"I despair when I see that the new campaign to push the Dunoon Dam shows no interest in values that we all claim to hold dear...."

 

Channon Gorge again under threat by the Dunoon Dam proposal?
IMAGE: David Lowe in Echo NetDaily, 17 December 2020

Echo NetDaily, Letter to the Editor, 5 May 2021.

Nan Nicholson, The Channon

I have been an environmental activist for over 50 years (I started when I was a 15 y/o schoolgirl in Melbourne). Some would call me ‘driven’.

Starting with Terania Creek, I have been involved in many campaigns to defend our rainforests, our old growth forests, and our beautiful rural landscapes from gas mining. Now I am fighting for the life of a rainforest that would be destroyed by a dam.

In all these cases I have been propelled by a powerful love of place, and of natural beauty. I think most Australians are familiar with this feeling, wherever they live. The first Australians certainly knew about it, with depths of connection that the rest of us can probably never understand. When the land is your religion, your history, your food source, your home, your responsibility, your future and your reason for being alive – then its preciousness can’t be described.

These two issues of heritage, natural and human, are central to the Dunoon dam debate. Heritage is something that is given to pass on intact, not to destroy in wilful ignorance.

So much of our heritage has been damaged in our region. Most of our original landscape has been transformed, and only a few original, or semi-original, remnants are left to tell us of what we have lost. Our Aboriginal heritage, now the heritage of all Australians, has been whittled away, over and over, while the traditional custodians are repeatedly ‘consulted’ then comprehensively ignored. How insulting is the Welcome to Country ritual when there is not a shred of willingness to act on their stated wishes?

I despair when I see that the new campaign to push the Dunoon Dam shows no interest in values that we all claim to hold dear – our love for our remarkable natural landscapes, forests, ecosystems and species that are found nowhere else on Earth, and our supposed respect for our First Nations peoples.

The natural places of our region have been maintained and preserved for thousands of years by people whose desire to protect them is now swept aside by uninformed claims that ‘the studies are incomplete’.

Detailed ecological and heritage assessments have already established why the Dunoon Dam site is extremely important, both to scientists and to our first people. Surely we can, just once, let the natural environment, and the people who have loved it the longest, prevail.

We know that extremes of drought are coming. Knowledge about droughts from the past can no longer be relied on. One big flood can fill the dam quickly, for sure, but five years of drought and low runoff would give us 253 ha of bare dirt with not a trace of the natural beauty and the millennia of human history that it destroyed with so little need.

Individuals and communities in New South Wales are feeling the emotional and social stress of two horror years in a row

 

One can hear the stress, fatigue, sadness, helplessness and sometimes despair behind a great many of the tweets and posts on Australian social media - especially from those living in regional areas around the country.

One NSW Labor MP recently observed to me that so many people are now in a dark place.

So sadly, this article comes as no surprise…..

The Daily Telegraph, 1 December 2020:

It was thrust into the national spotlight when 33 people tragically lost their lives in last year’s deadly bushfires. But the NSW south coast holds another unenviable title — the suicide capital of NSW.

In a grim reminder of the mental health battle facing our state, the area from Bateman’s Bay to the Victorian border lost 68 people to suicide between 2015 and 2019.

This is compared to the 33 lives lost to the bushfires which ravaged the region from September 2019 through to January 2020.

Analysis of Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) data reveals the south coast has a suicide rate of 21.5 per 100,000 people — the highest rate in NSW and an increase on the previous year.

Taree, Inverell, Yass and the Clarence Valley are the next worst affected. “We are seeing in the coastal regions the cumulative effects of the bushfires, social dislocation and the consequent effects of further trauma through COVID-19,” Professor Ian Hickie of the University of Sydney’s Brain and Mind Centre said. “These are the areas where there are already economic impacts, disruption and now there are additional effects. We talk about this idea of stacked distress.” The figures also reveal a yawning gap between suicide rates in the bush and Sydney, where the overwhelming majority of mental health professionals live.

Gosford and Wyong on the Central Coast are the second and third-worst areas in Greater Sydney, behind the Sydney CBD which has a suicide rate of 14.6 deaths per 100,000 people.

Yet there are 27 other rural and regional locations with a higher suicide rate. Youth mental health expert Professor Patrick McGorry said the statistics “are so shocking — it’s like a war zone”.

“There’s more than 15,500 people who have died in that five-year period (nationwide). If the cause of death were something different — like drownings or car accidents — it would be in people’s faces and on the front page,” he said.

Lifeline: 13 11 14

[my yellow highlighting]

By January 2019 drought affected 99.8 per cent of New South Wales and most of the state was still experiencing drought in January 2020.

The devastating 2019-20 bushfire season commenced early in regional New South Wales. The Clarence Valley fires started at the beginning of June 2019.

The COVID-19 pandemic reached New South Wales on 15 January 2020 and first appeared in the NSW Northern Rivers region on or about 16 March 2020. 

In New South Wales in October 2020 unemployment stood at 6.5% and the number of people in the state who were unemployed for periods ranging from up to 4 weeks to 52 weeks and under 104 weeks rose by 148,300 individuals between October 2019 and October 2020.

By July 2020 the employment growth rate stood at 0.0% to -2.4% across the NSW Northern Rivers region.

Fire, drought, fear of infection, public health orders and economic recession significantly affected how coastal communities have lived their lives in the last two years.

According to the federal Australian Institute of Health and Wellbeing:

The newly established New South Wales Suicide Monitoring System, launched by the NSW Government on 9 November 2020, reported 673 suspected suicides in NSW from 1 January to 30 September 2020. This is similar to the 672 suspected suicides reported for the same period in 2019 (NSW Ministry of Health 2020). Three-quarters of suspected suicides in 2020 were among males and more than half of all suspected suicides occurred among those aged between 25 and 55 (NSW Ministry of Health 2020).

Again, according to the same source, in New South Wales in 2018 there were a total 899 deaths registered as suicide and in 2019 at total of 937 deaths registered as suicide.

 

The number of registered deaths in 2019 exceeded the 22 year high of 1997 which saw 935 deaths registered as suicide.

The rate of NSW ambulance attendances for mental heath issues in 2019 was 114.3 persons per 100,000 population.

In 2018-2019 a total of 297 males and 388 females were hospitalised for self-harm on the NSW North Coast.

The rate of NSW Northern Rivers hospitalisations for self-harm by females in 2018-2019 ranged from Tweed Valley 181.5 persons per 100,000 population, Clarence Valley 128.3 persons, Richmond Valley-Hinterland 169.6 persons, and Richmond Valley-Coastal 104.2 persons. There are as yet no published figures for 2020.

Riddle me this.....

Q: What do Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme, the federal drought relief plan, bushfire recovery response funding and COVID-19 pandemic response have in common?

A: It seems the answer to this riddle is Morrison Government mismanagement, parsimony and, an almost pathalogical inability to keep policy promises.

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The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) commenced on 1 July 2013 and had an annual budget of $148.8 million. The initial 2013-14 budget was underspent by $18 million.

In the following financial years NDIS ran an operating surplus of $0.4 million in 2014-15, $15.8 million in 2015-16, $617 million in 2016-17, $146 million in 2017-18 and $ 694.4 million in 2018-19.

Despite growing concerns about the slow rollout of this scheme and allegations of poor services and needs not met, in 2018 est. $1.6 billion dollars was removed from NDIS and returned to federal government coffers to bolster that financial year's budget bottom line.

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On 1 September 2019 the $5 billion FutureDrought Fund was created by siphoning $3.96 billion from the Building Australia Fund. It consists of the Future Drought Fund Special Account and the investments of the Future Drought Fund. Fund earnings are to be reinvested until the balance reaches $5 billion (expected in 2028-29).

As of 31 March 2020 the Future Drought Fund was holding $3.99 billion, of which a total of $23 million is net earnings – an investment return of only 0.7 per cent. From 1 July 2020 there is a Morrison Government undertaking that the poorly performing fund will transfer $100 million each financial year to the Agriculture Future Drought Resilience Special Account despite the fact that it does not have the required balance of $5 billion.

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On 6 January 2020 Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison announced the federal government would allocate $2 billion for the National Bushfire Recovery Fund (NBRF).

At the time of the announcement $1.6 billion was unallocated.

The 2019-20 bushfire season officially ended on 31 March 2020.

As of 15 May 2020 only a total of $1 billion of the $2 billion in NBRF funding has been spent.

Of the 26 programs being funded by NBRF: 6 do not commence until 1 July 2020; only 3 have fully spent allocated funding with another demand driven program running over budget (funding provided to farmers, fishers, and foresters located in declared bushfire affected areas); and, the remaining 16 programs have spent from 0% (mental health support for emergency services workers) to 89% (additional emergency relief delivered by charities, plus financial counselling) of their allocated funding.

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On 20 March 2020 the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians & Liberal Senator for Tasmania Richard Colbeck announced temporary funding to support Aged Care providers, residents, staff and families - including $234.9 million for a COVID-19 ‘retention bonus’ to ensure the continuity of the workforce for aged care workers in both residential and home care.
This retention bonus would have seen a total of $1,600 tax-free paid in two installments to direct care workers and $1,200 tax-free paid in two installments to those providing care in the home.

However, by 5 June 2020 and ahead of the first installment being delivered, the Morrison Government announced a change to the 'retention bonus'. The bonus will now be capped at $800 for direct care workers, $500 for those providing care in the home and will now be taxed at the individual's marginal tax rate with most aged care workers losing est. >30% of the bonus. 

This measure is expected to save the Morrison Government somewhere in the vicinity of $50 million.

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On 31 March 2020 Scott Morrison headed a joint media event with two of his ministers at which it was announced that the federal government was committing $50 million to fund 3.4 million meals for 41,000 older and/or vulnerable people for 6 weeks – the equivalent of two meals a day for which there is a cost to Meals-on-Wheels clients. In addition $9.3 million was set aside to buy 36,000 emergency food supplies boxes to assist this same group to stay safe at home.

The purchase cost to government of these food supply boxes averages out at ext. $258 per box. It does not appear to be value for money.

On 5 June 2020 The Guardian revealed that only 38 food supply boxes had been delivered to date. In all probability because the contents of these boxes were decided by individual grocery chains and came at a cost to vulnerable recipients of $80 per box from Coles and Woolworths.

An additional impediment was that the Morrison Government initially restricted food supply box eligibility to people over 70 years of age who were registered with the National Disability Insurance Scheme or My Aged Care. This locked out so many older Australians with health condtions which made potential exposure to COVID-19 infection high risk.

Now desperate to rid itself of the remaining 36,962 boxes the only eligibility requirement seems to be that you are a registered online customer of a supermarket chain.

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A reminder that in the middle of a pandemic the old problems remain for land & climate

On 24 April 2020 the NSW Dept. of Primary Industries recorded that 64.6 per cent of the NSW North Coast is still in drought, 21 per cent is drought affected and 14.1 per cent no longer in drought.

This is the Clarence Valley showing by sector In Drought (light ochre to dark orche), Drought Affected (light to darker grey) and Non Drought (green tones):

Clarence Valley LGA outlined by sector
Data current to 24/4/2020 (AEST)

Analysis by NASA shows the NSW fires emitted about 195m tonnes of CO2 from 1 August to December 2019.

Permissions for logging in 2019-2020 firegrounds have been granted by NSW Berejiklian Government.

The Morrison Government is still not managing to present itself in a good light in 2020

Dissatisfaction with the Morrison Government appears to be widespread....

In November 2019 there were fears Tweed Heads could lose hundreds of jobs if Centrelink moves three of its offices to the Gold Coast.

The offices were identified as a national call centre, service centre and administrative centre.

At the time Centrelink denied it was moving out of the region.

But less than three months later, on 22 Februrary 2020, Centrelink announced it was indeed closing its Tweed Heads office.

Branches at Newcastle and Newport in New South Wales and Mornington in Victoria will also close their doors.

This news was reported as far away as the UK:

Some offices will be replaced with a so-called 'agency' or kiosk that will be staffed by one person.

Each day more than 66,000 people walk into Centrelink offices around the country.

This is being dwarfed by the amount of people who access government services online, with half a million people logging into the MyGov website each day.

Former opposition leader Bill Shorten has claimed the closing of some Centrelink locations is a move by the government to cover costs in other areas at the expense of citizens.

'This government's more interested in band aiding a dodgy budget surplus and it's going to do it by shafting everyday Centrelink users,' Mr Shorten said.

Services Australia, which oversees Centrelink, said in its annual report that it is trying to 'maximise the benefits of digital capabilities while reducing the costs of administering payments'…..

In Mornington, Mayor Sam Hearn told 9 News that he is furious. He says 35,000 people in the area could be worse off when the local branch closes at the end of the next month. Mr Hearn is now urging Prime Minister Scott Morrison to intervene.

Given Mornington is in Australian Minister for Health, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service and Cabinet & Liberal MP for Flinders Greg Hunt’s electorate, the mayor’s fury may yet be translated into action by his local member who appears to have been as much in the dark about these closure as everyone else.

However, the residents of Tweed Heads and environs have little chance of their dismay registering with Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook, ‘Scotty From Marketing’ Morrison, as Tweed Heads is in a federal electorate which has been held by the same Labor MP for the last fifteen years and six federal elections.

The Daily Examiner, 22 February 2020:

DAVE and Jan Binskin are in quarantine in “a sh-thole” in Darwin. After being evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship where two people died and 620 people tested positive for coronavirus, the Casino couple and 170 other Australians are in another 14 days’ quarantine in a mining compound.

They were on the ship in Japan when the Australian Government notified them they could return to Australia, but face further quarantine.

The conditions at the compound are terrible, Mr Binskin said. “Morrison conned us. They didn't prepare for us and the people opposite us didn't even have water for six hours,” he said.

Their quarantine sounds more like a prison.

“They locked us into an area with double fences around us and then decided it was a fire risk and took down the fences,” he said.

The Binskins were excited to be going back to Australia, he said, but conditions were worse than on the boat.

They have single beds, the room is unclean, the TVs don’t work and they’re not allowed to have alcohol, Mr Binskin said.

“We were told they didn't want the old people drinking and falling over,” he said.

“We can’t use the pool, we don't even have a garbage bin and some people don’t even have bed linen.” The couple tested negative for coronavirus.

“The government has forgotten about us,” Mr Binskin said in a flat voice. With nothing to do in the compound, Mr Binskin said his wife Jan liked knitting and providing her with wool and needles would help.

“It’s against human rights,” he said.

Had they disembarked in Japan they would have been free to leave, but were told they would be looked after in Australia.

“They didn’t prepare for us,” Mr Binskin said…...

He said many people at the compound had received letters from their local member of parliament.“We’ve heard nothing from Kevin Hogan (Member for Page),” Mr Binskin said.

ABC News, 23 February 2020:

The Country Women's Association (CWA) has slammed the Federal Government over its drought assistance, describing the latest funding announcement as "disappointing, infuriating, insulting and disrespectful".

But the CWA said despite repeatedly seeking more federal funding for its drought programs since September, it only learned of the voucher announcement on Wednesday evening.

"It was a total disregard, it's disrespectful ... it would have been nice to have been consulted," national president Tanya Cameron said.

"It's very disappointing. It's actually infuriating. It's very annoying. I'm really quite angry.

"It's quite insulting and it's disrespectful to an organisation that has been around as long as ours has."

The CWA has written to the Government to say it will not be participating in the outreach program as it is currently proposed.

It said its state branches did not support the process of administering $500 vouchers at public events, such as barbecues or roadshows, as they understood the Government intended.

"We've explained to the Federal Government on a number of occasions very clearly why, for NSW, the vouchers don't work," CWA NSW chief executive Danica Leys said.

"I don't think the provision of assistance in this way should be tied to having to attend an event to get it."

In New South Wales, the CWA has distributed more than $16 million of drought aid in recent years, directly depositing funding in the recipients' bank accounts.

"People are given the dignity and respect to make the decision they need to make," Ms Leys said of the CWA system.

"Obviously someone in the federal bureaucracy thinks they know better how to get it out.

"If they know how to get it out, then they should perhaps think about doing it themselves before verballing us and telling us that they're partnering with us.

Ms Ley said there were many questions around the logistics of how people would get the vouchers.

"We absolutely support further investment into drought-affected communities, and vouchers can be helpful for some people, but a $500 voucher at the outset is quite minimal in nature," she said.

"That is not what is needed ... not to sound ungrateful, but more than that is needed."……

It appears that almost singlehandedly Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison may have sunk his own government.

"Around 77.8 per cent of the population reported indirect exposure, by having a friend or family member that had property damage; friend/family that had property threatened; had their travel/holiday plans affected; were exposed to the physical effects of smoke; or felt anxious or worried. This equates to around 15.4 million adults." ["Exposure and the impact on attitudes of the 2019-20 Australian Bushfires" 2020]

In January 2020 the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods and the Social Research Centre collected data from more than three thousand Australian adults from the probability sample ‘Life in Australia’ about their exposure to the bushfires that occurred across the spring and summer of late 2019 and into early 2020. 

Researchers also asked about a range of attitudes towards the environment, institutions, and political issues. 

Data from the January 2020 ANU poll was able to be linked to previous polls at the individual level.

This is the result........

Biddle, N, Edwards, B, Herz, D & Makkai, T, (2020) "Exposure and the impact on attitudes of the 2019-20 Australian Bushfires":

Abstract 

The bushfires that occurred over the 2019/20 Australian spring and summer were unprecedented in scale and wide in their geographic impact. 

Between 20 January and 3 February 2020, the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods and the Social Research Centre collected data from more than three thousand Australian adults about their exposure to the bushfires, as well as a range of other attitudes and beliefs. 

We estimate that the vast majority of Australians (78.6 per cent) were impacted in one way or another either directly, through their family/friends, or through the physical effects of smoke. 

Furthermore, we estimate that around 2.9 million adult Australians had their property damaged, their property threatened, or had to be evacuated. 

This is the first estimate of self-reported impacts on that scale from a nationally representative, probability-based survey. 

Our survey findings also show that subjective wellbeing amongst the Australian population has declined since the start of spring 2019, people are less satisfied with the direction of the country, and have less confidence in the Federal Government. 

People are more likely, however, to think that the environment and climate change are issues and a potential threat to them, with a significant decline in the proportion of people who support new coal mines. 

By linking individuals through time, we are also able to show that some of these changes are attributable to exposure to the bushfires.

DOCUMENT Exposure_and_impact_on_attitudes_of_the_2019-20_Australian_Bushfires_publication.pdf (PDF, 685.59 KB):


General satisfaction with life before and after the bushfire season 

In the October 2019 ANUpoll 65.2 per centsaid they were either satisfied or very satisfied with the way the country is heading. By January 2020 this had declined to 59.5 per cent of adult Australians. 

Over the same period, there was a small (but significant) average decline in life satisfaction from 7.05 (on a scale from 0 to 10) to 6.9. 

Levels of confidence in institutions 

Confidence in the federal government declined by 10.9 percentage points from October 2019 to 27.3 per cent by January 2020. 

Confidence in other institutions was quite stable over the period, and higher than for the Federal Government. In January 2020: 

• 48.8 per cent of the population had confidence in the public service (52.1 per cent in October 2019); 

• 73.8 per cent had confidence in the police (75.8 per cent in October 2019); 

• 40.4 per cent had confidence in the State/Territory Government where they lived (not asked in 2019); and 

• 93.0 per cent reported confidence in organisations responsible for firefighting in regional or rural areas (not asked in 2019). 

Voting patterns between October 2019 and January 2020 

The per cent of people who said they would vote for the Coalition if an election was held that day declined from 40.4 per cent in October 2019 to 34.8 per cent in January 2020. 

The largest relative increase (8.8 per cent to 10.5 per cent) was for those who would vote for a party other than the Coalition, Labor, or the Greens. 

Views on party leaders between June 2019 and January 2020 

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s average rating declined from 5.25 to 3.92 out of 10. 

Leader of the Opposition Anthony Albanese’s average rating increased from 4.87 to 5.04. 

Changes in attitudes towards the environment 

49.7 per cent of people reported aspects of the environment as the most important issue or second most important issue facing Australia in January 2020 compared to 41.5 per cent in October 2019. 

Reporting fires, natural disasters or extreme weather as the most or second most important issue were close to non-existent in October 2019. This increased to 10.2 percent by January 2020. 

Concern about most specific issues increased from 2008 to January 2020, with the greatest increase for: 

• loss of native vegetation or animal species or biodiversity (a 13 percentage point increase); 

• drought and drying (a 9 percentage point increase). 

Support for new coal mines have declined since the May 2019 election. In June 2019 45.3 per cent said yes to the question ‘In your opinion, should the Government allow the opening of news coal mines?’. This had declined to 37.0 per cent in January 2020.

Capital cities versus the rest 

There is majority support by residents in both capital and those living outside of capital cities that global warming is very serious, and that global warming will be a threat to them. These views are more strongly held by capital city residents. 

Only 35.6 per cent of capital and 40.1 per cent of non-capital city residents support new coal mines and there is no statistically significant difference in views between the two. 

Did exposure to the bushfires affect changes in satisfaction, confidence or voting intentions? 

Direct or indirect exposure to bushfires did not statistically affect changes in life satisfaction between October and January. 

Indirect exposure to the bushfires affected levels of confidence in government and satisfaction with the direction of the country. Those exposed reported greater declines in both confidence and satisfaction. 

Although there was no significant direct affect from the bushfires on reporting a change in voting intention, exposure to the bushfires was associated with a significant decline in the likeability of Prime Minister Scott Morrison......

It appears that almost singlehandedly Australian Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott John Morrison - aka #ScottyFromMarketing - may have sunk his own government.