Sean gotcha there Tiger ol boy!
Editorial comment: This comment seems pointless. In general, I would prefer that people add comments that shed light on the topic at hand and avoid making comments which are merely to cheer on one side of the argument or 'boo' the other side. - JS
Comments
Distorted and biased reporting - where's the balance?
The man "attacked" by a kangaroo while trying to rescue his dog from a dam at Arthurs Creek, Victoria, sounds like distorted and biased reporting. Dogs are a danger to kangaroos, and the "attack" was more likely to be from the dog! The kangaroo was probably fighting for its life from two predators and tried to escape to the dam. Trying to drown the dog would have been an act of self-defence. Kangaroos are not normally aggressive animals. However, they have the right to defend themselves when startled or threatened, as this one evidently was. The man's wounds were only minor. The "attack" from the kangaroo should be revised as a case of a kangaroo, for once, having the upper hand and not being the submissive "pest" that the media usually report them as being. The dog should have been constrained in wildlife territory. Let's get some balance in these reports.
Greens Leader
Sorry Sheila, but I would have thought that given the fact CDB praises the likes of Lee R, and her stance on drugs was "let's go after the big guys" That this was relevant to her integrity. I don't think 8 kilos is for personal use.
It wasn't "news" it was FACT.
Environmentalists belittle our technological achievement
Sean is being labled for the the same kind of responses that you adhere to. As an observer (objectively) of these topics it's clear that someone who puts across a logical argument contrary to CBD bloggers is shot at dawn for such. As far as I'm concerned his comments are positive and that gives more hope than the doom and gloom that you and Shelia come up with.
Why make fun of space advances, only 20 years before man landed on the moon that was considered a big joke.
(Sean is engaging in fallacious argument with irrelevant gibberish, poetic language and answering with more questions. Sean digresses into irrelevancies like "empiricism" and rhetorical questions like "Tigerquoll, why do you hate humanity so much?")
This is exactly your style Tiger!
Bit less paranoia and hipocrisy from CBD Please.
Australia's fragile soils would benefit from more soil science
Agronomy and soil science are vital related fields of knowledge that Australia, with its typically poor and fragile natural soils, could well benefit more from, if it is not too late.
Perpetuating traditional farming and native vegetation clearing is continuing to downgrade Australia's soils, flora, fauna and ecosystems, converting marginal woodlands irreversibly into saline deserts.
Basic principles of soil science include soil physiology, soil formation processes, soil texture & structure, soil organic matter, soil chemistry, soil acidification, salinity, erosion, subsoil fertility, soil water management and soil management & conservation.
The reasons the Murray-Darling Depression bioregion has become an environmental basket case is due to colonial exploitation involving excessive deforestation, water rediversion, irrigation, and top soil mismanagement. A better understanding of the supply-water potential and drainage potential of soils is critical particularly in oils of relatively low organic matter content typical of much of inland Australia including the Murray-Darling.
We cannot afford to allow traditional farming practices to prevail. Widespread damage to Australia's soils causing acidification, salinity and erosion has underscored the viability of our remnant flora and fauna and ecosystems.
A key conflict to be resolved is the low phosphorus characteristics of Australia's native soils with which our native flora has evolved over millenia, yet the dependancy of traditional cropping on high phosphorus levels. Soil acidity is the worst environmental problem affecting Australian soils. According to the NSW Department of Primary Industries soil acidification is caused mainly by alkaline crops like lucerne being extracted from farms and excessive use of nitrogenous fertilisers (superphosphates) mainly sold to farmers in Australia by Incitec Pivot and the build up in organic matter by livestock.
A decade ago, Dr John Williams, the then Deputy Chief of CSIRO Land & Water, reported in a CSIRO media release entitled 'THE ANSWER REALLY DOES LIE IN THE SOIL' (1998):
"The greatest problem facing Australia’s soils is structural decline, leading to falling agricultural productivity. The bottom line is that it is very clear there has been significant damage to the nation’s soil resource, due mainly to farming, forestry, horticulture and other forms of development."
The next greatest threat is acidification of soils, a problem both insidious and very widespread. For this there is, as yet, no Australian farming system which can significantly slow the rate we are acidifying our soils. Land cleared of native vegetation tends to go acid at a rate of about one pH point every 35 years. In under a century some soils will become too acid for crops to grow."
"Put it all together and we see continued risk of damage to one of the world’s poorer soil resources – at the same time as there is great pressure on farmers to increase productivity."
And that was reported by Australia's leading science organisation over ten years ago. Wake up Australia!
Sean's sci-fi paranoia does little to legitimise the CEC
This article started off critiquing the Citizens Electoral Council (CEC), while acknowledging it "has a lot of worthwhile ideas", concerns are raised about the CEC's "refusal to recognise the global ecological crisis and the problem of overpopulation."
So returning to these two subjects, which are very relevant now in Federal politics:
Subject 1. Overpopulation
Sean from CEC claims "there is no overpopulation problem" and that "Humankind's future is to colonise the solar system and, indeed, the wider galaxy."
Well if the current world population of 6.798 billion is beneficial to humanity and the planet, why are people starving, why is there scarcity in food, water, energy and in public services, why are so many problems stemming from human population like deforestation?
Sean seems somewhat loonier than CEC's 13th item in its 'Fighting Platform': to "Encourage "generous immigration quotas, for the same reason which the Labor Party welcomed the "new Australians" after World War II—to help build our nation." CEC seems to be stuck in a post-WWII era, while Sean is off into the distant future claiming: "Humans can, and it's our tendency to do so, by *improving* and building on the earth, on other planets and through space." and "We need to develop science and industry so that we can begin to colonise space."
Yeah sure Sean, along with Star Trek and the Daleks!
Sean is engaging in fallacious argument with irrelevant gibberish, poetic language and answering with more questions. Sean digresses into irrelevancies like "empiricism" and rhetorical questions like "Tigerquoll, why do you hate humanity so much?"
I question the relevance of Sean's penchant for finger pointing to the cause of the world's problems lying with an apparent "financial oligarchy". Sean's unsubstantiated statements like "the environmentalist mindset is a creation of the oligarchy" and "perhaps the likes of large oil, mining, pharmaceutical, banking and media companies are promoting environmentalism and sustainability because they're tools of, and intertwined with, the oligarchy" reveals a delusional paranoia. Where is this omnipresent oligarchy?
Believe it or not Sean, Australia is a participative multi-party democracy, not rule by a few. Look up the definition! Fiji is probably our closest oligarchy at present ruled by militarist Frank Bainimarama. Such blatant errors of fact and cliche thinking are not helping CEC's cause to be taken seriously and spread its influence.
Subject 2. Global Ecological Crisis
Why Sean is the world engaging in the United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009 next month if there is no global ecological crisis? Perhaps our Sean is shy about presenting any evidence to support his view. Perhaps Sean cannot explain away the sobering climate facts outlined on the website Copenhagen Conference
Perhaps Sean is happy in Sean's world - a make believe sci-fi universe where humans take over the universe like Daleks. Sean should get out more, put the Dr Who DVD's back in the cupboard, go and visit the Murray Darling, the starving millions in Africa, visit mass population in Jakarta, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Calcutta, Beijing, tune into the Copenhagen summit. Sean would do well for the debate and himself to read up on relevant and important topics like 'carrying capacity', 'global human impact on biodiversity', 'environmental management', 'management of human consumption', 'nature as an economic externality' and 'social justice'. Good meaty topics these. Much better reading than 'oligarchs'.
Perhaps Sean's world view has him 'locked up' in the 18th Century industrialisation mindset in the linen mills. I dare Sean to step into 2009 and read a bit on climate change, overpopulation, triple bottom line and about corporate sustainability:
"Corporate sustainability encompasses strategies and practices that aim to meet the needs of stakeholders today while seeking to protect, support and enhance the human and natural resources that will be needed in the future. Business and industry has a crucial role to play in helping Australia to become more sustainable and competitive. As a result, many Australian organisations and industries are responding by reducing their environmental impacts and risks through improved environmental management practices and efficient use of natural resources."
Prime Minister Rudd in a speech earlier this month said of the climate change deniers:
" They are a minority. They are powerful. And invariably they are driven by vested interests. Powerful enough to so far block domestic legislation in Australia, powerful enough to so far slow down the passage of legislation through the Congress of the United States. And ultimately, by limiting the ambition of national climate change commitments, they are powerful enough to threaten a deal on global climate change both in Copenhagen and beyond."
Perhaps Sean's extreme views are based on vested interests. Perhaps he is one of those who phoned Federal Liberal MPs to lobby them to support climate change deniers and reject supporting the Government ETS. These loonies are indeed powerful. Look at the schism they have caused.
Reply to 'Well done'
The only comments we don't post are abusive ones or comments, such as 'news' about politicians relatives, designed to cause harm. If your comments were relevant and not abusive or damaging gossip, then please repost.
We have published Sean's comments because they need to be exposed and answered.
After they have been exposed and answered I would not be inclined to keep publishing them, but other CDB people with editorial permissions may feel differently.
So, you see, we do not censor valid comment.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
Copyright to the author. Please contact sheila [AT] candobetter org or the editor if you wish to make substantial reproduction or republish.
Well done
Well done Sean!
About time someone exposed the flawed thinking of the CDB team.
They don't like to post comments contrary to their way of thinking, I have had several not posted.
So much for their slogan (stop internet censorship).
Please stop being anthropocentric and get the big picture
Science won't increase our carrying capacity. "Resources" is a word to label things that already existed but have been "discovered" by people as being usable. The bottom line in not language or science, but the planet we have been provided with. Humans do not create resources, but discover ways of using what is existing. Resources can be consumed and expire. They are finite.
Our small planet Earth does NOT revolve around humans, or exist specifically FOR us! Our planet is finite and so is its ecosystems and the living and non-living things that it supports. We use and manipulate them, not actually "create" them! Sean, you are not being objective but totally anthropocentric, a common human error!
The world is hardly underpopulated! We can't have people wall-to-wall. What about the habitat of other non-human creatures, what about land that is uninhabitable, or too rich and too vital in biodiversity to destroy, such as the diminishing rainforests?
Other societies and civilisation have disintegrated by human destructive traits, and you are being naive and foolish if you think that today, because of science and technology, we are protected. I suggest think again about our planet, human history, and get the BIG PICTURE!
ABC misrepresentation of the truth and incitement
Bevans that sic their dogs on to wildlife are bad enough.
With a dog named 'Rocky' one can guess the breed was not quite a Maltese or Pug. In this case, the likely bull terrier/bull mastiff cross and the Bevan seemed to have got what they deserved. Don't go swimming in the Daly River either, especially dogs!
But worse is the misreporting of the facts by the ABC and the incitement of public antagonism toward kangaroos, as if kangaroos aren't already copping the raw end of the stick from industrial poaching.
One has to question the motive of the ABC editor's wording the title of the article "Kangaroo tries to drown dog, attacks owner".
One has to also question the misleading and sensationalised opening sentence implying from the outset an unprovoked attack by a kangaroo on a man and his pet dog, which in fact is later revealed in the story being entirely the converse. Did the editor seek sensationalism?
The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance Code of Ethics - recommends journalists "report and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts. Do not suppress relevant available facts, or give distorting emphasis. Do your utmost to give a fair opportunity for reply."
Of course kangaroos can't reply. Perhaps the ABC thought this more entertainment than news?
If anyone challenges a media organisation for breaching the code, complaining to the Judiciary Committee of the MEAA will involve a panel of five journalists hearing the complaint. A case of industry looking after its own.
As for ABC Editorial Policies, clause 11.4.7 states "violent events should never be sensationalised or presented for their own sake. A balance needs to be struck between the inherent strength of the images and proper detachment."
One for Media Watch perhaps?
Reply supporting "There is no overpopulation problem"
Vivienne, I do not think that you understand what science is. Referring to Galileo is not to refer to science but, rather, to empiricism. No original scientific discovery, in the sense of the discovery of a universal scientific principle, came out of an empiricist mindset. You ought to read a bit of Kepler and Leibniz.
Vivienne says, "By some divine or magical formula, or natural superior human status, we are protected from over consuming our natural resources". This is interesting because when we ask the question what a resource is, we find that there is nothing but a discovery by a human being at the bottom of it. Humans create resources. Therefore, by definition, we only run out of resources when we stop thinking. We have an abundance of uranium and thorium, but have hardly begun to use either. Next, we may shortly have thermonuclear fusion, and would have had it long ago if the naysayers hadn't cut funding to fusion research.
Oil and gas were not "resources" 3000 years ago, because civilisation had not developed to the stage where humanity knew how to use them. We have now moved beyond fossil fuels as energy sources, and are now well into the nuclear age.
Where are the "environmental vandalism and corruption" that the anti-industrial crowd like to crow about? True, the underdevelopment of the continent of Australia and of Africa are vandalism. Leaving deserts as useless masses of land, locking up huge swathes of land as "conservation parks" - that is vandalism. Developing continents with high-speed rail, nuclear power, water projects, agriculture and industry - that is to improve the land. To leave the Moon and Mars barren - that is vandalism. To develop those bodies so that they are fit for human habitation and industrialisation - that is development and progress. And to colonise beyond the solar system - that is our aim and destiny. No amount of backpedalling and pessimism by environmentalists can change the destiny and purpose of the human race.
Vivienne says, "It doesn't matter that the arithmetic of feeding the world doesn't add up, or that the changes to our planet mean devastation and extinction to non-human creatures, but if it propagates more of the human species, these losses are justified!"
You're quoting Parson Thomas Malthus, who was wrong. We can feed the world many times over. Your hatred of technology is what causes people to have to go hungry. If we develop infrastructure and agricultural potential (e.g. through desert-greening) around the world, then the world will not able be able to easily support the currently population, but twice as many people. Consider the Green Revolution of India which turned India from a nation reliant on handouts to a net exporter of food. The continents of Asia and Africa today now desperately need another Agricultural Green Revolution.
Every man, woman and child alive today, if in the state of Texas USA, could have 1000 square feet of their own. The world ain't overpopulated, it's underpopulated.
Vivienne takes exception to the view that, "Our natural and finite resources will somehow keep expanding". When you understand what a resource is, then you will understand that there is nothing either natural or finite about them.
How do "the changes to our planet mean devastation and extinction to non-human creatures"? No-one wants to extinguish species of animals, nor is that necessary. Developing the continental landmasses of the earth will make it possible for non-human creatures to flourish. However, it is absurd to say that a human being is not higher and more important than the animals, fish and birds. The beasts cannot create, they cannot discover, they cannot even increase the population-carrying capacity of any given area of land. Humans can, and it's our tendency to do so, by *improving* and building on the earth, on other planets and through space.
Vivienne complains that "Darwinism and environmental science are conveniently ignored". I hope they are, because they're largely fraudulent. Darwinism is riddled with contradictions and is certainly not worthy of the label "science". Environmental science is largely merely sophistry designed to further the political objective of depopulation of the earth. Darwinism and environmental science are basically Fabian ideas that serve the oligarchy, and that were created for that purpose. The Fabians came out of the Fellowship of the New Life which was created in service of the oligarchy. The Fabians are major political proponents of these oligarchical ideas even today, including the transparent fraud of anthropogenic climate change.
Vivienne suggests that "We need science to objectively and independently assess our carrying capacity." This is circular. Science increases the population-carrying capacity of the earth. Science is not a method of accounting nor is statistics any kind of science. Science is the discovery of new universal physical principles which can then be used for the benefit (including increasing the potential relative population density) of nations' land areas. Read LaRouche's book "So, You Wish to Learn All About Economics?"
Steve asks, "What is the advantage to unsustainable population growth?" He does not see the internal contradiction in the phrase "unsustainable population growth". How can something that is natural and inevitable be unsustainable? In any case, the earth is not our only home. There are many other habitable planets and bodies out there beyond the earth. We need to develop science and industry so that we can begin to colonise space. Where is the limitation or the "un"sustainability?
Steve asks, "Sean, do you have a vested interest in more people?" Amazing question really. We all benefit from what's good for humanity. Do you think that I'm in the burger-selling trade and so just want more customers to be born whom I can fleece?
Tigerquoll says, "May be anthropologists could argue that early Neolithic Man scattered in subsistence tribes hunter gathering could have reasonably justified their "right to be here". Bu then vasts flourishing forests and savannahs rich in food and biodiversity existed."
The CEC is promoting projects that would turn Australia's deserts into flourishing forests and rich, pulsating agro-industrial centres of intelligence, culture and productivity. What is it about such a proposal that annoys you? Do you want Australia to remain a quarry pit for the financial oligarchy?
Tigerquoll says, "Neolothic man lived more in harmony with nature, taking only what he needed to survive." Relatively undeveloped cultures tend to only be *able* to do this. More advanced cultures extend, build and improve on what nature has provided. How? By discovering new scientific principles and then using those discoveries to extend human capabilities. Right now, we are on the verge of being able to replicate, in a controlled way, the nuclear reactions that occur in the very Sun itself, for the benefit of humankind by providing high energy flux density sources for transport, infrastructure construction, and interplanetary travel.
You need to understand that your mindset that is essentially hostile to human development is not natural but has been imposed upon you by a kind of cultural brainwashing that is particularly pervasive in Australia.
Tigerquoll reveals all by saying, "Gaia is the host of humanity and all living organisms." This is nothing but pantheism. Vivienne objects to a supposedly Medieval view of Man that gives importance to humanity in the overall scheme of the universe, while Tigerquoll wants to return to a pantheism that is representative of the most primitive, undeveloped cultures that had no appreciation for scientific discovery. So views held in Medieval times are unacceptable, while views held even by cultures that did change nor developed any technology for thousands of years are acceptable.
In any case, the philosophy I'm attempting to give support to is not Medieval in the usual pejorative sense of the word Medieval. Yes, in Medieval times there were enlightened thinkers and benighted ones. Today, we have the same. I suggest again that you read some of Kepler and Leibniz' work. You might get something out of it.
Tigerquoll says, "When a parasite grows into a pathogen, what is the value of a pathogens 'right to be here'?"
Okay, so Tigerquoll is saying that humanity is a parasite-cum-pathogen. Brazen words my friend. This view could pretty much be described as *a* definition of evil. Tigerquoll then says, "Any species with a population of 6.798 billion and accelerating has in anyone's language evolved into a pathogen." Not in any human language. Tigerquoll, why do you hate humanity so much?
Humanity has the capacity to improve the planet and the universe, through our scientific creativity. Any species with a population of 6.798 billion and accelerating can only be beneficial, because that species has shown by its ability to increase its own potential (and actual) population density that it can discover and implement new scientific principles. So that species is on a par with the force/entity/Creator that created the universe. You see, cockroaches could never increase their population ad infinitum, because they cannot create new resources because they cannot discover new scientific principles. Cockroaches could never get past the earth’s atmosphere to colonise space.
Tigerquoll complains that, "Sean evangelises: 'humans are the highest and best force for change on this planet and beyond.' Such a statement comes across as meglomania seeking world domination." The problem with this complaint of Tigerquoll's is that a megalomaniac seeks to dominate other human being and perhaps the entire human race, and that is precisely what Tigerquoll's *own* dicta are seeking to achieve. By Tigerquoll seeking to suppress the true creative nature and tendency of humanity, he is working towards *precisely* the same goal as the oligarchy and the goals of those who promote clearly fascist ideas. I use the term "fascist" in the technically political sense and not as a random pejorative.
I have been to several of the "overpopulated" cities Tigerquoll mentions. To respond, I need only repeat, "There is no overpopulation problem, there is an undertechnologisation and de-industrialisation problem."
Tigerquoll's own stance is more apt for the Dalek "exterminate" metaphor, for it is Tigerquoll’s stance that is stridently in favour of curbing human population.
Let us reflect on, "For Sean to advance the notion that continued acceleration of human population is a good thing, perhaps he should reflect on to whom is it good?" Having reflected as you've suggested, I can respond that it is good for humanity as a whole. Because by doing the things that we need to do to support and promote an increased population (science, infrastructure, industry, space colonisation) we are enabling and promoting the fulfilment of the purpose of every individual human being.
Tigerquoll then goes down the "Sean is a profit maniac" route. He or she says, "Hey, developers like the numbers - more demand for construction. Local governments like the numbers - more ratepayers. Federal governments like the numbers - more demand for goods and services which make their GDP look good and their polls."
Why is it that many large corporations and most local councils are now promoting environmentalism, sustainability and even population reduction?
Tigerquoll suggests, "Perhaps Sean is employed in one of these industries that has something to gain from the Citizens Electoral Council of Australia (CECA)."
And perhaps not. And perhaps the likes of large oil, mining, pharmaceutical, banking and media companies are promoting environmentalism and sustainability because they're tools of, and intertwined with, the oligarchy.
Tigerquoll - if you don't want industry, manufacturing and space colonisation, what do you want? Do you want banking, finance and other "services"? These are certainly what the oligarchy likes and prefers over manufacturing, infrastructure construction, and scientific and industrial endeavour.
Tigerquoll goes on to list items in the CEC's fighting platform and says, "But on this issue, but with item 13 above to suggest a return to post-WWII 'generous immigration quotas' is to ignore Australia's already overstretched burdens and stresses of population on existing resources, communities, State governments and the natural environment." Well, we've addressed the nonsense of these ideas. Of course, if you're lazy and don't want to build or develop the nation, of course then you'll have burdens and stresses in your society, and your population will inevitably decline. You see Tigerquoll, environmentalists generally just don't want to improve things, they don't want to build, to produce, to create new infrastructure for transport, water and power, they just want to cut cut cut, including the population of humanity.
Tigerquoll do you want to return the planet earth to a "pristine" wilderness on which a few oligarchs can control a small, benighted and superstitious population which will live and breathe as nothing but the slaves of the oligarchy? Nothing in your own "platform" suggests otherwise. It's a pity.
Tigerquoll suggests, "But Sean seems to convey more extremist motives." Between the genocidalist anti-human anti-science brigade and the CEC, it is pretty clear who the extremists are.
Kangaroo "attack"
The human "victim" was interviewed on the local ABC radio. He said that his dog started harassing the kangaroo who eventually got up and headed for the dam. The dog followed the kangaroo into the dam and the man then got into the picture trying to save his dog. From the point of view of the kangaroo- all he was doing was defending himself from 2 attackers!!
Had the man any brains or had he trained his dog- he would have ordered the dog away from the kangaroo immediately the dog stared interfering with him.
The kangaroo's behaviour sounded quite reasonable and the behaviour of the man - stupid, irresponsible and inflammatory of the situation...even given the fact that the kangaroo was never going to testify anywhere against the man. Long live the kangaroo!
Let's hope the pork industry is squirming from this exposure
Already we have faced the threat of swine flu, initiated by the inhumane cruelty and unnatural crowding of pigs in small confined spaces. Factory farming means the massive cruelty of confining sows in metal crates for up to 4 months and then not allowing them to interact with their young is incomprehensible. The suffering of these intelligent and sensitive social animals must be enormous. Piglets are allowed, "legally", to be de-teethed and de-tailed without pain relief. Male piglets can be castrated without anesthetics. This treatment would cause an outcry if it was allowed on companion animals!
Producers are protected from RSPCA prosecution because of the Codes of Practice, codes that permit cruelty. How do these practitioners ignore the screams of the writhing pigs if they are mutilated while fully conscious? How do the vets allow this? Profits are the bottom-line in our livestock industries, and they rely on public ignorance and callousness.
Let's hope the pork industry is squirming uncomfortably from the exposure of piggeries!
What is clearly "legal" is not necessarily moral, ethical or sustainable. The best way to avoid this cruelty to pigs is not through the self-regulating industry, evidently, but for the public not to buy into it.
Criminalising barking
The owners of dogs which inflict distress by barking are certainly committing much more than a nuisance, and if the victims of this invasive noise can stop a moment to consider what is happening to them they will quickly admit they do indeed feel assaulted by the din.
There are solid reasons for the criminalisation of barking and this article from http://quietas.net/Page15.html shows why ...
Extract from the
QUEENSLAND CRIMINAL CODE
Act No 37 0f 1995
Division 2—Assault generally
What is an “assault”
113 (1) A person assaults anyone if, without the other person’s
consent—
(a) the person applies force to the other person; or
(b) the person—
(i) by a bodily act or gesture, attempts or threatens to apply
force to the other person; and
(ii) is able, or appears to be able, to apply the force.
(2) A person applies force to anyone if the person, directly or
indirectly—
(a) strikes, touches or moves the other person; or
(b) applies heat, light, electrical or other energy, gas or odour to the
other person to a degree that causes the other person injury or
(c) applies force in any other way to the other person.
---o0o---
We ordinarily regard assault in purely physical terms such as defined in (2) (a) but (2) (b) offers cause
for us to consider barking as an assault and to require the enforcement authorities to process it that
way.
Heat and light are electromagnetic radiations capable of transferring energy through space. The
energy content is measurable. The most common example of this energy transference is sunshine
and it is sufficiently forceful enough to propel spaceships. There is no physical contact whatever
between the sun, as the source of this energy, and humans as its recipients.
In a comparable manner but using an entirely different transmission medium, our earthly atmosphere
is the conductive mechanism for the transmission of cyclic air pressure variations which, when
audible, we call sound. This energy is also measurable and has forceful potential. Once again, there
is no physical contact between the source of sound and the recipient.
In both cases when there is a recipient, energy is transmitted from one place to another by sinusoidal
vibrations. The energy has no effect until it arrives somewhere and is absorbed and converted. With
heat and light the vibrations are purely electromagnetic and with sound they are purely atmospheric.
In both cases the physics behind this transmission of energy are comparable.
In section (2) (b) both heat and light, with no physical contact whatsoever, are defined as potentially
assaultive. It follows that sound must be treated the same way. Noise is defined as any unwanted
sound. All noise is therefore potentially assaultive according to these Division 2 definitions.
Reinforcing this deduction we have in (2) (b) is the usage of the phrase “ .. other energy .. ” where
sound is also forceful, and when it is received, as per s 113 (1) without the recipient's consent,
constitutes assault.
Consolidating the definition of noise as potentially assaultive is the terminology of s113 (2) (c) which
effectively outlaws the intentional application of unwanted force using any method at all.
Summary:
Unwanted noise is assaultive. Barking, when it disturbs or distresses a person, is unwanted noise.
Barking is therefore assaultive.
---o0o---
Late note, 25 Nov 09: A lawyer at Tasmania's Legal Aid Commission, having consulted with her colleagues, declared that those committing barking offences ARE committing crimes.
I'm not sure, but it seems that if an enforcement agency can bring a prosecution against an offender then the matter is a criminal matter.
The guidance of those who know the legal facts would be welcome ...
Peter Bright
www.pebri.net
Don't buy into animal cruelty
What is clearly "legal" is not necessarily moral, ethical or sustainable. Already we have faced swine flu, initiated by the inhumane cruelty and unnatural crowding of pigs in small confined spaces. The massive cruelty of confining sows in metal crates for up to 4 month and then not allowing them to interact with their young in incomprehensible. The suffering of these intelligent and sensitive social animals must be intolerable. Piglets are allowed, "legally", to be de-teethed and de-tailed without pain relief. Male piglets are castrated without anesthetics. The farmers are protected from RSPCA prosecution because of the Codes of Practice, really codes of cruelty that protect the producers, not the animals! How do these practitioners ignore the screams of the writhing pigs if they are mutilated while fully conscious? How do the vets allow this? Profits are the bottom-line in our livestock industries, and they rely on public ignorance, and callousness.
The standards of "free range" are flexible and are manipulated. The best way to avoid this cruelty to pigs is to not buy into it.
Background Briefing program 'Housing for Millions' was good IMO
Maybe I will have to re-think my own evaluation of that "Background Briefing" program, but I thought it was very good. To me it seemed that it gave both sides of the argument. I seem to recall that it did question the wisdom of increasing the population. I am certainly far from uncritical of the ABC as people may gather if they read my article "Brisbane's housing unaffordability crisis spun by ABC to promote property lobby interests" of 26 Jun 08,
This question is certainly worth pursuing. The full transcript should be avaialable here, some time after it is repeated on Tuesday night.
Anyway, here is a comment that I posted to the Background Briefing site:
Thanks for producing yet another excellent program about such a critical issue.
Given that Australia has demonstrably failed to cope with population growth in the past, why, unless our political leaders are completely stupid, are they planning to cram 13 million more into this arid, infertile land by 2050?
There can be no doubt that this will cause catastrophic declines in our living standards as well as the destruction of our natural environment. This will practically ensure the extinction of the Koala in South East Queensland, which some already fear will be gone in two years.
That our political leaders could possibly contemplate this insanity is symptomatic of something fundamentally rotten and corrupt in Australia's political system.
In order to give electors a choice to fix this, I will be standing as an Independent candidate in the forthcoming federal elections and encourage other likeminded people to also stand as candidates in other electorates.
Another comment which shows how well the Queensalnd Government 'planned' for past population growth is this:
As a resident of Chelmer in Brisbane I am horrified to learn of plans for apartments along the railway line. While it seems sensible on the surface, it can only work if nobody drives. While I walk to Chelmer station and would not consider driving to work, many see things differently or are not conveniently close to public transport. Oxley Road is now severely congested on weekends (especially Saturday) as well as on weekdays. It lasts all day on Saturday as people head in to Indooroopilly for shopping. Rapidly growing suburbs to the south feed more cars in to a road that, with Honour Avenue on the other side of the line, feeds into a the two lane Walter Taylor Bridge with a traffic mess in Indooroopilly. Numerous schools on or near Oxley Road, and more across the river compound the problem during school terms. Getting to somewhere not served by public transport is getting increasingly difficult. What is more, a less than reliable train service (late, cancelled and overcrowded trains, some with poorly functioning air conditioning and very limited parking for those not within walking distance) does not exactly encourage train use.
How can we be expected to trust the same political leaders to do any better in future than they have before? The kind of public transport system that would entice most of the residents even close to the railway lines to not buy cars would be astronomical.
It is not going to happen and our lying politicians know that, but they will do and say anything to allow the short term profits to continue to flow into the pockets of their corporate benefactors in the meantime.
James Sinnamon
Brisbane Independent for Truth,
Democracy and Economic Justice
Australian Federal Elections, 2010
The Age propaganda sheet
Just because it's in the Age it doesn't mean it's true. It just means that the Age wants you to believe it is true and give up. The Age is telling you, "Resistance is futile".
Tell the Age to get nicked and join the supporters of Kelvin Thomson (see articles about him on this blog).
Background briefing - just another ad for developers
If your blood pressure cannot endure the torture of tuning in to the Background briefing podcast - just add a scathing comment- In a nutshell- it's all about how we have to give up the lifestyle we have enjoyed in past decades because of the extra 13 million we have to accommodate (as it will be far more than that I assure you!)- changes anticipated in Melbourne, Sydney Brisbane. Earlier I heard that Dick Pratt's son has just bought a property previously owned by Russell Grimwade for $20million and they congratulated him and said how nice it was that the developers would not get to it- (Of course it's quite OK for ordinary Australians' homes to be demolished- gardens bulldozed for townhouses or high rise.....)
Where are the voices contrary to Brumby?
The headlines in The Age on Sunday 22nd indicated that according to their polls, the Labor Brumby government's "dominance of Victorian politics appears unassailable one year from the next state election". This is just incredulous! We have massive urban sprawl, housing competition causing impossible prices and increasing homelessness, little spending on public services and basic infrastructure, rising taxes, increasing bushfire dangers as developments eat into national parks, logging of old growth forests, rising costs for water due to the desalination plant, yet the media report him as leading the polls! Who they ask - the builders, financiers and land developers?
On the economy, 39 per cent of respondents believed the Government had done a good or very good job, and just 15 per cent said it had done a poor job. It seems most people vote from their hip pockets, not for the big picture!
Melbourne@5 million is a nightmare and a State that is already the most cleared and damaged. Where are the voices against Brumby? If people are lured to vote purely on economic growth, they will get ongoing and addictive population growth.
Population is the hot topic
Should be a very interesting talk. Bob Carr has also been in the news over the last few days on this topic with an article in The Age online which unfortunately did not appear in the hard copy edition.
Amendment C55 calls for emergency citizen response: Melbourne
HAVE YOU BEEN AWARE THAT the Victorian Government is wanting to put through Parliament this coming week what is known as Amendment C55. This Amendment would not only push the Urban Growth Boundary out further in all directions but also if you look at Clause 12 you will see it also spells the end of suburbia as we know it.
They are spelling out a new type of Activity Centres known as CADs and they will be Frankston, Dandenong, Ringwood, Box Hill, Broadmeadows and Footscray as well as the center of Melbourne City. These will all be NEW CITIES.
As well, they talk about all the high rise along tram and bus routes and massive development around all the Activity Centres, Principle, Major, Neighbourhood - nowhere is safe. And we all know that there will be 'infill' everywhere.
The only solution is to come out against the massive population increase which is being orchestrated by the Government hand in glove with the Growth Lobby.
PLEASE COME TO THE RALLY ON TUESDAY 12.30 AND SHOW THE GOVERNMENT WE WILL NOT PUT UP WITH IT.
http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/DSE/nrenpl.nsf/LinkView/E7EA0F2297769827CA25766B00196684CEE2CCA29F0B7E7CCA2572DC001F183F
This is the link to Amendment C55 And it is clause 12 I mention above, but have a look at the other parts. I feel that this is being sneaked through parliament without people knowing.
THIS IS BAD NEWS
Please stand up for your rights.
Message on behalf of Mary Drost and others
Shock Doctrine treatement of Jeffrey Sachs a caricature
pffft, lean something. the arg in the Shock Doctrine is a caricature. Heaven forbid someone try to explain something extremely complex and make simplifications for public consumption - if you read the other thousands of pages he's written you'd have a fundamentally different view - so that people who won't read more than a 600 word oped or a sensationalist complain about everything without offering solutions book can still get the message. Great analysis, glad to see you've put so much time into thinking about these problems. If anything, your comment is a good argument for the need for critical thinking and media literacy classes starting in grade school.
Psych staff and patients - similar paperwork problems
It's the same for psychiatric nurses and psychiatrists and residents. The staff spend so much time on paperwork that the patients are lucky to see them a few times a week. The patients find some comfort and therapy with other patients, but otherwise they are alone. I often think that those who design our paper workloads simply don't have any idea of how hard we normally need to work. They assume that we sit on our bums as much as they do; they simply cannot factor in the idea that you might spend half and hour to an hour a day with each patient and more in fragments and patients present in need.
The other thing that interferes with our ability to carry out the human interface of our jobs is the multiple telephones - especially for nurses. The telephones shriek like babies which must be attended to. It is normal for a patient to remain at the door or the window as nurses and doctors, trapped inside the glass-office bubble, surrounded by expensive printed forms, manicly answer telephones and indicate by hand gestures through the window to the patients that they simply cannot afford to take time away from phones and papers to attend to their needs.
Those with a Dalek superiority complex are in denial
Vivienne and Steve,
I share your concerns about Sean's comments (above).
Sean claims "there is no overpopulation problem, there is an undertechnologisation and de-industrialisation problem." He justifies "humans have a right to be here". Sean seizes on language to describe human sprawl and domination with a naive conception that humans should some how be considered 'advanced' for their global ruination and blind conviction to perpetuate that ruination.
May be anthropologists could argue that early Neolithic Man scattered in subsistence tribes hunter gathering could have reasonably justified their "right to be here". But then vasts flourishing forests and savannahs rich in food and biodiversity existed. Neolothic man lived more in harmony with nature, taking only what he needed to survive. History shows that this low impact relationship perpetuated through to the Middle Ages. But is was Industrialised Man that started getting greedy and taking far more than necessary and which has since destroyed nature in the process.
Perhaps parasites have a right to live, but when a parasite population becomes so pervasive, profligate, domineeering and displacing of other species, how does one morally legitimise the rights of a pathogenic species to supplant the rights of another to the point of accelerating extinction?
Gaia is the host of humanity and all living organisms. Doubters in this concept will have to rely upon NASA finding water on the moon soon or new live in far distant galaxy like they have on Star Trek and lost in Space. Humans happen to be at the Darminian top order of living things. That privilege provides oppportunities, but does not legitimise driving lesser species to extinction for some inner gratification like 'advancement'.
When a parasite grows into a pathogen, what is the value of a pathogens "right to be here"? Any species with a population of 6.798 billion and accelerating has in anyone's language evolved into a pathogen. This figure is the human population as estimated by the reputable US Census Bureau
Sean evangelises: "humans are the highest and best force for change on this planet and beyond." Such a statement comes across as meglomania seeking world domination. The Daleks from planet Skaro were a powerful race bent on universal conquest and domination, utterly without pity, compassion or remorse as well. Is this Sean's ideal? To exterminate... with each syllable individually screeched in a frantic electronic voice...?
Sean needs to get out more to experience first hand mass population. Perhaps a trip to Jakarta, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Calcutta, Beijing.
For Sean to advance the notion that continued acceleration of human population is a good thing, perhaps he should reflect on to whom is it good?
Hey, developers like the numbers - more demand for construction. Local governments like the numbers - more ratepayers. Federal governments like the numbers - more demand for goods and services which make their GDP look good and their polls.
Perhaps Sean is employed in one of these industries that has something to gain from the Citizens Electoral Council of Australia (CECA). The organisation's name seems to have a rather innocuous sounding name, perhaps deliberately, until one reads its manifesto.
The CECA's manifesto labelled the 'Summary of the Fighting Platform' in concise summary can be interpreted as follows:
1. Return to a Bretton Woods international monetary system (1944) (i.e. fixed AUD exchange rate)
2. Really cheap bank loans for farmers to do what they want (2%)
3. Bringing back strong industrial unions as they were
4. Strong civil rights for Australians
5. Reversing privatisation of public assets
6. Halting family farm foreclosures
7. Eliminating COAG's National Competition Policy to temper monopoly controls
8. Eliminating the GST
9. Reasserting government control over Australia's natural resources
10. Expanding public health delivery to all
11. Massive domestic infrastructure investment
12. Escalate the war on drugs including removal of money laundering
13. Encourage "generous immigration quotas, for the same reason which the Labor Party welcomed the "new Australians" after World War II—to help build our nation."
I think items 4,6,9,10,11,12 seem to have merit conceptually and should be publicly debated. But on this issue, but with item 13 above to suggest a return to post-WWII "generous immigration quotas" is to ignore Australia's already overstretched burdens and stresses of population on existing resources, communities, State governments and the natural environment.
Perhaps to a farmer out of Narrabri or Bulia, more immigrants may seem a notionally good thing. 'It's hard to get good labourers out 'ere'!
But on this issue, the CECA needs to get outside the farm gate and look around Australia's cities to see where the populations really congregate. Such an immigrant flood policy will only perpeatuate the aged old colonial scenario of all immigrants and imported wealth going to the big cities. Post War thinking of immigration to build farm labour is fanciful. How many of the 400,000 immigrants a year into Australia go out bush looking for work. Do the research. Stuff all!
But Sean seems to convey more extremist motives.
Rudd's apology to the forgotten generations
While OK in itself, the PM's apology implies that abuse of children in care has ceased. Not so. Child protection bureaucracies continue to abuse these children by taking social workers away from their clients & immersing them in paperwork. In SA, at least, whenever a problem arises in the bureaucracy more bureaucracy is thrown at it. The growth in bureaucractic structures is almost exponential as problem piles on problem & bureaucracy piles on bureaucracy. And it is impossible to get rid of these useless bureaucracies because their managers fight tooth & nail to protect their turf. Yes Minister is like a Sunday School picnic compared with this lot.
A child in care is fortunate indeed if he/she sees his/her social worker at all, let alone as needed. Many carers have left the system fed up with fighting bureaucracy for the things needed by the severely damaged children in their care & fed up with the lack of support from a child protection system which simply isn't focused on their needs.
Waste in child protection agencies is rife as so much work done has nothing to do with protecting the child & everything to do with protecting & promoting bureaucratic power. The child's interests are supposed to be paramount when, clearly, it's the interests of management & politicians which are paramount. Any help provided to a child in care is entirely incidental to the real business of protecting the power & careers of these people. And it matters not what the quality of a social worker's performance is as long as the social worker does nothing to threaten the career of the bureaucrats.
Sadly, there is no answer to this deeply ingrained problem. The vested interests in maintaining the status quo are far too powerful for change for the better to occur. Meanwhile children abused & neglected in their own families continue to be abused & neglected by the very agencies which are, ostensibly, there to help them learn to make better lives for themselves. The only hope is for social workers to conduct guerilla helping at the local level & to tell management up the food chain as little about it as possible.
ABC promotes growth ideology again in 'Housing for Millions'
HOUSING FOR MILLIONS
"Reporter: Ian Townsend
Planning for happy cities, when you're also jamming in millions more people, is politically tricky. Urban planners say they can make better communities with more people, but the NIMBYs don't believe it. Like it or not, high density apartment living is around the corner.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2009/2746551.htm
Sunday 22nd November 2009 9.10am
Tuesday 24th November 2009 7.05pm
Wednesday 25th November 2009 4.05am"
--
Looks like a program with ZERO questioning of population growth, just another presentation of the false dichotomy of expanding suburbia versus densification of existing settled areas. We should expect more from the ABC than a regurgitation of the same spin from the main-stream media.
Overpopulation is real
Sean, I find your comments disturbing. What is the advantage to unsustainable population growth?
In the contexts of over fishing, deforestation, soil degradation etc? Satellite images of Borneo or the Amazon speak volumes.
We have less than 5% of Australia's forests left. Should we clear the rest for wheat?
Big business just want to sell more burgers to more people. They have no interest in the welfare of their customers.
Sean, do you have a vested interest in more people?
Planning means infrastructure, and money!
We hear a lot that "planning" as the solution to providing for our population growth. However, this means spending money on infrastructure, but this is where our governments don't want to spend. The financial stimulus for goods and services from population growth doesn't extent far enough to cover the costs of infrastructure, so growth goes ahead anyway!
The solution? Add more people! This means we have an addiction to population growth, and the madness continues. With water prices calculated to soar to pay for Victoria's desalination plant, the public are not just paying for the water they use, but actually paying for population growth that is contrary to their own interests.
Multiculturalism unnecessary in internet age
Flannery said that “There was a time when travel was so limited, when trade and people’s experience of others overseas was so limited and where there was no Internet that we actually needed a program like that to foster mutual tolerance. Those days are well and truly gone.” He later said that “The argument that we need a massive immigration program to promote tolerance between people just has no legs”
http://therealists.com.au/?p=345
Mass immigration is an ideology of the past, but the capitalists are hanging on to it for grim death.
Poised growth back to the past
These comments just show the stupidity of pretending that past trends are predictions of the future.
With oil depletion, water scarcity, soil destruction and food scarcity we cannot rely on the future reflecting the past and only those with their dollars invested in short term growth continue to pretend that we can.
I'm sure that the Easter Islanders said, just before they cut the last tree down, "Gee, we are poised to be the world's fastest growing stone-cutting nation in the Pacific!"
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
Copyright to the author. Please contact sheila [AT] candobetter org or the editor if you wish to make substantial reproduction or republish.
sorry not enough
And it will mean about as much then as it means now when told to the aborigines - who were similarly displaced by capitalism gone mad.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
Copyright to the author. Please contact sheila [AT] candobetter org or the editor if you wish to make substantial reproduction or republish.
Rudd's echoes of hollow apologies
Rudd's national apology for the stolen generations and now the forgotten generations is easy as a politican. Speeches are a politician's core business. Apologising for the actions of others is also easy, especially when the problems stemmed from a previous government in a previous era'.
Apologies are hollow without follow up. To many follow up should be tangible like just monetary compensation, changing the laws, and even putting perpetrators on trial, if they're still alive. But has Rudd asked the victims of government policy and of criminal assault what they want 40 years later from governmemt?
Whitlam never apologised for his Balibo abandonment and cover up.
Why would Rudd commit to a moral undertaking not budgeted for according to re-election policy?
Rudd's legacy seems set to urbanise the entire coastline and hinterland up the eastern seaboard of Australia, congesting lifestyles.
If Rudd has a hope to leave a positive legacy for Australians he has kept it to himself.
Will a PM of the future say SORRY for over population?
Australia’s agricultural industries are projected to be some of the most adversely affected from climate change, given the climate’s influence on agricultural productivity. Agriculture accounted for 35 per cent of Australia's merchandise exports over the past 5 years (average $30.8 billion per year). The projections for Australia’s climate make it clear that farmers and other Australians should be prepared for a hotter, drier future. Changes in temperature, rainfall, and extreme events will affect water availability, water and soil quality, fire risk, and the incidence of pests, weeds, and disease.
Land in the Casey-Cardinia growth area in Victoria is about to go the same way as the orchards of Doncaster. This is high-quality agricultural land, with a combination of food soil, a ready and secure supply of recycled water from the Eastern Treatment Plant and close access to the Melbourne markets. It is one of only two significant vegetable-growing areas close to Melbourne; it produces at least $400 million of food, including much of the fresh food in our supermarkets and creates more than 2000 jobs. This is under threat from urban sprawl, despite the lack of infrastructure. Planning means spending money on infrastructure, and this is not covered by the economic stimulus of growth.
Urban sprawl is driving housing estates into fertile food growing areas. The food bowl that was the Murray-Darling Basin is fast drying up - the CSIRO expects cuts in irrigation water availability of up to 85 per cent by 2030 in Victorian regions.
There is no population plan, or strategy to deal with population growth - in Victoria or Queensland or any State. It is like adding animals into a paddock and having no plan for when they run out of food or water! Our environmental "capital" has not quantitative value, and is ignored by our $$-driven leaders. Farmers must calculate the carrying capacity of their land for livestock or else suffer spiraling cost of over stocking. They must suffer the costs of providing for food and water artificially, or losing their animals to starvation and death, and losing the value of their land through the environmental impacts of over grazing. However, the same logic does not seem to apply to the risks of over population of people. Immigration means that our States are still flooding with people despite the threats to our food and water production. Will it help to be reassured that in the future we will have a Prime Minister willing to say "SORRY" for over populating Australia and causing risks to our livelihoods through lack of action on climate change?
AUSTRALIA is poised to be
AUSTRALIA is poised to be the world's fastest growing industrialised nation over the next four decades, with a rate of population growth higher even than India.
It means that if the G20 leaders gathering in Pittsburgh this week were to line up according to expected population growth, Kevin Rudd would be in second place, standing only behind Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah who can expect his population to grow by 74 per cent by 2050.
Japan's Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, would be last in line, with his population expected to shrink by a quarter.
Australia is projected to grow at a rate of 65 per cent, well above the global average, a survey by the Washington-based private research body, the Population Reference Bureau, shows.
The population is already growing at the fastest rate since post-war migration and the baby boom saw it explode in the 1950s and '60s , figures released yesterday by the Bureau of Statistics show.
In the first quarter of this year Australia saw the biggest influx of migrants in almost 30 years of detailed figures. It gained about 97,000 net migrants in the quarter, about 20,000 more than at any time since Bureau of Statistics figures started in 1981. The natural increase in the population - births less deaths - was also about 15 per cent higher in the year to March 31, than the previous year.
No different to clubbing seal pups to death for pelts
Outback poaching of kangaroos is no different to Canadian sealers clubbing seal pups east off Newfoundland, Labrador and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Much can be learned and applied from efforts in Canada to ban the slaughter of Harp Seals.
"Though sealers from the Magdalen Islands of Quebec killed over 19,000 seal pups in just 3 days, reaching their quota in the first phase of the seal 'hunt', the second phase of the seal hunt began more slowly in the northern Gulf of St. Lawrence on April 10th. The sealers of Newfoundland and Labrador, who are fishermen most of the year, were hampered by some bad weather and discouraged by the low price offered for seal pelts - a direct result of the European Union's efforts at banning imports of all seal products. The passage of the EU ban resulted in the lowest number of seals killed since 1994.
Overall, the EU ban on seal imports will profoundly affect the seal hunt, causing financially-motivated sealers to find other ways to make a few extra dollars. We will continue to promote the boycott of Canadian seafood, to discourage even the 'die-hard' sealers from killing seals."
Go to harpseals.org
Australians slaughtering kangaroos or koalas or flying-foxes is no different to:
* New Zealanders slaughtering kiwi birds
* Chinese slaughtering pandas
* Indonesians slaughtering orangutans
* Africans slaughtering gorillas in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Gabon, Congo or Equatorial Guinea
* Namibians slaughtering cape fur seals
* Canadians slaughtering harp seals.
In Queensland, the Nature Conservation Act 1992 that suggests it is all about conserving nature "is based on principles to conserve biological diversity, ecologically sustainable use of wildlife..."
The political mindset over the Tweed is all about USING WILDLIFE, not protecting it. What's in a name... bit like North Korean calling itself the Democratic Republic of Korea.
Queenland Premier Anna Bligh is not long back from Russia trying to ramp up export sales of kangaroo meat to Russia.
[ABC Interview]
Bligh has become the number driver of Australia's wholesale immoral slaughter of kangaroos.
Time for another mutiny!
No justification for the kangaroo meat industries
According to the Premier of Queensland's office: "The Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia reports that the commercial kangaroo industry provides over 4000 jobs and contributes approximately $270 million annually to regional economies".
If the means justifies the end, surely there would be justification for crime, drugs, pornography and the sex industries! If the end is money and profits, without considering the ethics of killing our gentle native animals for a mass market, then all these industries are equally valid!
It is becoming tiresome to hear about environmental destruction for "jobs" and "economic benefits"! Interestingly, Anna Bligh wants to sell off $15b worth of public assets to support population growth, and outsource jobs and training! Her interest in "jobs" is rather dubious and thin.
Kangaroo meat for indigenous people would have been a source of protein, but the mass market for Australian consumers, pet food and exports, cannot be sustainable. Despite all the management and quotas of the fishing industries, they are collapsing due to overfishing. No wildlife "harvest" is ultimately sustainable.
"Kangaroo numbers in Australia have increased substantially since European settlement due to the development of the pastoral industry resulting in increased availability of food and watering points."
Australia has been responsible for about 40% of the world's mammal extinctions in the last 220 years. This is due to human impacts of loss of habitats, introduced species, feral animals, roads and human population growth. The historical evidence shows that kangaroos and other once "common" animals were abundant! Many are now lost forever, or suffering from threats. "Increased" food today for kangaroos is not what is being reported in today's papers! If these perfectly adapted animals are suffering, then it is no wonder that Australia's livestock industries in western Queensland are suffering. Livestock have devastated native pastures, water sources and forests. How could there be more food and water for kangaroos today?
" Aerial surveys are conducted annually to determine the kangaroo population with the harvest quota typically being set at between 10 to 20 percent of the population depending on the population density". How could aerial surveys really estimate kangaroo populations in such a wide area? This would be unfeasible and impractical. Just how could numbers be determined from the air, in all the vast areas? They could see the same mob, the next day, in a different area and think they were in multitudes!
"The Code also provides for the humane euthanising of pouch young and young at foot".
Dependent joeys can legally be bashed to death or decapitated. This is "humane"? At foot joeys can just go and die slowly, not having commercial value. Up to 40% of shots are missed, and animals can escape to die slowly and painfully. There is nothing "humane" about these killings that must terrorize these stress-prone animals.
Blissful ignorance
Animal cruelty is one of the worst forms of immorality. Animals have no say and are complete victims of their human masters.
If one was lucky enough to have received a golden executive parachute and somehow preserved one's super against the GFC Mark I, then a selfish person may consider 'social' and 'environmental' priorities matters for others.
Many in our community presume that if an ethical or social issue does not affect them directly, they can be morally justified in relegating them to the lot of noble charities. But charities don't just happen. Animal not-for-profit charities like WIRES and the RSPCA exist despite of government neglect of moral duty.
In my view, such selfishly disengaged members of our community deserve attracting higher tax premiums.
Few people experience such cruelty directly and so it is easy for them to ignore the issue as relevant or important to them. Many immoral issues fall into the same 'out-of sight-out-of-mind' category, including live sheep export well below animal welfare standards.
Once again, rural Australians choosing to lower themselves to profiteering from live sheep trading to Saudia Arabia, Egypt and Eritrea simply forgo ethical principles, as if so desperate that the lure of a quick buck from animal exploitation is ingrained like a colonial cultural contagion.
Pragmatically, many justify that they are too busy with their lives to take an interest outside their backyards in such issues. Blissful ignorance of social and ethical issues is the norm of the maintream. Busy parents and primary and secondary schools still don't teach life issues of morality or ethics at a child's impressionable age.
Why?
Contributors to this website that simply mud sling do nothing to add to the exploring the issue at hand. If 'Anonymous' contributers do so, I recommend their input be deleted as trash. They only demean this website. They may find more joy contributing to Ralph magazine.
The myths and lies of the kangaroo killing industry
According to an email from the office of Premier Anna Bligh:
"The Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia reports that the commercial kangaroo industry provides over 4000 jobs and contributes approximately $270 million annually to regional economies. "
The argument of "jobs" and "economic benefits" is becoming rather tiresome and well-worn! If the means justified the end, i.e. money and jobs, then crime definitely pays, and so does pornography, the sex industry and any sort of environmental destruction! If one ignores the moral, ethical and sustainability issues, anything that employs and pays is quite acceptable. Interestingly, Anna Bligh is quite willing to privatize public assets to the value of $15 billion and outsource jobs overseas!
"Kangaroo numbers in Australia have increased substantially since European settlement due to the development of the pastoral industry resulting in increased availability of food and watering points".
Why has Australia the dubious reputation for killing off about 40% of the planet's mammal species in the last 220 years if conditions have improved for them? Pastoral industries have caused devastation to our environment due to deforestation, destruction of rivers and waterways, and climate change. The historical record shows that at the time of first European contact the kangaroo was numerous and abundant over the continent and Tasmania. Government data shows that Australia-wide kangaroo numbers are down 75% since 2003, with populations well below the accepted 'sustainable ' level in most of the NSW, QLD, and SA commercial kangaroo shooting zones. Development driven population growth has already eradicated much of Queensland's koala populations and they could be gone in a few years.
"The industry operates under an annual quota system limiting the number
of animals that can be sustainably harvested. Aerial surveys are
conducted annually to determine the kangaroo population with the harvest
quota typically being set at between 10 to 20 percent of the population
depending on the population density".
Just how accurate are numbers seen from aerial surveys? Such a massive areas and so few kangaroos - this is really unbelievable!
"The (National) Code of Practice also provides for the humane euthanising of pouch young and young at foot".
This means that joeys have no commercial value and can be pulled from their mothers' pouch to be decapitated or bashed to death! It this "humane"? Yes, according to the industry and Anna Bligh.
Handle With Care
There is no doubt this is pure Evil and to think John Howard and now Rudd has turned their backs on it again is a sad reflection of our own worth because we voted them in.
However given the fact people have now been protesting for twenty pluss years- I am just wondering where is a plan- a project to phaze out this barbaric process.
HWC was launched- Um yes. What is it?
No I mean, what is the Handle with care all about. More pictures- more letters encouraged to be written to these same people that have turned their backs for years.
More funds raised- But to do what? Come on guys where is the plan?
What is the plan- other than show these pictures and ask for more funds?
I just dont get it. Why not employ some farmers x farmers. Get out in the bush and open some Aussie Abattoirs. Go and buy up stock and arrange to contract slaughter exporting carcuss only.
Or dont do that.
So what ARE you all doing? What is Handle With Care all about.
It would apprear just more hipe and hoohay+ fund raising...
Taxed Out Protest Rally
PROTEST AGAINST THE BRUMBY GOVERNMENT'S UNFAIR UGB PLANNING & TAXATION POLICIES
Tuesday 24th November 2009, 12.30pm on the steps of Parliament House
(This post has been turned into a blog entry. Thanks, Jeanette. - JS)
Despite an ageing population, Japan's economy grows
Japan's economy grew at the fastest pace in more than two years in the third quarter, as Government stimulus lifted consumer spending. Japan's economy grew 1.2 per cent in the three months from July to September compared to the previous quarter, faster than the median estimate for 0.7 per cent growth. Exports and personal consumption led the growth, while corporate investment picked up for the first time since the January-March quarter of 2008.
With the ageing and shrinking population dimming the outlook for consumer spending, Japan remains as dependent as ever on foreign markets to drive growth.
Japan has some of the world's strictest controls on immigration, and Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama admitted that he was broaching a "sensitive issue".
Japan has relatively few resident foreigners, although in recent years it has cautiously opened up its job market to nurses and care workers from some Southeast Asian countries. Their economic growth despite an ageing and shrinking population defies the growth-ists who say economic growth and population growth must go hand in hand. Some growth addicts believe that a fall in growth rates means a slump, so more people must be added. Thus we have an addiction habit!
Barking Dogs
It is known that about one in 25 people are sociopaths - see Martha Stouts's recent book "The Sociopath Next Door". In Australia, there are also millions of them - see "Touched by the Devil" by Andy Shea. These people like to cause pain and even death (e.g. serial killers) because, for one reason, it shows they have power and control over others. They have no conscience, feel no guilt or shame, and have no pity or empathy for others. You find the lower-level psychopaths in white-collor jobs by the thousands, according to Andy Shea.
One easy way, if your are a psychopath (sociopath) to exert control over others and get away with it is to keep a dog or two, which barks/attacks. You will never be called to account. Good fun.
If your victim dares to complain to either you or the Council, you can abuse him with impunity with more barking and other forms of reprisals because you have been "provoked".
72% of all Australians keep a dog, and one-third of those housholds keep at least one barking dog. That means there are about one in every four dwellings with barking dogs.
I believe the pet industry has a lot of do with it. Look at ads on T.V. Every second ad contains a dog!! It used to be a girl in a bikini. She has been replaced by a dog/dogs.
You can't appeal to the reasoning power of sociopaths - they don't have any empathy for you, and by begging them to give you relief you are simply playing into their hands because they enjoy seeing you suffer. The only solution is to treat barking dog owners the same way we treat most other vicious criminals.
Audrey
The F Word.
Thank you Menkit. That's all interesting material about the F word. I don't hear it very much, except in public places. Its careless usage tends to give the impression that those in hearing distance are undeserving of better standards. For my part, I feel that F-word users are attempting to dominate the occasion, taking the liberty to define the prevailing social standards downwards.
And yes, that is a very positive replied directive to another post --- to be nice.
Just be nice to each other. Being nice costs nothing, yet it facilitates enormous social harmony.
Not much change from Medieval thinking
The Medieval view of "Man" was that he was the pinnacle of Creation, the whole purpose of the Universe, next to God as His Image, and thus the solar system revolved around the Earth, and the Earth was flat. Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy,"the "father of modern physics," and "the Father of Modern Science." But science was actively thought of as hearsay, and the church of the day made Galileo renounce his observations of the planets' rotations. He was accused of heresy in 1615 by the Roman Inquisition as it was "contrary to Scripture".
Secular thinking today, and a reassessment of Genesis by modern churches, means that science and theology are, except for some fundamentalists, no longer in contention. If God created all, He created a consistent universe, with laws that can be studied and theories that can be formed from observations.
However, it seems that "Man" has not changed much in thinking, even in today's rational and science-based age! There is a Medieval mentality still, that other animals can be "overabundant" and need "management" to control their numbers, but we humans are somehow exempt from being over our carrying capacity. By some divine or magical formula, or natural superior human status, we are protected from over consuming our natural resources, and causing environmental vandalism and corruption! Our natural and finite resources will somehow keep expanding, and science will have answers to how we can just keep breeding and proliferating the planet! It doesn't matter that the arithmetic of feeding the world doesn't add up, or that the changes to our planet mean devastation and extinction to non-human creatures, but if it propagates more of the human species, these losses are justified!
Darwinism and environmental science are conveniently ignored when it comes to our own power and aggressive Earthly dominance! We will just wipe out other species and our own habitat due to a lack of predators or forces to limit our numbers.
We humans are still obsessed by our own egos, our own importance in the web of live, and will be the victims of our own suicidal narcissism!
We need science to objectively and independently assess our carrying capacity. Governments inherently will not act for the benefit of the public and those deciding on immigration numbers have direct conflicts of interests. Growth will be continual and constant!
The opposition to science today is not from the clerics (except from the Catholic church that opposed birth control) but from commercial and corporate forces, and the lure of capitalistic power and wealth.
Roos: Try crunching numbers rather than metaphores
Just one problem.
There are about 22 million of you and there were less than one million aborigines, and we are also exporting the kangaroos and feeding them to cats and dogs.
How long do you think the kangaroos will last according to that scenario?
Tamil asylum-seekers to drive rally cars in Bathurst NSW
Hell, I would go further. Let's give them the rally car driver jobs.
Jon Coleman on developer dictatorship & overseas buyers NSW
In a story on Today Tonight, Channel 7, 13 November, entitled "Australia's migrant boom Immigration policies have lead to a boom in numbers that Australia has never seen before, but some experts say we should be shrinking instead", Thomson and Tanner are cited.
http://au.todaytonight.yahoo.com/video#
The next story, with the same URL video, involving t.v. personality Jonathon Coleman and his wife in a Sydney house that lots of tv stars once lived in which is about to have its woodland surroundings bulldozed for 4 or six (forget) highrises, is really good value. Fingers the overseas buyers and investors and shows the Planning minister right up and the corrupt and undemocratic way that public meetings are run on planning issues in NSW. Coleman also points out that the situation is the same in Victoria and Queensland. The story is handled quite well by the presenter, who shows how some citizens will support the developers over all their neighbours because they stand to gain financially. It's a short term view that is bringing this country to its knees, democratically and environmentally speaking.
Go Coleman! Please write for candobetter.org
Eating national symbols
Don't get too upset about us eating our national symbol. Had a bit of a look at other nations and here's what I found- Countrys that eat their national symbol
Bolivia, Cambodia, East Timor, Eritrea, Finland, Japan, Maldives, Nepal, Philippines, South Africa,
Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Vietnam and AUSTRALIA.
About a third of the countriess had inedible mythical creatures that weren't very tasty. The rest were dogs, eagles and birds etc.
If it was good enough for aboriginals to eat roos, It's good enough me.
Not interested in your hyperbole it's starting to wear thin.
NPWS a shadow of their ecological selves
Any teeth and conviction that the National Parks & Wildlife Service in NSW had went with Bob Carr. Since Carr left, the NPWS has been dissolved and buried into a mega Department now including Water. Basically it is too complex for simple Premier Rees to handle and so he has merged it all into one bucket. I am frankly surprised that with his penchant for simplicity he has not created a Department of Other.
As for the Bathurst petrol heads demanding the local population of kangaroos be shot for 'public safety' for their V8 race, since they have no respect for the natives that existed in harmony before colonialisation, perhaps they won't mind more colonialisation with a few thousand Sri Lankan refugees being allocated to Bathurst, like they did with the Sudanese in Tamworth.
Displacement policy will be consistent. Let's recommend the 78 Tamils on the Oceanic Viking be free to settle in Bathurst.
There is no overpopulation or ecological problem
While your words of support are appreciated, James, your understanding of the CEC is seriously marred by your inability to understand the fraud, and intention behind the fraud, of ecological crises and overpopulation. Fighting those who claim that overpopulation is a problem is fundamental to the battle in which the CEC is engaged; early Labor leaders would also have joined in the same way. There is no overpopulation problem, there is an undertechnologisation and de-industrialisation problem. Prince Philip and Al Gore want to reduce the world's population to well under two billion as soon as possible, and your stance is supportive of their end-game and measures.
Not only do humans have a right to be here, but humans are the highest and best force for change on this planet and beyond. This is why the CEC is supporting the LaRouche push to go back to the moon, to colonise and industrialise it, and from there go to Mars to do the same, and thence to move beyond.
Humankind's future is to colonise the solar system and, indeed, the wider galaxy. Earth is not our only home. That does not mean that the CEC supports "stuffing up" the earth to then go and do the same on other planets. The very idea that humanity is "stuffing up" the planet is a fraud. Human activity improves the earth, it creates ecosystems. You want ecology? Humanity is part of ecology! And the best part.
The CEC is promoting longstanding plans to green Australia's desert. The Fitzroy Scheme and the Bradfield Scheme have been on the books for decades, but the imperialist-oriented and anti-nation governments that we have had for the last few decades do not want Australia to be anything other than a quarry pit for the financial oligarchy.
The LaRouche movement is promoting a worldwide buildout of nuclear power, maglev rail and massive water projects. Were these projects undertaken, "ecologies" would be improved far beyond the greenies' wildest dreams. But the greenies are not excited. Why? Because they don't want "green" or even ecology; all they want is what the imperialists want, which is depopulation.
The environmentalist mindset is a creation of the oligarchy. Industrialisation and scientific development are the worst enemies of the oligarchy. Hence, industrialisation and scientific development are the main targets of environmentalism/sustainability/conservation which were created by oligarchy as a battering ram. The Fabian Society has been going for more than a century and conservation alongside anti-industrialism have always been key planks of the Fabian policy mix. Kevin Rudd and Tony Blair are, of course, leading (and proud) Fabians.
You de-industrialise, and you depopulate, because humanity is supported by advanced power, transport and water systems, and on a vast and industrial scale. The oligarchs therefore target such basic economic infrastructure with their various, and nefarious, environmental frauds.
CEC literature explains all this, and particularly in an Australian context, much better than I can. See http://www.cecaust.com.au
Britain tightens immigration laws on skilled labor
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/13/2741541.htm?section=justin
By Europe correspondent Emma Alberici
Posted 26 minutes ago
The British Government has announced changes to the country's immigration laws that will narrow the number of foreign professionals and students allowed into the country from outside Europe.
In his first speech on immigration since becoming Prime Minister, Gordon Brown said the people of Britain should not be let down by foreign workers undermining local wages, affecting job prospects for their children or limiting whether they can even find housing in their own neighbourhoods.
Britain will no longer accept hospital consultants, civil engineers, aircraft engineers and ship's officers from outside Europe.
Next year, the list will be narrowed further and likely include more engineers, skilled chefs and care workers.
Mr Brown also announced a review of student visas that will consider whether to only allow people into the country if they intend to study graduate courses.
What was the result of James' experiment on water?
So, James.
We await the result of your experiment with your emotions and water.
Where have you published?
re Garbage Night
Dear critic,
I published your comment because I would like you to write in more detail about what you object to and why. More than that I would like you to write about what you like or liked about candobetter.org.
Penultimately, I would like you to write for candobetter.org on issues you do consider important and true.
Finally, I would like to say that we publish alternative views to give them an airing but we don't mind rational responses, comment and argument in response to those views, so take heart and don't be unkind to MP who is often right, sometimes wrong, like all of us. :-)
We all have our enthusiasms.
Please try to make your comments constructive because that is the way to help raise the standard of writing and debate.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
Copyright to the author. Please contact sheila [AT] candobetter org or the editor if you wish to make substantial reproduction or republish.
are you serious??!!
um, to put it politely I am rather dumbfounded at this nonsense about the poor kangaroos. Do you have ANY idea how many there are?? 150 would be WAY under the 15% you quote as the "allowed" proportion in commercial harvest areas. The estimated population for the Central Tablelands Harvest area is just under ONE MILLION (area of 52,484km2) (http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/wildlifemanagement/CommercialKangarooH...). I see no way at all how culling 150 animals in any local area of the Central Tablelands will put the population under threat, local or otherwise. In fact culling is used as a scientifically proven method for managing large kangaroo populations that would otherwise result in too much competition for other less common macropods. I would suggest you go educate yourselves a little on the matter before letting yourselves get too upset and even worse spread emotionally driven falsehoods about the subject that if listened too could result in the detriment of less common macropod species.
PLEASE READ SOME ACTUAL FACTS ON THIS MATTER
here's a head start for anyone that is even bothered:
http://www.kangaroo-industry.asn.au/morinfo/BACKGR1.HTM
http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/trade-use/publications/kangar...
http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/wildlifemanagement/CommercialKangarooH...
and your good friend google could find you even more REAL info on this subject
Pop debate ignores crucial Oz work re-biol & economic systems
John,
I think you underestimate the extent of the soil and water degradation in this continent.
The work on this has been done in a massive Australian study, that led the world, of the state of our economic and environmental systems. Tragically the Howard Government closed that study down. It did produce two major publications - one that was long and in which the Howard Government interfered with the results by forcing them to massage their conclusions in line with economists wants rather than with ecological realities. This was Future Dilemmas. Fortunately the data and information from which one may form the conclusions of the original scientists is still in that report, even though some of the economic conclusions are dramatically opposed to the data, being based on business-case wishes. Among other things the report deals with peak oil in Australia before we actually went past peak production of oil here.
The second publication, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, was much shorter. It told of the real conclusions. The title referred to the situation forced on the ecological scientists who provided much of the material for the Future Dilemmas Report and, I think it referred to the dilemma of survival we face in this country: That if we grow our population and our economy we run into fatal conflict with the biological systems based on the land and water systems.
These reports and those of other scientists have quite simply been suppressed by our press and governments. It is therefore not surprising if you are not aware of the dire situation.
Finally, I would suggest, from your comments about ecology and biodiversity, that you don't understand how much humans rely on biological systems to clean up the messes we make and revitalise the world from which we get our food. Our main occupation is levelling energy systems and replacing biological organisms with dead stuff - concrete, plastic, metals, bare hard depleted earth, disorganised eutrophic and poisonous waters. Without organised live systems to hinder and repair our activities, we simply create deserts. (Places without life).
The 'work' we do involves using energy and transforming it into more diffuse forms, which we then cannot use to the same extent. The only things on earth that are able to reorganise energy to some extent are animals and plants - live things. This skill is exemplified in their ability to reproduce functioning biological systems. Yes, we are also live things, reproducing functional biological systems - organisms -. The problem is that the mass of human organisms is vastly, vastly outweighed by the artificial, dead and biologically simplified systems we manufacture. The damage we do greatly outweighs the repair our organisms are able to do.
(If we all engaged in steady state natural systems farming and permaculture economies we would be fewer and far more positive in biological terms for the systems that support us - but we are doing the opposite).
And, as we create those deserts, we create horrible political systems, such as the one we are being kicked along by at the moment. Those other countries you believe are overpopulated and poor are often in much richer countries - like India and Africa - and their populations and economies were disorganised by the colonial system that is disorganising and destroying ours. We just started out with smaller populations. We will end up in the same situations as India and Africa - and even faster.
You probably also don't realise how indebted our governments have left our population.
We actually have a typical third-world economy - agricultural export and mineral export. Coupled with our import debt and infrastructure-development debt we are in fact on the brink of third world status. I would call us a third world economy. Formerly we were more sparsely populated and land was cheap - making 'production' cheap and we could afford to manufacture. Crowding the land has made the cost of living and of manufacture too expensive for anything except the kind of pillaging ventures of big mines and big agriculture.
Thanks very much for writing and I hope you will continue to contribute. Disagreement does not mean intolerance of your point of view.
sincerely,
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
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GARBAGE NIGHT
Did we miss garbage night?
because this site is overflowing with rubbish from the likes of M P. I used to admire CDB but it's becoming ridiculous.
Kangas
Sounds like we should be eating more kangaroo instead of those destructive sheep and cattle.
Why is it essential that we continue to grow?
Why is it essential that we continue to grow, despite the threats to our land, our society and livestyles. Why growth at all costs if it is counterproductive and retrograde? Because the economic model we have, that depends on growth, is the only one economist can come up with, the only model our leaders can envisage? Humans don't have natural predators, and we are voraciously on top of the power and food chain. Without "natural" enemies, it must be found within ourselves the mechanisms to survive the depletion of natural resources. Being locked into the "necessity" of growth besides all the warnings, is aburd and ridiculous! It seems that this is almost suicidal, something in our DNA, that will halt our survival even, eventually. We all depend on natural ecosystems and biological "services" much like animals. If we destroy these, the costs and outcomes could be disatrous. We don't have to have continual growth, and it we stopped immigration now, and the baby bonus and "students" overstaying their visas, then we may be able to stay under 35 million by 2050!
Closed and local systems support less population
I think that Natural Sequence Farming is about closed systems where you do not export what you produce. That is probably why Richard Pratt and other investment predators lost interest in it. It repairs the land, but then stops depleting the land by maintaining it, i.e. returning what was there to it in ecological stasis. I will check up on my statement at the Natural Sequence Bulletin Board.
Relocalisation, using such methods for rehabilitating the land, would support more people where none were supported before, but it would not reproduce the kind of population that broad acre farming with highly mechanised systems and using fossil-fuel based fertilisers as well as phosphates from rapidly disappearing guano deposits, is able to sustain - albeit for limited periods before ruining the soil and making land uninhabitable.
You could say that over time a sustainable local system using natural sequences and permaculture would be able to support more people, by sustaining small populations indefinitely. There are two big problems with industrial agriculture: it destroys soil and waterways - i.e. the very systems it relies on augmenting, and it affects political rights by removing choice and autonomy from most of the population, allowing only a very few people to be in control of the food and fiber supply, which is the basis of modern economies, even though most people live in cities in them.
Australians in cities where there are still big gardens could still supplement a lot of their food and fiber if they used these gardens to produce food, like the food gardens of the Pacific Islanders - in the permaculture manner. That would also change the political economy by taking importance away from the wage system, the banking system, the food transport and mass-production system. That is why we are encouraged to believe that producing our own food would be harder than it is. The people who dominate our current system get a lot of profits from all our hard work, where we dedicate most of our time to producing stuff for resale where the profits go to owners and investors. If we ran our own lives and 'traded'/bartered locally, the Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd types would be entirely out of the picture. People would take on real roles in the community and wake from their political sleep and realise that they have the same capacity for thought and action as the people they currently sit down and shut up to listen to.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
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Copyright to the author. Please contact sheila [AT] candobetter org or the editor if you wish to make substantial reproduction or republish.
Population growth as a necessity and not a virtue
I don't actually dismiss out of hand what John Hogan writes.
In future, we may face no political choice but to acceppt yet further population growth.
(As I have written elsewhere -- will find the link some other time) I think may just be possible, but by no means guaranteed, for this country to support more people if we began to repair the environment systematically using such techniques as Natural Sequence Farming advocated by Peter Andrews.
This could only conceivably occur if the economy move back to much more of a localised agricultural based system. We could not hope to be able to have access to the vast range of consumable items that we have today.
We would also have to preserve the maximum amout of biodivestiy and not permit any further loss of endangered fauna and flora.
In those cirumstances a larger population just may be sustainable, although, I don't consider desirable.
The irony of the situation is that those who are, today, pushing for breakneck rates of population growth, and without any serious effort to repair our current environment, are, in fact, destroying what real capacity this country has to support our current population, let alone a larger population in future.
One last point, I think there are already more than enough people here today to begin repairing the Australian environment, I dispute that more would be necessary to accomplish that.
Favours a different kind of managed population growth
Subject was: "Issues raised by Kelvin Thomson" - JS
Hi there,
I heard Mr Thomson's comments via the ABC yesterday and would like to respond to them briefly.
I share his concerns about the accelerated environmental degradation that could occur were our population to reach 35 or 50 million. I have noted in the past the public comments of Prof Ian Lowe on this issue. I think however that it is critical that we find a way to properly manage growth in a way that has not occurred previously because I think it essential that we do grow. I am in my 30s and I may well live another 50 years. I can see a crowded world in 50 years that looks at a wealthy and essentially empty continent with hunger and in many cases, desperation.
Now I know that seeing Australia as empty would be wrong - given our climate and resulting geography. But I don't think that the truth of the matter will come into it in 50 years. Desperate people do desperate things - think drowning men and straw. I won't go into the forms I suspect that this desperation could take but they can be imagined.
I think that a perverse truth exists here - that the best way to preserve and rehabilitate our country in the long term will be to develop quite quickly but correctly. I think we must quarantine in the most strict of ways the majority of the country from development while developing larger, sustainable population centres interspersed among it and concurrently using some of the least important land and some of the surrounding ocean to both feed us and our neighbours and to actually begin to reverse climate change. I think we will unfortunately need a much larger population in order to do this and to ensure that we remain the masters of our destiny. Our current means of increasing population is clearly poor and I see no signs that it will improve. What I am talking about requires a major rethink.
While it is obviously important that groups such as this one champion population and ecological issues, I am sorry to say that I believe that to achieve the ultimate aim, a different means to the end must be pursued. When there are more than 10 billion people on the planet and we are running a reasonably habitable continent but with only a few million people on it, issues of ecology and biodiversity will seem trifling to desperate hoards of people. I don't think that this is being considered properly.
thanks, John
Environmentally & economically stupid
Rudd should have a read of the UK House of Lords select committee report on the economic impacts of large scale immigration. The net benefits are marginal at best & that overcrowding/infrastructure costs can be a major problem.
Not to mention environmental costs, social cohesion problems (see social capital research by Harvard's Robert Putman) and crime.
The report is The ecomnomic impact of Immigration - Voulme I ; Report (pdf, 1.2MB).
We need an independent and scientific assessment on population
Does Lindsay Tanner really judge the validity of a country by how many people can be squeezed in per square kilometer? We are not livestock!
How can Australia be compared to Bangladesh? They are are developing nation that straddles the fertile Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta and is subject to annual monsoon floods and cyclones. It has the largest mangrove forest in the world. Very different from Australia's dry and expansive landscape!
Bangladesh's population growth was among the highest in the world in the 1960s and 1970s, when the country grew from 50 to 90 million, but with the promotion of birth control in the 1980s, the growth rate slowed! If a developing nation can some restraint, surely we in Australia can too. Bangladesh remains a poor, overpopulated, and inefficiently-governed nation.
Perhaps Lindsay Tanner would prefer to live in one of the world's overcrowded and sprawling cities than Australia?
His speech to the Property Council of Australia is evidence that Australia has no optimum population plan, or no policies on growth rates. Population growth is being allowed randomly, in an ad hoc manner, and thus we get these ridiculous statements derived from conflicts of interests.
We need a clear and independent assessment of what our carrying capacity really is.
Our carrying capacity should be assessed by independent ecologists, agriculturalists, climate change analysts and demographers. Such as important issue should not be addressed on desire, or idealism or economics alone. This "vast continent" is deceptive. We are actually a small nation on a large chunk of land, and much of it is not suitable for high density populations due to heat and lack of resources.
The most naive and suicidal thing our governments could do is to assume that our population can be continually grown! Australia's security will be compromised internally, and being dominant species, our ecosystems would be swamped by people wanting "jobs" and "economic benefits" from our environment until there is nothing left to consume!
Noise warfare between neighbours
Trading noise for noise sometimes works well, but it can also backfire.
Some inconsiderate dog owners are so dense that trying to reason with them proves futile. In these instances something else is required, but unfortunately that "something else" (such as reciprocal noise) can be in breach of other laws.
The mindset of many unintelligent dog owners is so illogical that if a distressed person retaliates with a noise rebuke (such as trading one noise for another as a free and unsolicited aid to learning) they become incensed and call the police.
I recall over twenty years ago being tormented by the loud barking of two large black dogs next door. Of course I politely told the owner about the noise but his riposte was the common "All dogs bark!" so I knew another method of getting through to him was required. I chose Noise for Noise.
Just on my side of the paling fence between us was a gum tree. I climbed it half way to a point where I could nail a car horn ($5 from the wrecker's yard) and aimed it downwards towards his barking dogs. Then I connected it to my car battery with heavy-duty automotive cable running down the side of the tree and secured to it.
When I became too distressed with the din invading all parts of my home I'd go outside, lift the car's bonnet and tap the wire onto the positive terminal of the battery. I'd make the circuit intermittently so that if a dog went "WOOF!" my horn went "HONK!" Similarly if the dogs went "WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! my horn went "HONK! HONK! HONK!" This is what I call trading noise for noise.
The owner was outraged. He called the police. Two police constables came out and said to me "You can't do that!" whereupon I quietly convinced them that I actually could. They repeated "You can't do that! It's Disturbing the Peace!" whereupon I asked them politely "What peace?"
They then threatened to arrest me if I did it again but as they did so, Mr Next-door's two big dogs started their engines up and the terrible din was startling. I said "There! Now you've heard for yourself what we have to put up with!" The two officers, now somewhat freaked out at having heard the alleged offence with their own ears, immediately left my front porch and entered my neighbour's premises. Maybe 20 minutes passed. When they came back they said "We have spoken to the owner and you'll be pleased to know he's getting rid of the dogs in two days!"
Quite surprisingly, he actually did, and peace reigned for several months. Then the oaf obtained two more large black dogs and the procedure repeated - but this time the police did NOT come out. You see, I had delivered a four-page letter to the town's police station outlining the problem and the distress it was causing, and informing them that if the owner repeated his offences I would double my responses to TWO honks per woof - and that's exactly what I did.
It seems the police eventually felt that they'd better just leave the matter to my neighbour and I to sort out between ourselves. He fumed that his phone calls to the police were clearly futile.
At some point I realised that aiming my very loud horn at the dogs was not fair to the dogs - themselves victims (as is so often the case) of owner stupidity. I recognised that their extreme barking was not their fault but their owner's, so I climbed the tree again and this time aimed the horn directly at my neighbour's bedroom.
This now proved altogether too much for him, particularly when, after one long din-for-din session, his wife told me that she'd just spent two hours trying to get their baby off to sleep - and then HORN! I did not know about the baby. She was a reasonable person, and fair. Her husband was neither.
This neighbour became resentful because he could not induce the police into condoning his lawbreaking - or to defend his self-perceived right to practice it at will.
He came down my driveway to remonstrate with me. I forget what he said, but I recall his parting curse: "I hope your house burns down!" Tough luck mate - it was never my house, and over twenty years later it's still there.
He and his family moved out, and the dogs with them.
The above story, all true, shows what can happen when an aggrieved person trades noise for noise. There can be trouble but there can also be success. In this unique instance, very satisfying relief had been achieved by putting my horn up a forking gum tree.
But there's more. Before this donkey moved out he had a visitor. It later became apparent that this visitor had been regaled with stories of my outrageous behaviour.
There was a loud knock on my front door. A somewhat inebriated man stood there. He had my horn in one hand and in the other hand was the horn's connecting cable trailing across my front yard and along my drive and into next-door's driveway.
He demanded to know, while standing beside his car parked in his friend's driveway and minding his own business, how suddenly, from out of the sky, came this object.
It had landed on his windscreen and cracked it. He pretended to great shock and affront. At first I did not know what to make of all this, then the truth of the matter dawned upon me.
What this moron had done, on behalf of his gutless dog-owning friend, was to put his arms across the top of the paling fence to grab hold of the power cable, and then jerked it with such strength that the horn and its mountings were wrenched from the tree trunk. This was evident from the damaged horn terminals, too.
I appraised him of my conclusion and he denied he'd done anything of the sort. Before departing, this liar declared "I don't care who did it, but I'm going to get a new windscreen out of it!"
My poor horn. It had given such sterling service for peace - but there it was, terminally wounded.
It never worked again. Even in death it represented the best $5 investment for peace that I'd ever made.
Peter Bright
www.pebri.net
A decision FOR the environment was timely
With the shame of the massive 10 week oil leak off the Kimberleys, and other pressures no doubt, a decision actually FOR the environment will well and truly due! With the exposure of the threat to koala populations, and the endangered species threatened by the dam, there was really no "science" that could be twisted and distorted enough to endorse this project. A decision FOR the environment had to be made - eventually.
Landsakes! Garrett makes an environmental decision!
Thanks for the news, tigerquoll. Thanks for the reprieve, Garrett. Didn't think you had it in you.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
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Garrett's decision to reject QLD Premier Bligh's dam is cogent!
I heard on the news this evening that Federal Environment Minister Garrett has rejected QLD Premier Bligh’s Traveston Dam proposal.
A JUST TIMELY DECISION WITH CONVICTION!
I support Mr Garrett on his decision, on his timing and moreso on this public delivery and explanation.
This is strong and frankly the best communicated decision Peter Garrett has delivered since entering politics. Conviction is what Australians respect, listen to and right now crave while political indecision wafts in the tropical heat to our north. When a Federal minister conveys a steadfast decision supported with a ratio decidendi at a prompt media conference, the public listens.
Good stuff! Leadership requires decisions that are not always popular. But popularism is a trait of submissiveness or manipulativeness, but not of leadership and more one of diplomacy or administrative convenience. No leader is remembered for a record of compromises, but for standing fast to one's conviction. No one can be fairly criticised for standing by one's conviction.
The Traveston issue is one well beyond Brisbane’s grey water thinking. It is one of overpopulation pressure – like an elephant in the room. Bligh landed Beattie's job from his timely departure, yet brought to Queenslanders no Bligh plan or hope. So what does Anna want to be remembered for in her time at the Queensland helm?
Our carrying capacity should be determined, not ad hoc
While our leaders are wrangling their political futures on climate change and ETS, population growth, easily as important and directly related to climate change, is being brushed aside as detached (de-linked) from the issue. Population growth is ad hoc, and determined with consultation from business leaders and economists, together with politicians who decide what they want! These groups all have conflicts of interests, and left to them we will have continual population growth!
Polls are not reliable either. What people "want" be be totally skewed and based on social issues and other subjective areas.
Our carrying capacity should be determined by ecologists, agriculturalists, climate change analysts, demographers and based on empirical science. The science is clear that Australia will suffer from loss of agricultural land, and will have problems producing food exports. Why add more people? As for national security, does Kevin Rudd want more cannon fodder?
Kevin Rudd should be making policies for the benefit of the people of Australia, not on his personal and egotistical desire of a "big Australia"!
Our government puts population growth above wildlife
Humans are feathering and propagating their own nests, their own numbers, and destroying other species. The policies that are being imposed on native species are totally selfish and anthropocentric. While our wildlife are diminishing and ecosystems are being destroyed for water, roads and housing, our biological systems are under more stress. Koalas are a flagship species and are easily recognisable icons of Australia. SE Queensland has Australia's highest population growth rate in Australia, and developers and mortgage industries are accumulating wealth while other species are being denied a livelihood and being butchered! We cannot continue with such lethal policies from our greedy development-driven governments. Our government prefers population growth and developments at the cost of the environment and the animals that make Australia unique.
ABC local demand ignored in favour of Rudd's global message
The programme certainly tackles the important issues affecting Australia. The popularity of the programme and its broadcast reach (being the national coverage and perceived credibility of the ABC) means demand to be heard invariably exceeds time available.
To address the shortage of public airtime, Talk Back programme listeners should publicly question ABC Radio management's allocation of available airtime to issues of popular interest and talk back.
Perhaps listeners shoud be more concerned about ABC's current corporate-wide strategy to focus to take on an unprecedented expansion into multiple overseas news bureaus. This includes a service in Arabic, which has been flagged as a Rudd/Obama propaganda tool soft pitching Rudd-US policy.
Ethics, democracy and ABC budget to the wind!
Again Rudd, with his statesman head in the stratosphere of global politics, is aloof to home issues beneath him, while salivating on his new 'world leader' status to play the ABC on the world stage.
Issues of national significance should be Rudds focus such as personaly following up his hollow 'sorry' statement to indigenous Australians with financial compensation and pragmatic follow through on delivering policies to reduce the disadvantages between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.
Instead, Rudd's head space is anywhere but in Australia. What national priority warrants our national broadcaster investing millions of public money on an unjustified juggernaut into overseas expansion competing with the BBC, CNN and Al Jazera?
"Scott argues that only the ABC can deliver the benefits." [Source: Crikey]
His boss is Kevin Rudd of course! Clearly this move is a furtherance of Rudd's unchecked addiction to foreign affairs at the expense of Australian domestic affairs.
Like talking to kindergartners - Australia talks
I just spent 45 minutes hanging on the Australia talks talkback phone, without ever getting to say this - even though I was one of the very first callers.
This is what I never got a chance to say, but it is of enormous importance:
"Kevin Rudd does not have a mandate to set Australia on the path of the population level that he is talking about -35 million - and that is an underestimate anyway.
Anyone with primary school arithmetic would know that a growth rate of 2% per annum our present population of 22 million will double in 35 years to 44 million in 2044.
Australia is not living sustainably right now with 22 million people.
Peter McDonald said we would be wealthy with a larger population. What does 'wealthier' mean, when we are living in a degraded environment with far fewer 'choices'?
Rob Adams said that in his sustainable city of the future we would harvest sunlight from rooftops, when in highrise buildings, only the top floor has the privilege of doing this (and only if it rises above the neighboring buildings). What are the ramifications?"
You know what, it's like arguing with kindergarteners or being at the mad hatter's tea party.
Our environment is deteriorating. All environmental indicators are nose-diving - waterways, biodiversity, soils...
I would also like to have said: Peter McDonald said we 'are not talking about a doubling'. But of course we are. When you have a growth rate of 2.1 you must be talking about a doubling.
Ed. Radio Australia or radio growth lobby?
Geothermal ... but there was much more to say
I have just posted this comment to The Australia Talks Website.
"I rang this program and was 'permitted' to criticise planner Rob Adams's reckless promotion of Geothermal energy as a solution for the additional energy needs of a big population. I was talking about deep geothermal. Rob had not specified that he might be referring to subsurface geothermal - which is not going to provide the vast quantities of energy for millions more people; it can merely off-set some heating and cooling needs, and I have written about this as well in the Final Energy Crisis, Pluto Press, UK., 2008. It isn't as if most houses are even using this kind of technology. Many are not even insulated. That is another reason for the insulation rebate. It is not responsible to have planners talk 'as if' when the problem is already really grave.
The presenter did not introduce me with my qualifications, which are Energy and Population Sociologist, and cut me off before I could give my sources or my qualifications, which are very germane to this debate. I was also cut before I could talk about other matters, which no-one else writes about, such as the role of the Scanlon Foundation and government in pushing population growth, unfortunately. When I rang to speak a second time, I was told that I had taken a long time to 'make my point' about geothermal energy and that I could make my comment on the website. I suspect, however, that I will not be allowed to give people a reference to my research on the Scanlon Foundation. http://candobetter.org/taxonomy/term/1179 (If you cannot include a web address for research articles, could you please ask people to google the Scanlon Foundation and candobetter.org?)
As for Peter McDonald's comment about "Human rights" and one child policies, it is the big population policy that is abrogating human rights in Australia, notably the right to self-government. We are losing democracy to commercial planning projects and policy."
Sure sign Brisbane's population has exceeded regional saturation
It's a sure sign Brisbane's population has reached saturation when new dams are proposed.
If a city cannot sustain its population on the existing resources it has, then it has reached population saturation.
Brisbane's metropolis now sprawls from NSW to Noosa Heads and west of Ipswich. It's population demand for water has exceeded its water supply.
Queensland Premier Bligh says "the Queensland Government will have to come up with alternative sources of drinking water if the Traveston Crossing dam in the state's south-east is not approved." [ABC 10-Nov-09]
Water is just one public utility, then there is electricity, gas, public transport, education, housing, aged care, etc. All Queensland public services are overstretched from Rudds flood gate policy on immigration with spill over effects from interstate as many thousands flee saturated Sydney and Melbourne to a bulemic Brisbane. Australia's urban population problem is snowballing, yet Rudd blindly cannot see the elephant in the room or has a hidden agenda. It has nothing to do with race and nothing to do with the refugee issue - which are being mischieviously played as political red herrings.
Traveston dam on the Mary River near Gympie will be another travesty of justice on the existing rural community way of life and ecology to feed an insatiable sprawl policy.
Garrett stands to be remembered for his watering down of Australia's environmental legislation and for species extinctions on his watch.
Pop Stats need to be relative to have meaning to mainstream
The population statistics have little meaning to the mainstream population when expressed as a national aggregate. A figure of 35 million or 50 million for the whole of Australia may sound small or large. This is reflected in the contradictory results of The Age/Nielson poll.
It is important to first appreciate the inherent weaknesses of statistics and of survey sampling of quantitative data.
Australia’s population size has a comparable meaning as world population being about 6.7 Billion. The mainstream will ask, so how does that impact on me? How do people evaluate whether a figure is acceptable or too large?
Well, when that figure is expressed as a relative change or is translated to the scale of the person being surveyed. For instance, If Australia’s population in November 2009 is about 22 million, then 50 million represents a doubling of the current figure. In order to objectively guage public opinion about projected population growth and immigration, the Age/Nielson poll ought to ask is: Is the doubling of Australia’s population from what it is now to what it may be in forty years time an acceptable level of population growth? This allows the respondent to a survey assess the figure relative to what they know now. It is important to be aware that population growth and immigration, while related, are different statistics.
Further, the national figure should be translated into a likely proportion on a State basis (which in Australia would in the main be the same as the Capital City of that State. For instance, NSW (or Sydney) may typically have a third the population of Australia (see ABS statistics below). So another survey question could ask: Is an increase of Sydney’s population by 13 million (1/3 of 40 million) an acceptable level of population growth?
MARCH KEY FIGURES
Population at end Mar qtr 2009
PRELIMINARY DATA '000
________________________________________
New South Wales 7 076.5
Victoria 5 402.6
Queensland 4 380.4
South Australia 1 618.2
Western Australia 2 224.3
Tasmania 501.8
Northern Territory 223.1
Australian Capital Territory 349.9
Australia(a) 21 779.1
________________________________________
(a) Includes Other Territories comprising Jervis Bay Territory, Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.
SOURCE: Australian Bureau of Statistics
Yes, we must question the validity of the poll – the collection, analysis and interpretation of the population data. The statistical method used by Age/Neilson should be independently peer scrutinised, to ensure best practice is followed and so the public and federal policy makers alike are not mislead with inappropriate findings. “Statistics is the science of making effective use of numerical data relating to groups of individuals or experiments. It deals with all aspects of this, including not only the collection, analysis and interpretation of such data, but also the planning of the collection of data, in terms of the design of surveys and experiments.”
[SOURCE: Wikipedia citing Dodge, Y. (2003) The Oxford Dictionary of Statistical Terms, OUP]
I question whether in this poll whether indeed effective use has been made of the numerical data.
we should like totally like
we should like totally like stop killing secy turtles
Population poll today in The Age
There is a poll today in The Age
Already the results are overwhelming that 35 million for Australia is too high!
This is an interesting contrast to the nation wide Age/Nielson poll:
43% say that immigration is "too high" and the same number say it is "about right". 9% say "too low".
Population projection of 35 million by 2049: (another deception - at our present growth rate it will be closer to 50 million).
40% said "too many", 30% "about right", the rest "too few" or "no opinion".
We must question the validity of the poll. How neutral is The Age?
How relevant is a public opinion poll when our human numbers may be the real issue that defines our future, and maybe our very survival?
There are many people in cities who are basically environmentally illiterate. They buy their food in supermarkets, turn on taps for water, and air conditioners for cooling but have little awareness of what is happening in rural Australia, or the devastation of climate change and drought on natural resources and our biological systems.
Our leaders should consult ecologists, agriculturalists, demographers and climate change scientists to assess our carrying capacity and form a population policy for Australia. Such a basic issue, and so impertinent for climate change and our food-producing ability, but left to economists, incompetent leaders and corporations to decide!
EPBC's future?
The Traveston Dam project to provide water for the growing population does not align with the objectives of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act that Mr Garrett administers. Thousands of people wait for Peter Garret to invoke a decision that may in fact save their homes, their communities, their lifestyles. They don’t want a song or a live performance, they simply want one word. NO. The decision rests firmly in the hands of Garrett and according to some, so does the future of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC) which the federal minister must consider when assessing the proposed dam.
The state government said that if approved the dam would be completed by 2016-17 and create 770 jobs. Anna Bligh said she had always said south-east Queensland needed the project to deliver reliable water supply for the future. Queensland lungfish, the Mary River turtle, Mary River cod and the giant barred frog and further koala habitat will be all possibly gone! What is the chance that Peter Garrett will make a decision FOR the environment on this one? What is the future of the power of the Environmental Protection Biodiversity Conservation Act if the dam goes ahead?
QIC boss: $15billion Qld fire sale to pay for population growth
I just heard Brisbane local ABC radio's Madonna King interview Doug McTaggart the Chief Executive of the Government owned Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC).
He talked of 20,000 (I think) people moving up to Queensland each quarter.
I am not sure how this topic came into it, but Madonna King asked if that would cause property prices to go up and he unsurprisingly confirmed that it would. Then Madonna King suggested that property would be a good investment.
In other words, Madonna King apparently sees profiting from others' needs for such a basic necessity as shelter being a good thing and, presumably, allowing (or deliberately causing) population growth to drive up property values is also a good thing, although se didn't state that explicitly.
A regular feature of her program is a discussion of property values with a real estate investment adviser. In those sessions she talks as if its inherently good if property prices go up and bad if they remain the same or go down
Then, on other occasions, Madonna King rails with seeming passion against housing unaffordability and the plight of the homeless. At least one of her Saturday Courier-Mail columns in the previous month was devoted to this issue, However, she seems inexplicably incapable of understanding the obvious irecconciliable conflict of interest between property speculators on the one hand and ordinary Australians needing secure adn affordable shelter on the other. As I put in a media release as Lord Mayoral candidate on 4 March 2008 in response to one of Prime Minister Rudd's similar expressed concerns about housing unaffordability:
Mr Rudd needs to decide whether he will continue to serve the interests of the property sector or whether he will provide ordinary Australians with affordable housing, but he cannot do both.Naturally my media release was not published. Doug McTaggart also went on to explain how population growth necessitated the Queensland Government's fire sale. The argument he put was, the Queensland faced 3 choices: 1. Not build the infrastructure necessary to provide jobs for and meet the needs of the new arrivals; 2. Raise taxes; or 3. Sell off assets ("Rearrange the balance sheet" as he put it at one point. Interestingly, both Kevin Rudd and Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspaper neglected to tell the Australian public that selling off public assets was part of the price they would have to pay for the population growth that they insist is so much in our interests. (See, for example "Population is destiny" in the Australian of 19 September.) Somehow, it apparently occurred to neither King nor McTaggart that another choice should be offered to the Australian public: 4. Reduce immigration and stablise our population. McTaggart's 'argument' in favour of privitasation was reported almost immediately afterwards on the ABC's 10AM news bulletin. For those who may be interested, I have written more of Madonna King's method of journalism, which many of her listeners mistake for properly holding to account our political and business leaders here on John Quiggin's web site as well as in the article "Brisbane ABC suppresses alternative candidates in state elections despite listener dismay with major parties” of 30 Apr 09 on this web site.
Need for poacher culling industry
So long as cowboy poachers in utes hoon around the scrub shooting wildlife for a pittance and seek to legitimise it by calling it a 'kangaroo industry', there ought to be calls to set up a Poacher Culling Industry.
Roo mis-information
What a load of C R A P, with an obvious bias to scare.
I am an active roo shooter, and all those killed are treated the same. A quick clean kill, with attention to any young, if nec.
Editorial comment: The personal attack in this post, which does not address the substance of the issue, has been removed. - JS
Growth lines the pockets of investors
Paul Braddick, head of property and financial systems analysis at ANZ, said the housing industry and policy authorities have a lot of work ahead to ensure supply issues don't further skew house prices. Housing prices have become impossibly high for many Australians by an artificial high demand. That means that more houses must be build to keep up to demand.
Migration added 439,000 people to Australia's population in the year to March 2009, the strongest increase on record. But dwelling completions are forecast to fall below 130,000 in the year ahead, he said. Instead of dealing with the root source of the problem, explosive and unnatural population growth, the pro-growth investors want to take advantage of it and line their own pockets.
It is ironic that Kevin Rudd is blasting the climate change deniers while he himself orchestrated our historically high immigration numbers, supports economic growth at all costs and unsustainable coal industries.
Adams and Palestine, Israel, 9/11, population, etc.
Thanks for your sharing your observations about Phillip Adams with us.
I personally don't understand why so many people if we are rightly critical of US military aggression, we should necessarily feel bound to view this through the prism of the Palestine vs. Israel conflict.
To me, it seems that the US rulers are engaged in these wars not to suit Israel or 'Zionism', but rather to suit their own ends. Obviously, there is a lot of confluence of interest between Israel on the one hand and the US rulers on the other and I agree that the US is highly partisan in favour of Israel in that conflict, but I still find it hard to accept the view that the US rulers are somehow dancing to the tune of Israel and 'Zionism'. My mind is not closed on this one way or the other, by the way.
I think Adams displays an irritating fetish for just about everything Jewish in the world on his program, but in regard to the Palestine-Israel conflict he strikes me as more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israel. Of course, so is, supposedy, fellow 'left' Gatekeeper Noam Chomsky. As far as I am concerned, they are both effectively in the service of both Israel and the US rulers.
Certainly Addams strikes me as often gullible and impressionable. He seems to have a capacity to be wholly agreeable with everyone who comes on his program.
Once, years ago, even war criminal Henry Kissinger appeared on his program. He never breathed a word about his carpet bombing of Cambodia or his role in orchestrating the 1973 coup in Chile and his many other cirmes against humanity.
The a few years later, he interviewed Christopher Hitchens, who, is spite of being an apologist for US wars, today, was then commendably trying to get Kissinger tried for his war crimes.
I didn't hear Adams make any reference to the way he, himself had been so accomodating to that very same war criminal.
He will accept uncritically the views of people who argue that China's attempt to control it's population numbers placed it at a competietive disadvanatge with with India as he did early in 2008 and then a fe months later will just as uncritically accept the (in this case correct) views of population stability campaigners such as Mark O'Connor.
Phillip Adams
Like you, I have noted Adams' dismissal of all but the official conspiracy theory about the Twin Towers collapse. I think it is because he knows that any real investigation of that and other atrocities would lead straight to the activities of Israeli secret agents in the US and of Zionist loyalists in high positions in the US Government. Adams makes no secret of his fervent attachment to Jewish causes. You may call him a left gatekeeper; I would call him at best a sentimental, egotistical soft-liberal who loves above all the sound of his own voice.
The fellow is also profoundly ignorant scientifically, to the point of imbecility. I refer you to the campaign he mounted about 2 years ago in support of Dr James Whisson and his so-called water machine, which he claimed could extract huge quantities of water from the atmosphere using wind power alone. Of course it was pure quackery, as anyone familiar with high-school physics could see straight away, but Adams encouraged the gullible masses through all possible media outlets (including the Inventors program on ABCTV) to invest their money in it. I emailed him to protest about this; all I got in reply from Adams was a list of all the clever things he claims to have done over the years, and a statement of his faith in Dr Whisson. In the light of that, I suggest to you that there is no point in trying to persuade Adams of the scientific and physical impossibility of the official 9/11 story. It is all way above his head.
No need for holographic planes on September 11
The planes did not enter the buildings the way ordinary planes would enter ordinary buildings. Not because there were no planes, but because both the planes and the buildings had been prepared in a special way. The buildings were full of various sets of explosives. With both planes the contact was preceded by a bright flash. Most probably a missile. There is no excuse for someone into 9/11 truth not knowing about this. It was extensively analyzed in the first serious 9/11 documentary, In Plane Sight, still easily available. The mechanism for the planes having left a Roadrunner-silhouette sort of gash can be easily explained as the result of explosives in the leading parts of the plane set off by the missile's detonation. This and the resulting fireball were straight out of Hollywood -- probably literally, as Christopher Bollyn has pointed out. As professional show business -- albeit in the service of evil -- it was top class. Oscar material.
A defence of 9/11 holographic plane theory
Subject was "Real planes?" - JS
Good to see more criticism of Chomsky around the issue of 9/11. Chomsky was a big influence on my gradual political awakening, but I am very distrustful of him at this point.
"From that distance at that instant Flight 175 appears to be flying through South Tower as if either the South Tower was not real, Flight 175 was not real real or both were not real."
The Hezarkhani/"ghost plane" footage (which is what I currently see a still from on the blog you've linked to) is clear enough and shows an impossibility. This has been gone over elsewhere, but if you freeze frame through the footage, you will see, for instance, a point at which the plane is half-in and half-out, yes there is no evidence of debris, the planes are not deformed (despite having hit heavy steel columns), and there is no explosion.
And how about the Fairbanks footage? Is that not taken from a close enough vantage point for you? Again, it shows an absurdity.
"In fact, it is hardly surprising that it should appear thus given that passenger airlines such as the Boeing 767-222 which was used for the doomed Flight 175 are constructed of light weight aluminum and that the much of the material comprising the outer walls of the Twin Towers were not of great strength, unlike the inner core of the buildings."
I'm not sure I follow all of this, but as for the second part, the outer walls of the Twin Towers were built of heavy steel. Go look at how the Twin Towers were constructed.
I'm sorry we are stuck with a "weird" theory that this was faked somehow (I go with cgi rather than holographs, incidentally), but I think it's the best one.
There's no question that the no planer wing (as it were) of the 9/11 truth movement(s) is full of dubious characters, but some of the core arguments are quite solid. One simply has to focus on the arguments and the information presented and try not to accept anyone as a guru. I admit I have made the mistake of giving some people the benefit of the doubt on some of their arguments I didn't quite follow, because other things they said made sense. Don't give anyone in the 9/11 truth movement the benefit of the doubt!
I will add that in my opinion (Australia's own) "Genghis6199" has been the most reliable in presenting serious evidence-based arguments and in trying to encourage group self-criticism and self-regulation rather than simply embracing any new theory anyone within the no-planer group happens to propose. (That's not to say he is a "nice," even-tempered fellow!)
One solution to nuisance dog barking
My wife puts a loud radio at our property edge when the neighbor's dogs are barking. After the neighbor takes the dogs inside, she turns the radio off. The wife is trying to 'train the trainer' or lack thereof.
Appreciation of article exposing Chomsky
The following was sent to me through the feedback form. - JS
Dear Sir,
Thank you for an excellent piece. More please, Much appreciate your
insight and work.
Your assessment that Chomsky and his fellow travelers -- like Naomi Klein[1], Howard Zinn, Amy Goodman -- all sayanim[2] for the NWO. Close research reveals that Chomsky was Director of the Institute for Policy Studies back in the 1960's when it was at the top of its influence molding the SDS etc. IPS was a covert MI6 sponsee of the Tavistock Institute and very hooked up with its brethen groups to further the cultural/intellectual side of the
NWO. Chomsky is as fake as they come. And he is NOT "brilliant"- his
stuff is muddled, inconsistent and anything but original. Just another of
the stooges, like Obama, who has been branded and stuffed down our throats via the overwhelming media propaganda. Chomsky is a "designated
opposition" of the NWO and has been from the very start. Research what Dr
John Coleman (former MI6 agent) has to say on Chomsky... Hard to believe,
but the Left is even more conformist than the right. Just my opinion as
strictly a Party of One, neither left, right or center.
Footnotes
1. I still have a lot of time for Naomi Klein. Her book "The Shock Doctrine" of 2007 is towering and indispensable and represents a massive propaganda blow against the disaster capitalist elite who have guided much of the world's destiny since at least 1973, in spite of its failure to point out the obvious truth about 9/11 (and, also, less 'politically correct' on our part, its effective stance in favour of high immigration.) If it were not for the fact that she produced this book, I would consider Klein a left gatekeeper. I can only offer as a possible explanation that some people around her in whom she has placed her trust have counselled her to steer clear of the 9/11 Truth Movement in order to be able to better sell the message contained in the pages of "The Shock Doctrine." Of course, my mind is open to being swayed in either direction depending upon what further evidence is forthcoming.
Other people I have grave doubts about, who are not usually included in lists of left gatekeepers include John Pilger and Gore Vidal. I would be most interested to read further comments to any of the three forums to which I have linked, either in defence of or critical of these two.
2. I'm not sure whether or not the word ''sayanim' was the result of mis-typing, so, for now, I have left it as it was. - JS.
We humans are cruel bastards aren't we?
I remember nursing a lady in her final days. We were talking together one night and she said to me that, although she would miss some of the things about the world she would soon be leaving, she would not miss the cruelty. She told me the story of gratuitous cruelty and neglect by her own daughter of some dogs. We also talked about the situation of wildlife in Victoria, which was not so dire then. She gave me an angry smile and said, "We humans are really cruel bastards, aren't we?" I could see in her eyes that she was remembering things she had observed over her long life, and there were tears in her eyes.
I agreed.
That is the last thing she ever said to me and I have never forgotten it.
If there is anything that humans should try to change about themselves it is this trait of cruelty towards other creatures and the land that nourishes all things.
Kevin Rudd is leading a march of depravity towards nature in this land by intending to overwhelm it with people and if we continue on this course we will all be so much poorer, morally as well as economically.
A Gore has finally conceded to methane as a greenhouse gas
Al Gore has finally conceded that CO2 is not the only atmospheric warmer. Gore now blames soot and methane for the majority of global warming, leaving the door open for a tax on livestock, a tax on meat and milk.
There are 1.4 billion cows and pigs on the planet emitting methane, which is 25 times more effective than carbon dioxide at containing the planet's heat. Calculated by Food and Agricultural Organisation of the UN (FAO), livestock farming generates more greenhouse gas emissions worldwide than all cars, lorries, trains, boats and planes added together.
Lord Stern, a British expert on global warming, says that if we really want to pull the planet back from the brink of utter destruction, we all need to stop eating meat. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources.
With a burgeoning world population, and rising middle classes in Asia, the demand for meat and dairy will continue to grow.
A Gore's crusades remain shallow until he includes the "inconvenient" truth of the need to reduce our livestock production and consumption, something that is much simpler to address than the technology and costs of alternative energy.
PS on Sweden
Sheila,
I forgot to mention the poor forest practices and importing of timber from baltic regions.
The high concentrations of immigrants are not intergrating and crime is rising.
They import more oil per capita than any other country.
Currently the engineering industry and the car manufacturing account for over 40% of the Swedish industry. The wood, pulp and paper industry accounts for over 20% the chemical industry about 12%. not very eco, me thinks.
Current population is just over 9.31 million.
Sweden's problems with immigration and nuclear power
Guess what,
Sweden has ten nuclear power plants that supply 46% of the power they use so they can deal with a few taxes. What you fail to state in your nordic footprint is that Sweden also own 12 coal fired powerplants in other regions. Greenpeace dumped tons of coal on parliment's doorstep in protest. You paint a rosy picture of nordic standards but have a look at the reactor incidents and problems developing in regard to immigrants, the stats you show are only up to 2003. They are currently taking more refugees from Iraq than any other country. They are headed for a big hangover soon.
Disputes claims about Kangaroo killing industry
Subject was "Menkit Prince joke". - JS
I had to check if it was April 1st after reading Menkit Prince's article. Do you really expect people to swallow that much mis-information in one go? This is the same tired old patchwork of rot, sticky taped together for another fear campaign by animal rights folk.
If your a vegetarian good for you, but dont dictate to others about what they should and shouln't eat, it makes you sound like a loonie.
The green on the carcass photo is fresh paunch material which when removed renders the meat quite safe to eat as I have done many times. Im sure your intention was to present a rotting carcass.
As for quantity of roos stop reading the crap that gets dished out as scientific fact and spend some time out bush.
Im truly amazed that you could glue together so many small bits of information and tar/feather the whole kangaroo industry. No cred for you.
By kilo, most kangaroo meat sold by Coles & Woolies, is pet food
By kilo most kangaroo meat sold by Coles & Woolies is pet food selling retail under $4 a kilo. So it is a low margin product for the cheapest meat market around - domestic cats and dogs "not for human consumption". These are the "huge quantities of this meat to their customers". So are roo shooters proud of their work? Shooting wildlife for pet meat for pittance? Get a real job!
Check out a leading brand of roo pet meat at Coles:
Paws Fresh Pet Foods
PO Box 10562, Southport BC Qld 4215
http://www.pawsfresh.com.au/pet-food/default.asp
It is in these PAWS 1 kg plastic bags of mince that thousands of Australia's kangaroos end up. With Coles and Woolies having dominant market buying power with dominant market share of the shameful 'roo trade', they control and almost set kangaroo meat prices paid to wildlife poachers.
If PH had an argument with any merit, PH would supply referenced facts, rather than resort to argument ad hominem (shooting the messenger 'do gooder' while avoiding the 'do gooders' argument). How lame!
Consumers buy roo cat food because its cheap - simple as that! It's even cheaper than old mutton. It's like ripping out precious native forests in East Gippsland and WA so it can be woodchipped it on the cheap and flogged to Japanese pulp companies like Itochu for just $2.50 a tonne!
Just last month [21-Oct-09], Japan's Itochu Corporation announced that "it is expected to push for lower woodchip prices after terminating its purchase agreement with failed agribusiness group Great Southern."
Source: WA Business News
Go to Japan and see how the Japanese revere and protect their own forests like the famous Beech Tree Forest in Shirakami Sanchi.
"The hills and mountains of Japan cover 70 % of the land. Forests cover a total area of 62 million acres that is equal to 67 % of the land. But "even though two thirds of its land is covered by forests, Japan is one of the world largest timber importers. Foreign imported timber is cheaper than Japan's domestically grown timber, even after considering freight costs for importing timber."
SOURCE: http://www.saveamericasforests.org/JapansForests/Japansforests.htm
Australian immigrants and their descendants since their colonial exploitation culture are mugs for raping Australia's natural heritage and wildlife and flogging it for a song to foreign profiteers who make the real profit.
Perhaps PH can quote facts about the percentage gourmet roo meat that actually makes it to expensive restaurants and retail for $100+ a kilo at the table. If the roo 'industry' was smart and treated kangaroo as gourmet like abalone, despite still being immoral poaching of Australian wildlife, it would have a stronger case for itself as a viable and sustainable practice.
But pet food?
It's hell for leather out there in western Queensland with thousands shot and no controls on humane treatment or hygiene. Any hobo can register as a roo shooter and make a quick quid, but bugger all profit. The so-called 'industry' is basically a knackery supplier and has literally gone to the dogs.
Perhaps road kill ends up on the shelves as well - wombat, echidna, Tasy Devil, whatever, who'll notice? The cat?
Bark-counting collars.
No James, the collars are fraught with potential legal dangers. Any vexatious dog-owner can readily modify his/her dog's barking behaviour for the duration of the monitoring period. In order to avoid rebuke, or a fine, the owner of a dog wearing the bark-counting device can choose to keep the suspect dog inside, or leave it with a friend where possibly less populated environmental conditions ensure it will not bark.
Then what do we have? Documentation that provides the dog-owner with legal evidence that the dog was not barking, and that the person who complained likely made a false statement! Once again, the person who has been unwillingly drawn into this unhealthy situation is subjected to even more complications.
The emotional, legal and environmental position of the person on the wrong end of the barking is further degraded.
Fitting such a collar to a dog is a clear signal to any uncooperative dog-owner that habitual barking will be recorded. What better way to warn someone that he/she should keep the dog quiet --- at least for the time it takes to prove the dog was not barking as reported?
Not only that, but as yet there are no professional human health studies that recommend how much barking disturbs sleep, interferes with family communications and constitutes psychological deficit. Dr Craig Mixon (Californian psychologist) has written extensively on The Harm Done, but no-one has yet announced how many barks per hour will cause sleep arousals (with consequent drowsy driving).
I wouldn't want my pilot, ambulance officer or school bus driver to be a victim of bark-induced sleep deprivation. Yet this is occurring everywhere, it is not restricted to poorer socio-economic areas. I live in Toorak, Melbourne, and also spent years in Ascot, Queensland, both areas where one would not expect irresponsible dog ownership. But right across Australia, in every nook and cranny, at every level, the statistics are showing rising complaint numbers on an environmental pollution that you would more likely associate with socially under-privileged, under-informed groups.
It must be just another sign that the Australia we once had is not the Australia that our valiant Diggers honoured with their lives. The title of this website is "We Can Do Better". And a good part of doing better is to do the right thing for neighbours. Just be nice. That's all.
People are capable of eating anything
People are capable of eating anything that is available. Most people eat for flavour and customs, and ignore the pain ethics. About 95% of pigs are raised in intensive conditions, and sows can be in sow stalls pinned for up to 16 weeks in the one tight metal stall. Piglets get little maternal care, and it is quite legal to de-tail them, castrate and extract their eye teeth without pain relief. They are "processed" at about 6 months without normal lives.
Factory farmed hens are de-beaked, and suffer in cramped cages. This is to stop the cannibalism caused by stress. There are no ethics, and all these abuses are "legal"! It is all sanitised by supermarkets and left to consumers to decide what is moral and ethical. If it produces money, it is saleable and people don't see, and often don't care, about the cruelty involved.
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Electronic bark-counting collars an investment easily justified
Thanks for that news, Peter.
I think the money invested in such devices by councils would be well worth the investment.
Would retailers risk law suits over Kangaroo meat anaphylaxis?
Extremely biased article from a do-gooder who does not understand the food chain. If what you say is true, why are all the major food retailers (Woolworths, Coles etc.), selling huge quantities of this meat to their customers. I do not think that the legal department of "Woolies" would open themselves up to a huge lawsuit from someone with an anaphylaxis reaction to their product. It is so rare that it makes your article laughable. The grocery stores still sell peanuts, do they not? It is up to the consumer to decide whether or not to buy kangaroo, and many of them have made their choice with their wallets. Some of the best chefs and restaurants in the world serve kangaroo, and I know many people who have consumed it to their utmost satisfaction. Maybe your article should be a bit more "balanced", and not based on pure emotion from what you may have seen on television.
Electronic Bark-counting Collar
Councils everywhere are hamstrung by their state's barking control legislation's use of imprecise terminology.
Here's part of Tasmania's Dog Control Act 2000 ...
Dogs creating nuisance
Section 46:
(2) The occupier of any premises must not permit a dog to be, become or create a nuisance on those premises.
Penalty: Fine not exceeding 5 penalty units. (A "penalty unit" is currently $120.)
(3) A dog is a nuisance if –
(a) it behaves in a manner that is injurious or dangerous to the health of any person; or
(b) it creates a noise, by barking or otherwise, that persistently occurs or continues to such an extent that it unreasonably interferes with the peace, comfort or convenience of any person in any premises or public place.
At first glance this all looks very reasonable, however if you are an Animal Management Officer (AMO) or anyone else lumbered with enforcement tasks, then it's so unreasonable as to be virtually unworkable. For example, where's the definition of "injurious" and where's that for "health"? Similarly, where are the definitions of "continues" and "to such an extent" and "unreasonably" and "peace" and "comfort" and "convenience"?
These subjective terms impose such legal minefields on councils that it's no wonder many of them have entered denial mode and won't come out. This leaves innumerable barking victims with no legal recourse for relief so it's no wonder that some tormented persons prefer to kill the dog rather than move out.
Some states have attempted to resolve the above dilemmas by time-slotting - that is, a dog may bark for six daytime minutes per hour or three night-time minutes per hour before its owner commits an offence. There are several serious problems that render this concept impractical. For one thing, dog's can't tell the time. For another, who is going to stand outside the premises alleged to contain a barking dog and record the woofing with a stopwatch? For another, who's going to believe his tally anyway?
In the last few years a new device, developed in Australia, has been trialled by some councils. This electronic device logs each bark as a function of time - the time being perhaps 7-10 days. At the end of this period the collar, which can't be removed by the dog's owner, is taken off by the council which fitted it and its data is downloaded for examination.
The Onkaparinga council in South Australia was one of the first councils to trial this device and its management expresses some satisfaction with the results obtained - when owners consented to its use. The Knox City Council in Victoria is currently proposing to not only fit the collar, but to do so whether the dog's owner likes it or not.
Interested persons are invited to visit http://www.pebri.net/index_32.htm and assess the matter for themselves.
There are currently provisions for commenting both on the Quiet Tasmania News website and that of the Knox Leader.
Peter Bright
Tasmania
www.quietas.net
www.pebri.net
If you can dish it out...?
Labelling Sean is in response to Sean's own labelling without any substantiated evidence.
The issues here are of serious national socio-ecological concern.
So present a strong sound case with supporting evidence and you are engaging. But resort to wild unsubstantiated claims and personal abuse and expect dismissal with payment in kind. Debate requires justifying claims to be treated fairly, else dish it out and cop it sweet!
Re-read the wild claims by Sean and ask if the ABC TV would report them seriously. This is a fair reasonableness test.
As for the cliche call of 'catching a tiger by the tail', I would invite mates to the Melbourne Zoo to watch someone try. Put your Wild Turkey away and engage! Before you two run away with your tails between your legs, spitting abuse, I challenge your both back to the issue.
Sean from CES claims Australia has no population problem and no ecological problem. Sean and CES growth lobbyists ought read the following about Melbourne sprawl and offer justification for their sprawl is good argument.
Suburban sprawl to solve Melbourne's housing crisis
Climate change deniers are down there with holocaust deniers and I invite them to deny climate change after reading what's happening north of the Murray to Banjo Patterson's legendary Lachlan River:
'Everything's dried up and communities begin to crack'
[Sydney Morning Herald 28-Nov-09, p.13 ]"River flows are being cut, and many will go without, writes Josephine Tovey. FISH lie belly-up on the cracked bed of Lake Cargelligo. Like the lake it is built around, the town is drying out.
Lake Cargelligo, a settlement of 1300 in the geographical heart of NSW, was once a holiday haven for swimmers and waterskiers. Now empty shops line the street and even the post office is for sale.
On Tuesday hundreds of those who are still here gathered to listen to a travelling roadshow of water bureaucrats about what was going to be done with the little bit of water that remains in the dam upstream.
The Lachlan River, muse of Banjo Paterson and lifeblood to tens of thousands in the region, is being cut off at Condoblin, with only small flows being released below. Towns further south-west will go without.
If they did not do this, State Water staff told the meeting, the dam would be sapped by February.
The plan was met with uproar.
''Why are we expected to take the pain for the whole valley?'' one man yelled. ''You've forgotten a whole section of the river,'' a woman said through tears.
In splitting the river, the State Government has split the people of this region. It is not the first time water has been held back to conserve what is left. A similar plan involving controlled releases is in place for the Namoi River.
But since the Water Minister, Phil Costa, made a decision to restrict the river earlier this month, tempers have flared among those downstream.
Farmers with thirsty cattle want to know why people upstream in Forbes are still allowed to put sprinklers on their lawns, and why fruit farms still receive water, albeit at reduced rates.
They also want to know if this is the future of water management in a state where almost 74 per cent of the land is in drought, and hotter and drier conditions are on the way.
''If this is the Government's climate change policy,'' said Patti Bartholomew, a cattle farmer, ''then God help NSW.''
The Lachlan River winds from Wyangala Dam, through Cowra, Forbes, Condoblin and almost to the Victorian border. It is a region heavy with grain, cattle and sheep that has endured three devastating droughts in the past century.
''Just now there is a howling drought. That pretty near has starved us out,'' wrote Paterson more than 100 years ago of Boolilgal, a town at river's end.
But this is a dry like no other.
Ten years ago Wyangala Dam was at 99 per cent, a wall of water 25 storeys high licked the top of its wall. Since then the inflows have been the lowest on record, less than half of what they were during the Federation drought. The dam is now less than 5 per cent full.
As water disappears, cracked creek beds and muddy embankments are left exposed. Animals searching for water are getting bogged up to their necks.
The Herald saw a farmer crawl out on logs and sink his hands deep into the thick mud to wrench out his neighbour's sheep. Most of the people the Herald spoke to are sceptical about climate change, but according to CSIRO and other climate models, they are some of the hardest hit. ''Certainly the southern part of the Murray-Darling Basin, which includes the Lachlan, [is] looking at hotter and drier projections in the future,'' a senior research fellow at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of NSW, Dr Jason Evans, said.
Upstream, at a meeting in Forbes on Monday, scenes were very different. There were no interjections from the floor. People stayed for tea and sandwiches. One man, who asked not to be named, said he would be voting Labor for the first time at the next state election.
Ian Smith, a cattle farmer, has bores on his property that provide him with a secure water supply. ''I can't really see they've mismanaged anything,'' he said. ''There's just been no rain.''
Bores are being sunk all along the Lachlan as towns such as Boolilgal and Oxley look to shore up their supply of water. But it is not an option for many Lake Cargelligo farmers. Some have invested heavily only to discover the water is salty and useless.
Rod Middleton and his wife Leanne live with their three sons on a cattle and grain farm.
The creek that has been their water source, a tributary of the Lachlan, is dry. The pump sits on the exposed creek bed. ''I think the worst thing about it is the mines and fruit trees still getting water and we're not,'' Mr Middleton said.
The young farmer, whose parents came to the area 30 years ago, said he would have preferred to see the river run its course, whatever the consequences. ''The fairest thing would've been to let it run till everyone's out, rather than have the top end get themselves through till next year and us being out now.''
The Australian bush is dying. Engage and help detox the colonial hangovers!