Mick Keogh from The Australian Farm Institute had a piece published in yesterday's Australian Financial Review titled 'Getting a balanced perspective on salinity'. It reiterated what some scientists have been saying since late last year, that they got it wrong with their salt predictions.
Keogh wrote:
Conduct an internet search using the terms "salinity" and "17 million hectares" and you can access almost 500 references explaining that Australia could have 17 million hectares of salinised land by the year 2050. Websites providing this information range from the ABC and the CSIRO, to Parliaments, the BBC, the Australian Academy of Sciences, major Australian and international media groups, educational organisations, environmental groups and even sites containing speeches by the Prime Minister and the Governor General.
With such an impressive list of organisations, anyone from school children through to senior policymakers could feel comfortable that the figure is credible, and represents an authoritative estimate of the potential scale of the dryland salinity problem in Australia.
Unfortunately, the comfort is ill-founded.Increasingly, researchers are concluding that many of the assumptions and much of the data used in generating this estimate were wrong, or should not have been used. There are suggestions, for example, that some State salinity assessments used to calculate the national estimate overstate the current extent of salinity by factors of between three and seven times, let alone the projected future extent. Several of the state reports had no reliable data to base estimates on, and many made assumptions about future groundwater levels
Sorry, I can't agree with your electoral boundary (gerrymander) solution, Neil. For that will merely invert the existing system where urban demographics define electorate sizes in the bush which are so geographically broad that the electors are effectively denied the access enjoyed by urban voters. The alternative, to use the rural footprint of community of interest, or some compromise of both, to define urban electorates would be equally inappropriate.
The average country community of interest is about 10,000 people while the average urban community is closer to the 40,000 currently found in each electorate. And to have each electorate the size of a country community would mean a parliament with 360 MP's which would have zero support.
The only conclusion to be drawn is that the generally accepted democratic standards cannot be delivered to both communities in the one system. The existing state is still working for the "city State" of SEQ but is clearly not working for the regions. Better to have one or two regional states with smaller electorates and a city state with the existing ones.
They couldn't do any worse than the one we have now.
So what would be agriculture's contribution to the Gross State Product?
Eighty-four percent of Queensland's population lives within one-hundred kilometres of Brisbane.
On a per-party basis, electoral maps reveal relative equivalence between Coalition and Labour seats, except for two insets; Brisbane North and Brisbane South, which upon closer scurtiny contain the state electorates of Ashgrove, Aspley, Brisbane Central, Clayfield, Everton, Ferny Grove, Indooroopilly, Kallangur, Kurwongbah, Moggill, Mount Coot-tha, Murrumba, Nudgee, Redcliffe, Sandgate, Stafford, Albert, Algester, Bulimba, Bundamba, Capalaba, Chatsworth, Cleveland, Greenslopes, Inala, Ipswich, Logan, Lytton, Mansfield, Mount Gravatt, Mount Ommaney, Redlands, South Brisbane, Springwood, Stretton, Waterford, Woodridge and Yeerongpilly.
Almost half of the state's population occupy these Brisbane electorates, which are so small in area they cannot be discerned without inset.
An unscrupulous government would furnish the interests of the metropolitant masses at the expense of rural well-being and in doing so achieve a de facto gerrimander.
Ethical government would apportion electoral boundaries on both a per capita basis and also land area, insofar as natural resources underpin the state's potential.
Is not the issue though one of vegetation management ? That's where salinity affects on-property decisions and becomes the issue in court in alledged illegal clearing.
What is a reasonable level of vegetation retention for a region to have? Should we clear regional ecosystems down to levels of extinction or endangered levels? How much control of land clearing should the state have?
If you do have limits - how do you regulate it? What do you do with people who flagrantly break vegetation related law (assuming you have any).
As much as Ian (and I believe genuinely) decribes the plight of landholders caught up in bureaucratic nightmares I have also heard it said that some corporates regard the fines as cost effective.
POSTED BY JEN FOR NEIL HEWITT WHO WAS DENIED ACCESS BECAUSE OF 'QUESTIONABLE CONTENT', I SUSPECT IT WAS BECAUSE HE PUT THREE DOTS IN A ROW
"Many rural Australians are in the firing line of environmental activism, bureaucracy and politics.
Conservation values predominate outside of urban environs and nature deficit yearns for environmentalism. If (particularly) middle Australia can't/won't get into nature then at least it can take comfort from participating in its protection.
I would very much like to participate in Ian's inquiry, but would argue against any strategy that sought to directly counter the overwhelming multitudes from urban constituencies.
The better approach would take the momentum of the urban environmentalism and steer it towards its objective in a manner the maximises returns and minimises costs for the people affected, that is the rural people in the environmental firing line.
Rather than opposing the action, rural Australia applauds the efforts of its urban communities with the stipulation that such activities are consistent with existing environmental policies and in particular the Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment 1992.
If Ian's inquiry could unite rural Australia in its demand for compliance with these already established policies, federal government would surely respond with a legislative mechanism that protected the rights and aspirations of rural landholders from urban-driven environmental over-enthusiasm.
At the very least such an approach would have a greater potential for success than the "the simple withdrawal of our existing positive contributions (that are completely taken for granted) will inflict some very serious ecological damage to the wider community.." which will only serve to demolish any shred of uncertainty on the part of the urban environmentalist. Neil Hewett"
POSTED BY JENNIFER FOR NEIL.
Phil,
A resignation or two, might help with confidence building.
Col Crighton oversaw the salinity audit, had a sort of CEO position, and Roy Green was the Chair of the National Land Water Resources Audit Advisory Council.
You tell me where the buck should stop?
Ian - I hear what you're saying.
It seems then there is no way back with current institutions or goverments. Therefore we have appear to have reached a crisis of confidence in vegetation management - which underpins policies in salinity, tree clearing, forestry, and catchment water resource management.
Can you see a path forward with another future administration(s) to improve the situation and to build a better contract between suburbia and the bush? Or are both sides of politics over some irretrievable threshold.
You all seem to assume that I was sponsoring unlawful retaliation. If you look back at what I said, it was to the effect that the farming community needs to develop its own consensus on the nature of the social contract that is being continually revised, not by agreement, but by the whim and fiat of the dominant urban elite.
This is not an attack on urban people per se. But those who remain silent in the face of injustice can rightfully be regarded as condoning injustice. I am often accused by supporters of Metrotyranny of being extreme or hysterical. But my views are very much in accord with my community of interest.
And there is no point shooting the messenger for making the point that these continual arbitrary revisions of the social contract are doing serious damage to the very fabric of Australian society. For example, I was with one gathering who expressed profound regret and anger at the pictures of ACT farmers being burnt out in 2003. But they all cheered when the footage of burned out Canberra bureaucrats houses were shown. They didn't get that way by substance abuse, cultish brainwashing or any underlying anti-social roots, they were all stable, active community builders who feel deeply betrayed. And justifiably so.
And I would like to ask Phil and Thinksy how an aggrieved farmers failure to dob in a firebug, especially if the fire gets rid of a burdensome forest that the community claims to control but will not look after, is any different to a persons failure to dob in a neighbour who has a few dope plants up near the boundary fence?
As a resident of the Byron Shire hinterland, and earlier 15 years in inner city Sydney, I have lost count of the number of times I have declined to report that sort of crime. And interestingly, there have been cases where a local farmer has spent years ignoring the drug crimes of neighbours but those very same neighbours dobbed him in the first time he took out a tree without a permit.
So what is the test of "reasonableness" here? And what is the test of lawful obligation? Is reasonableness a concept that is only defined by the urban majority? Or is this a sleazy old double standard for a targeted minority?
You see, I don't know what sequence of injustice and persecution would tip me over the edge to torch the Lamington Plateau. And the last thing I want to do is to find out. But only a few months ago we saw a farmer who was hounded by DNRM to the point where the only way for him to protect the value of his kids inheritance was suicide.
And that level of persecution is only possible when the subject has been completely demonised in the eyes of the tormenters. And this is where all the exaggerations, the extrapolations to extremes and the self serving departmental spin leads to.
The first step forward, without which no other steps are possible, is a very public apology from all the people who have taken part in this salinity defamation.
Lets have a public apology from the Wentworth Group of boorishly ignorant sleazbags. Lets have a public retraction of their letter to Beattie that claimed that ANY clearing will exacerbate salinity.
Lets have a public apology (followed by resignation) from the entire senior executive of the Murray Darling Basin Commission for obtaining a massive funding benefit by deception.
Lets have a public apology from all the Phillip Toynes, the Wendy Craiks and all the other professional staff who were paid very good salaries by farmers organisations for their assumed capacity to distinguish between unsubstantiated opinion and fact.
And lets have the resignations of all the DNRM and EPA spivs who deliberately censored information on salinity to maximise their unjustifiable corporate objectives. They obtained a power or priveledge over land by deception.
And lets get this clear, we have had an occupational class (public sector science) with high levels of educational, income, communication and socio-political advantage who have singled out an occupational class (farmers)with high levels of educational, income, communication and socio-political disadvantage for a campaign of villification for personal gain. Make you real proud to be Australian, does it?
But, please, forget another apology from Beattie. No-one would believe a word he says anymore and the last thing we need is him trying to fix anything.
Some thoughts:
When Helen writes "community demands for conservation regulation", well some of this demand has been driven by:
1. Campaigning after solutions were put in place to solve the problem i.e. salinity and the Murray River,
2.Is based on a mythical problem i.e. water quality and the great barrier reef (here the problem was in the catchments, but the reef represented an icon and was better for campaign purposes, see http://www.ipa.org.au/files/wwftext.htm )
3. While other community concerns are real and not being addressed, i.e. need for better management of rangelands and protection of northern hairy noses wombat.
At the moment there are so many myths, it is difficult to get to the real environmental issues and because the 'community' have limited understanding of the true magnitude of the problem they think use of the term property rights is just an excuse for business as usual?
Phil,
You are asking the wrong questions again. You seem to pre-suppose an exploitive mentality on my part.
Governments have always legislated to control the activities of individuals on the justification of wider public interest.
Right across Australia Governments have used a cute method to meet the community demands for conservation regulation, while shifting the cost of those demands onto landowners. Causing huge social and economic injustices, and growing resentment. That is not good for the future of conservation.
I believe that the way to move towards fairer conservation laws, better conservation outcomes and happier front line troops, is to address the issue of secure property rights. And just what, on the bottom line, constitutes security. But this is really an issue for another post.
Ian,
Some of the points you raised merit further comment.
We are all obliged to abide by the law. But none of us are obliged to do a tap more than the minimum needed to meet our statutory obligations.
It is any person's right to withdraw their voluntary services. Across the board, or selectively.
Helen Mahar