Comments
A sceptical, but open-minded view
Kangaroo exports must be stopped.
What about Repco's competitors?
"No stone unturned" - Brumby, 16th Feb 2009.
Royal Bushfire Commission & police submissions
Does the Governor have the power?
Governor should sack corrupt Victorian Government
Our State government is certainly corrupt and they are abusing their mandate to provide a democratic government to serve the interests of Victoria. They have become spokespeople and supporters for the pro-development lobby and are over-riding democratic processes and citizen inputs. Our Governor of Victoria, David de Kretser, should be taking note of the public's dismay and the destruction of our suburbs and put into place some action to dissolve state government. Surely this is his duty as the Queen's representative? Waiting for elections will be too late!
Addresses of Chinese Embassies to write to
comment
Write China while this issue is a hot topic, pls.
Letter to Chinese Embassy and General Consulates, Australia:
I am writing with great concern because I understand your country has agreed to import kangaroo meat.
The beautiful kangaroo is our county's iconic symbol and is on our coat of arms. The kangaroo is recognised and loved around the world; the fact that kangaroos are commercially slaughtered here for profit is an Australian National disgrace and our government should be deeply ashamed.
And in the interest of profit, you have been told lies by the government sponsored Kangaroo Industry.
You have been told the "harvest" is "sustainable", but it is a lie.
There has never been any commercial wildlife slaughter in the world that was ever "sustainable". Ever. The world almost lost all whales, walruses, and koalas due to the lie of "sustainable harvest" regarding wildlife. The koala was another beautiful Australian iconic animal commercially slaughtered over 80 years ago...and the koala never recovered. (Koala experts have estimated extinction to be within our life time.) The Australian government didn't learn with our koala and they are doing the same to our kangaroo for profit. Over-exploitation is not "sustainable".
Kangaroos are being slaughtered faster than they can reproduce and because the largest animals are the most desirable for slaughter, the species is losing vital genetic diversity. Killing the strongest of a species in a country where the weak do not survive is not "sustainable".
You have been told the "harvest" is "humane", but it is a lie.
Most adult kangaroos are not shot with a single bullet through the head. Shooting any panicked wild animal in the dark from a moving vehicle using a spotlight cannot possibly always be "accurate" and RSPCA/Australia in 2002 expressed grave concern about the large number of adult kangaroos killed inhumanely.
And every year, it is estimated that 440,000 kangaroo babies are killed as cruelly as Canadian baby Harp seal pups are killed. Ripping a baby from her dead mother's pouch and bashing her head with a metal club is considered "humane" by the Australian government. It is no different from what Canada does to its baby seals except it happens in Australia, in the dark, and is not publicised.
You have been told the "harvest" occurs under very strict safety standards, but it is a lie.
Kangaroos are killed in hot, dusty conditions, gutted in the dirt, and hung on hooks in open-air trucks for hours before before being transported to a holding chiller. There is no water and no sanitation. There is very little industry supervision because it is impossible to monitor millions of isolated kill sites in the Australian outback.
The filthy blood-caked chillers store the dead bodies for up to 2 weeks before shipping them to processing plants located hundreds of miles away. Bacteria actively breed in faecal matter and congealed blood on "chilled" kangaroos. Maggots have been photographed openly feasting on dead flesh.
Russia is absolutely correct in their charge of a "systemic problem" regarding issues of food safety and have wisely banned all kangaroo meat import.
You have been told eating kangaroo flesh is "healthy", but it is a lie.
Like all wild animals, kangaroos are infected with parasites that cannot be treated because they are not domesticated or farmed. Like all wild animals, kangaroos are infected with fungal and viral diseases. There has been little scientific investigation concerning the potential link to human health.
Of a significant public health interest, however, it is known that kangaroos are prone to infection with toxoplasmosis and salmonnella bacteria, both of which can spread to humans through handling, processing, or eating kangaroo meat. Australia experienced a human outbreak in Queensland that was traced back to contaminated kangaroo meat, but it is not well publicised.
You may not care as deeply as I do about the ethical issues of inhumane kangaroo killing. You may not care as deeply as I do about the ethics of eating a nation's National icon, but I hope you will carefully and deeply consider the known heath and safety issues. Logistically, it is impossible to provide identical standards of health safety in killing and processing "game meat" versus domestic livestock, and no amount of rhetoric will change this basic fact.
The world stood horrified as Chinese babies died from contaminated material in baby formula. The same material that killed hundreds of overseas pets just a year prior. From pet food made from the same contaminated material that killed Chinese babies.
Russia has banned the import of kangaroo meat based on very valid health and safety issues. I sincerely hope China does the same and doesn't allow known contaminates to endanger public health.
Kangaroos really are the most amazing, remarkable creatures and deserve great respect and appreciation. Please invite your country to come enjoy beautiful, living kangaroos instead of eating them and we'll all stay healthy!
With kind regards,
~robyn cooper
Melbourne's new industry - accommodating people!
Australia's optimal population for a benchmark lifestyle?
If "Australia was a big country well able to absorb a bigger population", then we would have full employment and all governments would be in surplus and there would be no undue pressures on our economy, society or ecology. This is clearly not the case. Demand stress upon all resources is worsening and at its root, this demand is driven by the growth of human population and its proportionate demand for those resources.
What is needed to clarify the problem is to establish measures and benchmarks. The ‘best or most favourable’ population for Australia and each of its cities and regions will be its 'optimum population'. This is one key benchmark. It is a more appropriate measure than 'sustainable population', because 'sustainable' implies the maximum possible, which is a less than ideal outcome. If Australians want to live in congestion akin to Bangkok or Hong Kong, then even if our resources could be pushed further to the sustainable limit, Australia's 'sustainable population' would be a scary number!
But how do we measure the benchmark of 'optimum population'? The Optimum Population Trust (OPT) approaches this measurement by applying the test of ecological footprinting (or eco-footprinting) This seeks to measure the ecological carrying capacity of a district, province, country, global region and even the whole planet. Carrying capacity is defined by OPT as "the size of human population that can be supported in a given territory, in a specified life-style (for example 'Modest European'), without degrading its physical and ecological environment, and without imposing wastes on the global environment beyond a specified limit." OPT Research Co-ordinator Andrew Ferguson defines eco-footprinting as "the process of determining the bioproductive area that a person or a population needs in order to sustain a specified lifestyle."
So the test then comes down to one of lifestyle. This assumes lifestyle is inversely proportional to population - where the larger the population and faster the growth of that population the lower the standard of lifestyle - 'room to move', lower costs, opportunities, resource access, reduced competition, etc. In Australia, we apparently have one of the best lifestyles on the planet.
But this is relative and these days it depends on where one lives in Australia and one's socio-economic status. Back in the 1960's Australia was arguably a classless society. These days not so. In 1960 Australia's populatiion was 10 million. In 1970 it was 12 million. In 1980 it was 14 million. In 1990 it was 17 million. In 2009 it is 21.8 million and increasing exponentially currently at 300,000 per year and could reach $23 million by 2010. So in 50 years, Australia's population has more than doubled. With current government policy at both federal and state levels our population will likely double again to 50 million in less than 50 years. Based on policies and historical trends to concentrate population in Australia's capital cities, this means Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and other major cities will be twice the size they are now. Imagine that for a moment! This is the real risk. It is the frankly biggest problem facing Australia.
Some other useful measures to better define the population growth problem are:
'Ecological footprint' is defined by the World Wildlife Fund as "an ecological footprint compares countries' consumption of natural resources with the Earth's biological capacity to regenerate them," or "a measure of humanity's use of renewable resources."
'Ecological space' is "the biologically productive space available to each person on the planet. Divided into equal shares (i.e. divided by world population) it was 5 - 6 hectares per person in 1900 and decreased to 1.5 hectares per person by 2000. Ecological space can expand or shrink depending on resource consumption, technological innovation, population growth and other factors."
Hectare, global (gha) "In eco-footprinting, 1 hectare (10,000m2, or 100m x 100m) of biologically productive space with world-average productivity. In 2002 the biosphere had 11.4 billion hectares of biologically productive space corresponding to roughly one quarter of the planet's surface. These 11.4 billion hectares include 2 billion hectares of cropland, 3.5 billion hectares of grazing land, 3.8 billion hectares of forest land, 0.3 billion hectares of inland waters and 0.3 hectares of built-up land. One global hectare is therefore a hectare representing the average capacity of one of these 11.4 billion hectares. Thus a hectare of highly productive land represents more 'global hectares' than the same surface of less productive land. Global hectares allow the meaningful comparison of the ecological footprints of different countries, which use different qualities and mixes of cropland, grazing land, and forest."
Becoming familiar with these measures and benchmarks will enable us to be more definite on what population Australia can indeed 'absorb'.
Bad State policy wins: Camberwell project approved
We are actually a small country in a big area!
Tasmania's animal cruelty
Why is NSW NPWS gagged from commenting?
No credit due here ....
tourism boycott
Hear hear.
What is Tasmania's government doing about the cruelty?
Give credit to Joan van Lieshout where credit is due
Check rally's history of financial failure !!
The above comment: 'Buy No More Repco spares In Australia' has merit but won't stop the Repco Rally going ahead in December. In order to effectively stop this rally, the campaign ought to focus on multiple initiatives, including publicising in the mass media the event's history of financial failure at Dwellingup, south of Perth.
1. Research the failings of the previous rally being expelled from Dwellingup. This will clearly reveal core weaknesses of the entire rally business case. The event in Western Australia was previously called Rally Australia in 2006 and the key sponsor was Telstra Rally Australia
Check the following websites on the event's financial failures:
http://www.worldrallychampionship.net/features/index.php?id_display=9
http://www.mediastatements.wa.gov.au/Lists/Statements/Attachments/128008/rally.pdf
2. Contact former Western Australia Tourism Minister Mr Mark McGowan, who back in 2005 canned the Telstra Rally as it was called then in WA and proclaimed: "The State Government will seek to end its contract with the motorsport event Rally Australia in 2006 in light of concerns over the economic viability of the event."
Further to the history of the failure of this event, I also direct you to the following relevant weblink:
...."Mr M. McGOWAN: In 2003 and 2004 Rally Australia cost taxpayers $5.9 million. It was the biggest event on the EventsCorp calendar in terms of cost, and that cost was predicted to grow because insurance costs were increasing and some competitors were dropping out.
"The fees payable to the various motor sport bodies involved were also increasing. In addition, we received advice - it has been publicly noted - that the Rally Australia sponsors would not continue to sponsor that event.
Mr R.F. Johnson: Who - Telstra?
Mr M. McGOWAN: Yes, Telstra.
"Costs were rising and the sponsors were pulling out. In addition, crowd attendances were declining, and the international television coverage and core markets relevant to Western Australia were very poor. That meant that Rally Australia was not securing the benefit for the sponsors, the overseas television coverage, and interstate and international visitors to Western Australia. In direct spend, a $6 million event returned - as members have noted - $9.3 million to the state. As I have said ad nauseam, a return of $1.60 on every dollar spent is the worst return by a country mile for an event sponsored by a government. I will go through some of the other events so that members understand the situation."
All the best.
Newfie Seal-Hunters to Club Abducted Cats
Speed, entropy and the Fordian process
Buy No More Repco spares In Australia
What Creates the Market for Manufactured Reality?
Bushfire organisation response - how to improve?
Similar undemocratic development in Ku-ring-gai (Sydney)
Take the following instance of a local resident protest in the Ku-ring-gai shire in Sydney's still leafy north shore which is dominated by national park:
Katrina Adamski of The North Shore Times on 28 May 09 reported "Angry crowd jeers as Planning Panel adopts town centre plans"
'HUNDREDS of angry residents packed a Lindfield hall to protest against the "sham plans’’ adopted by the Ku-ring-gai Planning Panel last night.
Up to 600 people packed into the Greenhalgh Auditorium at UTS Lindfield, many holding placards and banners. More than 100 people registered to speak but in the time allowed only 60 had a chance to air their views.
As the night wore on, residents grew angrier at the "flawed process’’ with most holding the opinion that their words would not make a difference to the outcome. After listening to people speak for three and a half hours, (chair) Ms Crouch said the panel members would adjourn for a few minutes before voting on the motion to adopt the plans. This was met with boos and jeers as residents cried out that they had wasted their night and started to leave the auditorium. Before the meeting started, Ms Crouch said the panel had held a series of community consultation sessions as well as reviewing more than 1800 submissions and meeting with resident groups.
During the following hours, residents spoke about ad hoc zoning, of impacts on their family homes, about the height, bulk and scale of development destroying the amenity of the area, and how Ku-ring-gai could be reduced to a slum.
When Ms Crouch said that no more speakers could be heard, one resident threatened to report her to the Planning Minister Kristina Keneally. But Ms Crouch said a large number of issues had been raised and proceeded to adjourn for a few minutes to "consider these issues’’. When they returned she thanked people for their "stringent opinions, ideas and suggestions’’. Ms Crouch then put the motion to adopt the plans and send them to the Planning Minister for gazettal and this was unanimously adopted.'
[Extract from The North Shore Times]
Withholding taxes in Australia where democracy is failing
Australian and state governments[1] are creating major political and budgetary problems by flooding the country with people when they are already unable to provide adequate water, transport, employment, land or housing. The vastly over-sold problem of funding an aging population has nothing on this kamikazi economic policy. Public private partnerships, corporatisation and privatisation are all failing hopelessly to attract private funding for (deeply unpopular) projects like salinisation, toll-ways, housing and socially and other financially costly major infrastructure. The industries and companies involved in such projects expect governments, State and Private, to fund their projects by raising taxes and increasing public debt. And Australia is already deeply in debt. Even though governments are increasing charges for most power and resources, private businesses based on the inflation of resources are still not viable and the world is in financial crisis.
For several years now NO government can claim a mandate to increase the population and charges and taxes to 'manage' water and power, because the electorate has never been asked to choose this as an option. Governments at federal and state level have misled Australians about the origin of our population problem by pretending it was something they were somehow obliged to 'manage', as if they had no responsibility in it, when in actuality, Federal and State governments have been running advertisements and internet sites encouraging people to migrate here in larger and larger numbers. At the same time there have been concerted efforts to encourage women to have more children here, by misleading women about economic prospects.
The commercial press and the ABC have consistently failed to inform the public of the government's role and the opposition's collusion in the democratically anathema business-case to overpopulate Australia. Although the media have begun to publish articles about how out of control the costs of population growth have become, they still fail to show that Australia has been willfully overpopulated to the extent that vital resources, especially water, are now dangerously overstressed.
All state and federal governments had a duty to advise the electorate of their activities in raising immigration numbers and that this would cause rises in all basic costs. All oppositions also had a duty to allow the public a choice to not go down the route of overpopulation, yet they have failed to do this and continue to fail to do this. All governments should have made this matter a voting issue at elections by using public money to give proper information where the commercial media did not.
The electorate is entitled to withhold taxes on the grounds that it has not had representation on these issues. The PAYE tax system makes it impossible for most wage-earners to withhold taxes, unless their employers do this for them. Many employers must be sick and tired of the increasing charges for rent, water and power, which raise their costs and lower their margins. Withholding PAYE tax would be a democratic option to bring the government to its senses.
The PAYE tax system was brought in around the time of the second world war. Unions and employers could attempt to cooperate with Australian citizens in withholding the PAYE tax at the request of salary earners, by organising resistance and legal strategy. Ratepayer groups could cooperate to assist residents to organise together to withhold their rates from councils which, by failing to limit building permissions, undemocratically commit residents to subsidising the costs of infrastructure expansion to accomodate unwanted and avoidable population increase.
[1] Yes, State governments are deeply involved in the people-importing business. It is not just the Commonwealth that has power and responsibility in this.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
Ageing population clouds growth forecasts
Enivronmental NGO Silence
A music award but nothing for the whales!
THE OECD and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation report
ferals and natives and shooting
'Extremism' thirsts for 24/7 open season for natives in NPs
The problem of immigration is all one of scale
Immigration a form of 'lemon socialism'
"After the immigrants arrive, they are at low wages, pay little or
nothing in taxes and demand full social benefit."
Immigration is essentially a form of 'lemon socialism' in which the costs
are socialised while the benefits are privatised. It provides huge
indirect subsidies to certain industries in the form of more consumers and
cheap labour, but imposes a significant burden on the wider population.
It is certainly true that immigration places downward pressure on wages;
indeed, it is impossible to argue otherwise.
And, yes, immigrants also place pressure on public infrastructure and
services without having contributed anything to the cumulative
intergenerational investment that gone into building up such
infrastructure and services.
There is also the impact of immigration on housing costs and our national
balance of payments - both major issues here in Australia.
Posted on behalf of RD. - JS
Scientific Whaling - no different to Ishii's depraved Unit 731
So, we think taking over half an hour for a whale to die from explosive internal harpooning is inhumane?
We think 'scientific' whale research is cruel and should be stopped, but not sure how?
Japan's claim that it is conducting 'scientific' whaling is as scientific as Japanese Unit 731 and its 'scientific' human experiments during World War II, commanded under microbiologist Lieutenant General Shiro Ishii of the Imperial Japanese Army.
Try this...
Those engaged in 'scientific' whaling should be publicly labelled as Unit 731 'Nana-san-ichi butai' in the Japanese media!!
This would be one damn nasty way to stop the whaling. How so? Read below extracts.
Activities of Unit 731:
A special project code-named Maruta used human beings for experiments. Test subjects were gathered from the surrounding population and were sometimes referred to euphemistically as "logs" (??, maruta?).[11] This term originated as a joke on the part of the staff due to the fact that the official cover story for the facility given to the local authorities was that it was a lumber mill. [SOURCE: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-439776/Doctors-Depravity.html]
Vivisection
* Prisoners of war were subjected to vivisection without anesthesia.
* Vivisections were performed on prisoners after infecting them with various diseases. Scientists performed invasive surgery on prisoners, removing organs to study the effects of disease on the human body. These were conducted while the patients were alive because it was feared that the decomposition process would affect the results. The infected and vivisected prisoners included men, women, children, and infants.
* Vivisections were also performed on pregnant women, sometimes impregnated by doctors, and the fetus removed.
* Prisoners had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss.
* Those limbs that were removed were sometimes re-attached to the opposite sides of the body.
* Some prisoners' limbs were frozen and amputated, while others had limbs frozen then thawed to study the effects of the resultant untreated gangrene and rotting.
* Some prisoners had their stomachs surgically removed and the esophagus reattached to the intestines.
* Parts of the brain, lungs, liver, etc. were removed from some prisoners.
* In 2007, Doctor Ken Yuasa testified to the Japan Times that, "I was afraid during my first vivisection, but the second time around, it was much easier. By the third time, I was willing to do it." He believes at least 1,000 persons, including surgeons, were involved in vivisections over mainland China.
Weapons testing:
* Human targets were used to test grenades positioned at various distances and in different positions.
* Flame throwers were tested on humans.
* Humans were tied to stakes and used as targets to test germ-releasing bombs, chemical weapons and explosive bombs.
Germ warfare attacks:
* Prisoners were injected with inoculations of disease, disguised as vaccinations, to study their effects.
* To study the effects of untreated venereal diseases, male and female prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhea, then studied.
* Prisoners were infested with fleas in order to acquire large quantities of disease-carrying fleas for the purposes of studying the viability of germ warfare.
* Plague fleas, infected clothing, and infected supplies encased in bombs were dropped on various targets. The resulting cholera, anthrax, and plague were estimated to have killed around 400,000 Chinese civilians.
* Tularemia was tested on Chinese civilians.
Unit 731 and its affiliated units (Unit 1644, Unit 100, et cetera) were actively involved not only in research and development, but also in experimental deployment of epidemic-creating biowarfare weapons in assaults against the Chinese populace (both civilian and military) throughout World War II. Plague-infested fleas, bred in the laboratories of Unit 731 and Unit 1644, were spread by low-flying airplanes upon Chinese cities, coastal Ningbo in 1940, and Changde, Hunan Province, in 1941. This military aerial spraying killed thousands of people with bubonic plague epidemics.
Other 'scientific' experiments:
Prisoners were subjected to other experiments such as:
* being hung upside down to see how long it would take for them to choke to death.
* having air injected into their arteries to determine the time until the onset of embolism.
* having horse urine injected into their kidneys.
* being deprived of food and water to determine the length of time until death.
* being placed into high-pressure chambers until death.
* being exposed to extreme temperatures and developing frostbite to determine how long humans could survive with such an affliction, and to determine the effects of rotting and gangrene on human flesh.
* having experiments performed upon prisoners to determine the relationship between temperature, burns, and human survival.
* being placed into centrifuges and spun until dead.
* having animal blood injected and the effects studied.
* being exposed to lethal doses of x-ray radiation.
* having various chemical weapons tested on prisoners inside gas chambers.
* being injected with sea water to determine if it could be a substitute for saline.
* being buried alive. (This practice included infants.)
[SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731]
Petition against REPCO Rally law
Oz has a fascist big population policy
Problems ordering "The Howard Legacy"
Stop bad town planning outcomes
Our household has been affected by bad town planning decisions. Yarra City Council is hiding behind Melbourne 2030 to justify it poor planning decisions. Overcrowding, noise, lack of parking controls, undesirable neighbors urinating from three storey balconies right in front of our eyes are just a few issues we have to thank our Yarra City town planners for.
During a recent IDAC meeting for a planning application for former Yarra City Councilor Paul D'Agostino (Labor) the committee unanimously carried the motion to approve a permit for a four storey apartment block in a tiny North Fitzroy backstreet 18m wide. There is nothing new about apartment blocks in the North Fitzroy street that the application was proposed for. However a large group of objectors did want Yarra City Council to apply some restrictions to the permit, namely to reduce the number of levels from four to three, which prior to this application, was the maximum number of floor levels permitted in this compact street. The objectors also wanted the committee to address issues of potential parking stress which was considered and issue by the objectors. Needless to say, Steve Jolly (Stephen Jolly) was first to move that Paul D'Agostino's building permit be approved. The other Yarra councillors followed.
See also: urbanplanningyarra.blogspot.com.
It's not about immigration. Its about unbridled greed.
The wealthy use immigrants to break their countrymen's ability to command a working wage. If you object to this, you are called a racist. They say Australians won't do the work. Of course not! And neither will the immigrants child. Are you going to immigrate the entire labor force every 20 years.?
After the immigrants arrive, they are at low wages, pay little or nothing in taxes and demand full social benefit. You subsidize these immigrants and dilute your own benefits. Your corrupt politicians may even ask you to provide subsidized housing for "low income families". Don't do it. You are simply subsidizing greedy employers and ruining you own opportunities for meaningful employment. If you force the immigrants to demand a living wage watch how quickly greedy employers loose interest. Watch how the money flows. The greedy get the money and the politicians pass the burden on to the taxpayers.
It's all over the world news about Aussie women now working as prostitutes in record numbers to get by. How gutless can Aussies get? Does anything matter to you? Stand up to your politicians and their backdoor lobbyists.
(My emphasis - JS)
Australia's de-facto population policy
Frosty incorrect on this point
Possums have become a garment export industry in New Zealand
Australia lacks a 'Sustainable Population Policy'
Since I only have one possum
Whaling Conference
Miranda mulch
Howard's immigration legacy
possum footwear
Robert Browns comment
Supporting RSPCA is supporting Corruption - animal control for $
Feral Animals BIll
HECS fees and globalisation
Bill's purpose is to include native animals as 'game animals'
Feral and Native animals.
Give credit where credit is due
Shooters Party bill
Shooters Party should be banned
Ex Prime Minister Bob Hawke said the same thing!
Feral animals is a human caused problem
I don't think most of you
Political crisis NSW today - shooters party
Shooters Party, about
McNamara and the Wiggles
Good Speech Menkit
Great speech Dorothy
Feral Animals Control Bill
It needs to be remembered that the earth was made for humankind"
Keep up long-term vision
Bushfire bunkers past and present
An easy solution, Tigerquoll
Let them build up the coast...
No hunting wildlife
Address human overgrazing and the kangaroos will be fine
What about kangaroos?
Native fauna targeted in Feral Shooters Bill
Shooters Party bill article misleading
You seem to have got most of the facts right about the bill, but then put a radical animal liberation and discriminatory slant on them.
The NPWS are in charge of managing our National Parks and they should continue doing it. The Game Council are another government body the same as the NPWS, just that there expertise is in managing animal populations not parks. For that reason the GC should manage things such as permits to control problem animal populations using the same procedure to set numbers and permits as now. The NPWS will then have more time to concentrate on managing National Parks.
Your next part on opening up National Parks for hunting is misleading as it implies anyone will be able to hunt anywhere. The legislation only gives approval for the government to open an area in a National park if it sees an environmental benefit. The government still chooses when and where, and only Game Council licenced and trained hunters can participate.
Game reserves are another issue and are legal in all other states except NSW. The claims about these are also misleading as they are present in other states and have none of the claimed problems.
The reason it being illegal to approach hunters is that protesters have been interfering with people going about their legal business. It is to avoid situations such as in Victoria recently, where protesters stole legally shot ducks and interfered illegally with others. The safety issue was alresdy brought up before huting in State forests was started and all fears were unfounded. The same system of policing will be used as in NSW State Forests for the last 3 years. All hunters will book before hunting and are required to Carry the written permission at all times while hunting. Police, Game Council staff and NP rangers will have the right to check that written permission at any time. You then make many discriminating comments about hunters being unable to identify species and polluting the bush. It is unfounded discrimination like this that leads to racism.
If you are so concerned about the possibility of someone who had to book to go in the NP, and a record of them being there kept, possibly littering, how do you feel about bushwalkers being unregulated. Any of those bushwalkers could leave rubbish or light a fire and we would not even have a permanent record of them being there.
Lastly your last comment about Australia having the world’s worst record for wildlife extinctions. Over 38% of our mammal species have been driven extinct since 1778. This is indeed a terrible figure and the control of feral pests is the main way to prevent more extinctions. NPWS has had many years to try all methods of pest control and has achieved little. Don't you think it is time to try a holistic approach and allow community volunteers to become involved. That is what this bill will allow and I can only see benefit in removing feral pest animals from out National Parks.
NO PREFERENCES TO LABOR IN 2011 if Shooters Bill goes ahead
The AAT don't have power over the status quo!
The scrutinize over fluoride
National park fringe areas are an escape from the rat race!
BUSHFIRE reconstruction chief Christine Nixon has stated that we need a "rethink" on the place of National Parks, and our relationship with them. Kinglake National Park, and others, were seriously burned and damaged on Black Saturday.
A study by Rees (1984) for the period 1974-84 in Victoria found forest fires were four times more likely to occur in ‘managed state forest’ than in national parks, and that state forest fires burnt eight times the area of park fires. Only 5 per cent of fires started in national parks.
By "managing" our forests and clearing native vegetation, along with the conditions of drought and climate change, we may be actually making them drier, hotter and less dense, and thus adding to the risk of mega-fires.
National Parks have more to do with ecological conservation, biodiversity maintenance, and wilderness recreation, than the creation of safe human sanctuaries. Victoria is already the most damaged and cleared State in Australia.
Maybe our Brumby government should "rethink" about stopping the logging ("management") of state forests and the concrete urban sprawl! With Melbourne's boundaries continually spreading out, more people want to escape the leggo-like sterile building developments and find sanctuary in more natural settings near forested areas. Thus, national park fringes become more attractive not only to fauna but to humans trying to escape the urban rat-race.
Repco Reps more powerful than elected Reps!
Rallying against rally
Will Rally drivers have to use Third World NSW medical services?
Repco Representative visits, Still no reply from NSW Premier
But could we afford the cost of such bushfire shelters?
Thanks, Joan for sharing your knowledge with us.
Aime's article suggested that good protection against bushfires could be achieved at a cost that would be affordable to most people. Yours suggests that the solutions proposed in Aime's article and associated comments could become death traps.
Could I put to you that the bushfire bunker designs she suggested may still be considerably better than no protection at all?
Whether or not this proves to be the case, it seems that the cost, in economic and ecological terms, of giving everyone in bushfire-prone areas near absolute protection against the threat of bushfires may be more than we can afford if we take into account the cost of building bushfire shelters and the clearing of vegetation from around the bushfire shelters.
If we multiply the necessary cleared land per shelter by the number of shelters necessary to house the growing numbers of people living in bushfire-prone areas, whether by choice or necessity, then much more of Australia will necessarily become drier increasing even further the likelihood of bushfires in what little bush is likley to remain.
It is somewhat analogous to the way the waste heat necessarily created by the operation of air-conditioning units in cities like Tokyo actually increases the overall temperature as well as adding to the level of greenhouse gases, even as they afford some respite from the heat inside dwellings.
Instead of going to all this enormous expense and trouble, either as individuals or as a community, we, perhaps, instead, need to consider other alternatives, some of which have already been suggested by others including Tigerquoll in his article "Bushfire bunkers strategy an 'after-the-fact' dead end". These include:
- Measures to make the bush less dry. These can be adapted from proposals by Peter Andrews and the Natural Sequence Farming movement to fix up our rural land (although this would require us to rethink many of our assumptions about the inappropriateness of weeds and non-native plant species);
- make the settlement patterns in bushfire-prone areas more compact;
- discouragement of settlement in bushfire-porne areas in the first place;
- effective bushfire-fighting strategies including early detection and aerial suppression of fire rather than the tired old truck-centric response methodology; and
- the establishment of a nationwide professional bushfire fighting service in place of reliance on volunteers;
Gross government neglect of emergency management
More evidence of harm caused by fluoridation
People feel safer in their cabins!
Like the Titanic, many people didn't want to board the life-boats because they felt safer in their cabins! That's why many were launched almost empty, and then when the inevitable became obvious, there wasn't enough life boats so most of the passengers drowned. The Titanic's record of disaster is so much like climate change! Our "unsinkable" Titanic is our planet Earthship. We can't change human culture or mindset until the end is visible, when it will be too late for most of humanity, and the non-human creatures we will take with us. Anthropocentric attitudes, that the World was made for human existence and couldn't be destroyed by human impact and numbers, will also cause resistence to change. Addressing climate change will be a hard battle, and the existing mindset and culture attached to Capitalistic ideas will form a firm barrier of skeptism. Even Christine Milne doesn't mention exponential population growth! Surely any "green" efforts to cut carbon emissions are negated by more people! More people will make the Titanic sink faster, and mean more fatalities.
What "looming problem"?
Rob said: "However, now that the export market has collapsed, I believe there may be a looming problem with roo numbers". Why should there be a "problem" with roo numbers? The "improved" lands from grazing is about "improving" income, not the land! Kangaroos have lived and evolved in Australia for millions of years without causing damage or destruction. This "pest" status of kangaroos is being propagated by the industry and pseudo-scientists to justify the massacres. Their soft paws do not damage pasture, like livestock, and they have only a fraction of the grazing pressure of sheep! They help fertilise the soils with their urine and excrement, and they do not destroy grasslands when they eat. They should be left to do their job - protect our biodiversity and add value to our landscape. Farmers should be outlawed from shooting native animals that come on their property. They need to value kangaroos and their contribution to our ecology. If they really need to keep out the roos, they should install fences. Kangaroos are natural and well-refined indigenous Australians, not a looming threat!