bound to try for myself, with as open a mind as I can, the experiments suggested by Masaru Emoto in his video. Whatever the outcome of any experiments may be, the observations should be considered valid whether or not they conform to current scientific understanding or whether or not a theory to explain the observations can even be conceived. Nevertheless, until such experiments can be performed in circumstances that can be controlled and reproduced, it will be difficult to get the mainstream of today's scientists to accept the validity of Masaru Emoto's observations.

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