Australia faces an era of mass extinctions

For decades international scientists have been warning Australia that this island continent would feel the worst environmental impacts of global warming first.

And for just as many decades (with the exception of the years between 2007 and 2013), as both governments and the governed, this country has been ignoring these warnings.

The end result is that Australia now lists 83 species of higher plants, 23 mammal species, 22 species of birds and at least 4 frogs species as having been driven into extinction since 1788. 

There are many hundreds more threatened species and ecological communities. See: C'wealth EPBC Act List of Threatened Fauna.

While we as a nation and people have not yet achieved 100 per cent extinction in certain flora and fauna groups, climate change has arrived to assist in turning this unique landmass and its coastal waters into a barren wasteland. 

This year alone has seen 93 per cent of The Great Barrier Reef experience coral bleaching and 700 kilometres of the Gulf of Carpentaria suffer widespread mangrove dieback with saltmash loss, while the Great Southern Reef lost 100 kms of its giant kelp forests in 2011 leading to the functional extinction of 370sq km of rocky cool-climate reefs, extending down the coast from Kalbarri, about 570km north of Perth, Western Australia. 

Now reputable institutions and senior scientists are giving us another urgent warning about extinctions to come if Australia doesn't stop acting as if the natural environment hasn't changed for the worse in the last 200 years.

SCIENTISTS’DECLARATION: ACCELERATING FOREST, WOODLAND AND GRASSLAND DESTRUCTION IN AUSTRALIA

Australia’s land clearing rate is once again among the highest in the world.

Remaining forests and woodlands are critical for much of our wildlife, for the health and productivity of our lands and waters, and for the character of our nation. Beginning in the 1990s, governments gradually increased protection of these remaining forests and woodlands.

However, those laws are now being wound back.

The State of Queensland has suffered the greatest loss of forests and woodlands. But while stronger laws by the mid-2000s achieved dramatic reductions of forest and woodland loss, recent weakening of laws reversed the trend. Loss of rtinture forest has more than trebled since 2009. In Victoria, home to four of Australia’s five most heavily cleared bioregions, land clearing controls were weakened in 2013, and in New South Wales, proposed biodiversity laws provide increased opportunities for habitat destruction.

Of the eleven world regions highlighted as global deforestation fronts, eastern Australia is the only one in a developed country. This problem threatens much of Australia’s extraordinary biodiversity and, if not redressed, will blight the environmental legacy we leave future generations.

Australia’s wildlife at risk

Already, Australia’s environment has suffered substantial damage from clearing of forests, woodlands and grasslands, including serious declines in woodland birds and reptiles.  Vast numbers of animals are killed by forest and woodland destruction. For example, between 1998 and 2005 an estimated 100 million native birds, reptiles and mammals were killed because of destruction of their habitat in NSW; in Queensland, the estimate was 100 million native animals dying each year between 1997 and 1999. As land clearing once again escalates, so too will these losses of wildlife.

The loss of habitat is among the greatest of threats to Australia’s unique threatened species, imperiling 60% of Australia’s more than 1,700 threatened species. Habitat protection is essential for preventing more species from becoming threatened in the future, adding to our burgeoning threatened species lists. Habitat removal eliminates the plants and animals that lived in it; increases risks to wildlife from introduced predators; impacts surface and groundwater-dependent ecosystems, and fragments habitat so that individuals are unable to move through the landscape. It also reduces the ability of species to move in response to climate change.

The societal costs of forest and woodland destruction

Forest and woodland destruction also causes long-term costs to farmers, governments and society. Removal of native vegetation:

·         Hastens erosion and reduces fertility of Australia’s ancient and fragile soils 

·         Increases the risk of soils becoming saline 

·         Exacerbates drought 

·         Reduces numbers of native pollinators and many wildlife species (such as woodland birds and insectivorous bats) that control agricultural pests 

·         Reduces shade for livestock from heat and wind.

Continued and increasing removal of forests, woodlands and grasslands increases the cost of restoring landscapes and reduces the chance of success. For example, the Australian Government has committed to plant 20 million trees by 2020. Yet many more than 20 million trees are cleared every year in Queensland alone.

Forest and woodland destruction increases the threat to some of Australia’s most iconic environmental assets. Coral health on The Great Barrier Reef has declined precipitously from the effects of high temperatures associated with climate change, poor water quality, and the flow-on impacts it triggers (such as crown-of-thorns outbreaks). Native vegetation removal from catchments that flow into the Great Barrier Reef liberates topsoil and contaminants, reducing water quality and threatening the health and resilience of the Great Barrier Reef. Governments have already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on this problem, with estimates of the full cost of restoring water quality as high as AUD$10 billion.

Native vegetation is a major carbon sink. Forest and woodland destruction is the fastest-growing contributor to Australia’s carbon emissions, as it transfers the carbon that was stored in the vegetation to the atmosphere. Hence, Australia’s increasing forest and woodland destruction threatens its ability to meet its commitments under four major international treaties: the Convention on Biological Diversity, the World Heritage Convention, the Convention to Combat Desertification, and the Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Urgently-needed solutions

·         Develop and implement a strategy to end net loss of native vegetation, and restore over-cleared landscapes

·         Recognise all biodiversity, not just threatened species, in policy and legislation for the management of native vegetation

·         Establish clear, transparent and repeatable national reporting of clearing of native vegetation

·         Use rigorous biodiversity assessment methods for assessing clearing requests, accounting for all potential impacts, including cumulative and indirect impacts

·         Identify habitats that are of high conservation value for complete protection

·         For unavoidable losses of native vegetation, require robust and transparent offsets that meet the highest standards and improve biodiversity outcomes

Thirteen years ago, scientists from across the world expressed their grave concern about ongoing high rates of land forest and woodland destruction in the Australian State of Queensland. For a while, the warning was heeded, and the Queensland state government acted to bring land clearing to historically low levels.

The progress made then is now being undone. Forest and woodland destruction has resumed at increasingly high rates. This return of large-scale deforestation to Australia risks further irreversible environmental consequences of international significance.

Today, scientists from across the world (including those listed), in conjunction with scientific societies and the delegates of the Society for Conservation Biology (Oceania) Conference, call upon Australian governments and parliaments, especially those of Queensland and New South Wales, to take action. We call for the prevention of a return to the damaging past of high rates of woodland and forest destruction, in order to protect the unique biodiversity and marine environments of which Australia is sole custodian.

Signatories

Scientific Societies

·         The Society for Conservation Biology Oceania

·         The Ecological Society of Australia

·         The Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales

·         The Australian Wildlife Management Society

And 200 senior scientists from Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Malaysia, Sweden, Denmark, United Kingdom, and United States of America whose names can be found here.

8 July 2016

On the subject of professional journalism - using Leigh Sales as an example of the disconnect between citizens and reporters

Excerpt from Tim Dunlop writing at medium.com on the subject of professional journalism and the very real, deep disconnect between citizens and reporters, 8 July 2016:

These differences are not merely minor quibbles: they point to a fundamentally different understanding of what role journalists play in a democratic society.

And here is a key point: What they point to is not just a disconnect between the expectations of audience and journalists, but to the lack of power that audiences feel in regard to their elected representatives.

This is something that goes much wider than this exchange on Twitter and it is something that I don't think very many journalists really understand, so it is worth lingering on: audiences — citizens — feel powerless. They feel that events are outside their control and that they are forever being manipulated, lied to and pushed around by people with more power and influence than them, and that that includes journalists.

Outside of voting, and maybe the odd protest, citizens feel that they can have very little effect on the political process, and they therefore expect the media — who they see as powerful compared to themselves — to fulfill that role and exercise that power on their behalf. This is a view that is encouraged by journalists themselves when they describe their work as a profession, or boast about their "insider" connections, or when they describe themselves in terms of being a watchdog on power, a fourth estate in the national polity. It is doubly reinforced when voters see journalists and politicians on a first-name basis with each other (as happened in much of the television coverage of election night) or when they see them all attending the same parties.

This is the real disconnect at the heart of the criticism Sales copped on Twitter, that her audience understood her comments to indicate, not just a failure to act properly, but a failure to understand what her job even was. Their own powerlessness — they will never get a chance to question John Howard — turns into a frustration with the profession who they see as having the power to do something about their concerns, and failing to do it. To them, Sales' Tweet was saying, no, that's not our job.

The question that arises is obvious: who is right here? Well, in one sense, there isn't an answer. No-one is right or wrong, both sides just have different expectations about the nature of the job.

But that isn't really good enough. In fact, to leave it at that would be a very journalistic response. It would be to avoid the judgement that I am saying I think is at heart of the disconnect I am trying to describe.

So I don't think there is any doubt. Sales, and any journalist who agrees with what she said, is wrong. The audience is right. Not in any sort of the-customer-is-always-right sort of way, but because what is the point of a journalism that so fundamentally contradicts the expectations of the audience for which it is created?

What a significant section of the audience heard when they saw the original Tweet by Leigh Sales was: I am on his side, not on yours. I have more empathy with his point of view than I do with my audience's. In expressing admiration for John Howard's press conference, she was telling her audience that she approaches her entire job in a way that gives politicians the benefit of doubt and she was confirming what many in the audience feel in their bones, that journalists too often come across as siding with power rather than challenging it.

That mightn't be what she meant, but she and every other journalist needs to realise that that is how it was understood. And that that underlying approach goes to the heart of how they do their job.

It is all very well to say, well, this is just how we do it, but that would be the worst sort of professional hubris, tantamount to saying, we don't care what you, our audience think.

Leigh Sales has one of the most high-profile political jobs in the land, but in Tweeting what she did she was telling her audience that she is maintaining standards and practices that fundamentally contradict their expectations.

She and other journalists can, of course, simply dismiss all this as yet another example of the Twitter "echo chamber" and reassure themselves with declarations that Twitter is not representative of the wider audience, and that the views expressed there can be safely ignored.

But I think that would be a mistake.

Another perspective on the issue from Jim Parker…..

The Failed Estate, 7 July 2016:

There’s a lesson for Australian media here. Journalists need to stop seeing themselves as players. Their job is to represent the public to decision-makers, not the other way around.  We don’t want them to make forecasts; we want to them to demand answers to simple questions. We want them, beyond rare exceptions, to stop reporting self-serving anonymous scuttlebutt and to insist that people go on the record. We would prefer that instead of guessing and surmising and speculating, they just said “I really don’t know what will happen next. But here are the facts.”  And we would prefer their editors to stop asking them to issue “hot takes” on every little brain fart in Canberra and leave them to get their teeth into a story once in a while.

As Russell Marks writes in The Monthly, in perhaps the best analysis of the media’s failures this election, journalists can do us all a big favour by giving up the pretence that they are god-like electoral analysts or judges of spin. Stop the second-hand running commentary on how the management of issues will ‘play’ in the electorate, turn your bullshit detectors up to 10 and start testing the “perceptions” against the facts.

“While intelligent journalists are running themselves ragged acting as unglorified public relations assistants for politicians, they’re not testing statements and checking claims,” Marks writes. “News reportage becomes quite literally a matter of ‘Turnbull said A, while Shorten said B’, which is close to entirely useless without context. In the end, we are told, the voters get it right. But that expression of faith in the democratic process depends on faith in the fourth estate to present political realities so that voters can make sensible choices.”

Journalism is a tough job, even tougher when your resources are constantly being cut, the bosses are asking you to file constantly and social media is bagging you. But journalists can make it a lot easier for themselves by giving up the pretence that they are all-seeing political sages and focus instead on asking good questions, reporting facts, placing those facts in context and admitting that neither they, nor anyone, has any idea about what happens next.

In journalism at least, god is dead.

CSIRO implements Abbott-Turnbull Government's climate change denial agenda?

The latest CSIRO chief executive Dr. Larry Marshall (with the organisation since January 2015) clearly states in this podcast that the type of scientific investigation to be conducted in the future will be dictated by the federal government ("the customer") and implies that the Abbott-Turnbull Government is unbiased when it comes to climate change.......

https://www.buzzfeed.com/ginarushton/secret-tape-reveals-why-climate-change-is-off-the-csiros-age?utm_term=.tjdmAJnAG#.yr3Dy3Eyz

Both an Abbott and Turnbull appointee, Dr. Marshall was previously employed by a Silicon Valley-based private capital venture firm and, was sued in 2015; Shareholders in failed laser technology company Arasor claim Dr Marshall was a central figure in the company’s collapse, alleging he and other directors engaged in misleading and ­deceptiveconduct, as well as ­serious breaches of the Corporations and ASIC acts inrelation to the company’s financial reports and a disastrous $81 million float.

Meanwhile, as Marshall trashes the international reputation of the CSIRO, a newly resurgent One Nation is all set to strengthen the hand of  climate change denialists' in Coalition ranks.....

Independent Australia, 7 July 2016:

Hanson, who leads her own One Nation party, has won election to Australia’s Senate and, as counting continues, she could bring more candidates with her.

But as well as pushing xenophobia and division, the Queensland politician will also take a most extreme brand of climate science denial with her into the Senate.

As I wrote on The Guardian, Hanson’s party has been taking cues on climate science from one of the country’s most enthusiastic and relentless pushers of climate science denial, former coal miner Malcolm Roberts.

Roberts is the volunteer project leader of the Galileo Movement, a Queensland-based project launched in 2011 to fight laws to put a price on greenhouse gas emissions.

Roberts is also standing as a Senate candidate for One Nation and still has an outside chance of being elected, although Hanson is more enthusiastic about his chances than some analysts. The “wacky world view” of Roberts has since been reported by the Courier-Mail and the Sydney Morning Herald.

If you hang around the climate change issue for long enough, then at some point you’ll likely come across the extreme end of science denial and the conspiracy theories that Roberts represents.

It goes a bit like this. Humans are not causing climate change. Government-paid climate scientists and their agencies are corrupt. The United Nations is in league with international bankers to defraud the world. It’s all about control. 

That sort of stuff.

The Galileo Movement was founded in 2011 by Queensland retirees Case Smit and John Smeed.

A year earlier, the pair had organised a speaking tour for British climate science denialist Lord Christopher Monckton — a tour that attracted sponsorship from mining billionaire Gina Rinehart.

Roberts became the project manager. The group pulled together an “advisory council” that includes the likes of Fred Singer, Monckton, Pat Michaels and Richard Lindzen. 

The advisory group once included influential political blogger Andrew Bolt, until the News Ltd writer claimed Roberts had been spreading anti-Jewish conspiracy theories — a charge the Galileo Movement denied.

The climate policies of Hanson’s One Nation party have been quite literally cut and pasted from the Galileo Movement.

Those policies include calls for investigations into the “corruption of climate science” and the teaching of climate “scepticism” in schools.

After gaining enough votes to secure her own seat, Hanson told The Saturday Paper:

“This whole climate change is not based on empirical evidence and we are being hoodwinked. Climate change is not due to humans.”

Elsewhere, One Nation also reflects Roberts’ paranoia over United Nation’s policies to support environmentally sustainable development — known as Agenda 21. In the eyes of One Nation, Agenda 21 morphs into a sinister control program leaving “no person outside of its reach.”

Australia Infrastructure Development doesn't know its rivers

The Message from Iluka....

Clarence Valley Independent, June 2016:

Ed,

I read with some bewilderment that a “summit” had been held in Casino last week by AID (Australia Infrastructure Development) for the development of a mega port to accommodate massive ships in the Lower Clarence River.

Thought I’d Google here to see what is going on: www.aid-australia.com.au.

This proposal would completely destroy the lower Clarence.

It would appear to be a box ticking exercise as part of a formal application process to government.

Ticking the “community consultation” box.

Community consultation indeed!

This company has completely failed to consult the right communities.

Surely the business people and residents of Iluka, Yamba, Maclean, Grafton and all the smaller villages and islands along the river should have been the target audiences?

One would think the company’s “summit” might have been held in one of the fine clubs that are at Iluka, Yamba, or perhaps Maclean or Grafton, rather than Casino over 100kms away.

And hey, not even the right river! Casino is on the Richmond River. Go figure.

Perhaps AID just had some bad advice about matching the right town/s to the right river.

Or is this just being a tad sneaky? Trying to keep us all in the dark until the paperwork has been lodged.

Or worse still, trying to bluff us and the government that AID conducted extensive “community consultation”.

Either way, there will be huge opposition to this MEGA PORT proposal if it is ever considered.

Tony Belton, Iluka

The Message from Grafton....

The Daily Examiner, Letter to the Editor, 8 Jul 2016:

Ugly transformation

THE Yamba Port and Rail proposal first raised its ugly head three or four years ago, and now the promoters, Australian Infrastructure Developments, and Deakin Capital Pty Ltd, are ramping up the pressure, promoting their multi billion dollar, 36sqkm obscenity, which would completely transform the lower Clarence into an export port facility to rival Newcastle.

Gone would be the fishing, sugar and tourist industries that are the current economic drivers, replaced by heavy industry and its associated noise, air and water pollution, as huge freighters, tankers, and container ships, spewing their poisonous bilge sludge into the river as they go, replace the current pleasure craft and fishing vessels.

Gone would be the quiet relaxing retirement destination described in a series of Government development strategies over the past 20 years, as coastal villages of Iluka, and Harwood, along with communities on Palmers Island and elsewhere, are decimated to allow for the widening and dredging of the river estuary, to four times the current depth.

Gone would be the culturally significant Dirrangun Reef, sacred to the Yaegl people, as part of that massive dredging.

Gone would be the supposedly protected significant agricultural land on the delta, replaced by endless kilometres of wharfs and warehouses, and massive holding pens for the proposed live cattle export, their stench wafting over the urban centres of Yamba and Maclean.

And don't forget border security, with the proponents making provision for a naval base that, in the event of conflict, could see the area become an enemy target.

There are of course the obvious obstacles to such a scheme; the sacred reef, the unstable delta soils which will collapse into the river as a result of the dredging.

There are regular floods that will require mountains of fill to raise the entire project area above flood level, a barrier that is bound to divert those flood waters across Yamba, causing even worse flooding there.

Then there is the added problem of climate change and rising sea levels. Even a modest .75 of a metre within 80 years will see most of the land proposed for the industrial complex inundated at high tide, a situation that will worsen even further with the passage of time.

It's hard to take such a proposal seriously, but over the years we have heard reports that politicians, state and federal, various northern NSW councils, including some of our local councillors, meeting with the scheme's proponents. The Northern Star's report featuring a happy Australian Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce, with arms around the proponents smiling for the cameras, adds a worrying dimension to this abhorrent proposal.

It's time for our leaders to come clean, tell us exactly what has, and is still being discussed behind closed doors, and if this proposal is pie in the sky, then to inform the proponents of that fact, and tell them to back off and put their foreign investment into something useful, like renewable energy.

John Edwards, South Grafton

The Message from Yamba....

Post-Australian Federal Election 2016: feel the angst rising

Voter text to candidate, Twitter, 2 July 2016

Data shows that 18.94% of those eligible to vote in Cowper didn’t cast a ballot according to the Australian Electoral Commission on 5 July 2016.

ABC News, 4 July 2016:

Complaints are growing in Western Australia's north about late changes and limited polling options, which left hundreds of people unable to cast a vote in the federal election.

Shire of Halls Creek CEO Rodger Kerr-Newell said dozens of tourists were turned away from the town's polling station on Saturday.

"There were issues ... there was not interstate voting," Mr Kerr-Newell said.

"Halls Creek has a very large population of tourists at this time of year and they were denied the opportunity to vote."

According to Mr Kerr-Newell, several tourists came to the shire to complain….

Complaints have also surfaced from several Aboriginal communities in the Pilbara and Kimberley.

WA Today, 6 July 2016:

Callers to Radio 6PR's Breakfast rumour file said on Tuesday several polling places across WA ran out of ballot papers on election day, leaving many with no opportunity to vote.

Polling stations near Caversham, in the electorate of Hasluck, were said to have combined leaving a shortfall of ballot papers come the afternoon…..

In the electorate of Pearce, it was claimed the only polling station in Aveley and Bullsbrook ran out of ballot papers, as did the only two available in Quinns Rock…..

There is also trouble brewing in the knife-edge Perth seat of Cowan, with Sky News reporting that up to 150 votes were not properly signed off by an AEC officer, potentially rendering them void.

ABC News, 7 July 2016:

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) and the voting system have come under intense scrutiny as reports of ballot issues in several seats continue to emerge.

Four states have been affected by mishaps, including shortages and incorrect distribution of ballot papers.

Many people have claimed they were unable to vote on July 2 and some votes have even been ruled informal due to AEC errors…..

In the electorate of Pearce, 105 voters were given Victorian Senate ballot papers, meaning their votes have now been deemed informal.

The blunder happened under the supervision of an early polling mobile ballot team which visited various health and aged care establishments across the region….

Queensland senator Glenn Lazarus, who has not been returned, said many Queensland voters had contacted him to complain they were unable to vote due to polling booths running out of ballot papers.

The Glenn Lazarus team is compiling information from those around the country who were unable to vote which will then be lodged with the AEC as a bulk complaint.

Mr Lazarus has created an online form for people to complete which has been shared more than 600 times on Facebook.

"According to many people they were told by AEC staff to check their name off the electoral roll so they could be excused from voting to avoid a fine because the polling booth had run out of ballot papers," Mr Lazarus said…..

The AEC said it was investigating reports of wrong ballot papers being handed out in the electorate of Higgins.

For the first six minutes of voting at a South Yarra polling station, voters were given ballot papers for a neighbouring seat.

ABC political analyst Barrie Cassidy said an ABC staff member was one of several people who received the wrong paper.

"He went back and said, 'It's not the right paper'," Cassidy said.

"They got the supervisor. They noticed other such ballot papers had been torn off."…..

Independent candidate Rob Oakeshott and Greens candidate Carol Vernon, who both ran for the seat of Cowper, have lodged an official complaint with the AEC claiming the neighbouring seat ran out of Cowper absentee ballot papers.

Those who voted in the electorate of Lyne were reportedly told they would be signed off the electoral roll but would not be able to cast a ballot.

"People turned out to vote and didn't have the chance to have their say, and it's their right to do so," Mr Oakeshott told the Coffs Coast Advocate.

He said it was unclear how many people were unable to vote but he urged the AEC to clarify the issue.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 July 2016:

Fresh voting controversy has hit Western Australia after residents at a nursing home in the Pearce electorate were counted as informal voters after being given Victorian ballot papers by mistake.

The Australian Electoral Commission confirmed a mobile voting unit gave the 105 residents the Victorian senate papers on Thursday.

"The Senate is a statewide vote, and I can't speculate on what the impact might be, except to say that together with 47,000 votes already deemed informal [in WA] those 105 are also informal and will play no further part in the determination of the election result," the commission's state manager Marie Neilson told News Talk 6PR on Thursday.  

ABC News, 8 July 2016:

On election day, Defence said just under 1,300 ADF members voted at the special polling stations in the exercise area, but that the Army had to truck another 1,400 or so to civilian booths in places such as Port Augusta.

Defence said AEC staff and volunteers stayed back for up to three hours - until 9pm - to process the huge lines.

But it still was not enough.

In a statement Defence said: "628 Army members did not cast their votes. Of this number, 543 are from the 1st Brigade."

SOS Save Happy Paws Haven

Happy Paws Haven, Eatonville, NSW, 27 June 2016:

Dear Friends of Happy Paws Haven

Thank you so very much for your support it has really made a significant difference.

We very very much appreciate it!

We really need your help!

We have just re-launched today a crowdfunding winter appeal.

We are asking those who have supported us for a donation.

Every little bit helps us and goes directly to the animals in our care.

Could you also please share this email with your friends and those you know may have supported us in the past.

Please ask them to do the same as we are struggling financially.

We have approximately 70 dogs and puppies,  and nearly 130 cats and kittens in our care, at foster carers and at our shelter locations. 

We are also renovating the dog shelters and cat enclosures to make them warmer for the animals for winter!
We have so many mouths to feed!

We have 6 puppies and 20 kittens to desex and immunise.

The good news is that we have already rehomed over 80 animals this year since January 2016.

Please help us raise the funds we urgently need for us to continue!

We urgently need money to make sure the puppies and kittens, cats and dogs in our care are warm for winter, have the food and vet care they need as we are struggling financially!

Please, please donate to this very worthy cause.

To donate:

https://www.youcaring.com/happy-paws-haven-inc-570458

All donations over $2 are tax deductible! We have DGR status.

Our BSB 633000 Our account is 130786031, Our Account name is Happy Paws Haven Inc.

Regards

Sally Rogers

MBA Macquarie, BSc (Bio-Med),

Founder, President, Public Officer and General Manager

HappyPaws Haven

140 Tindal Road

Eatonsville NSW 2460

Your local animal welfare charity

Rescue Officer Belgian Shepherd Club, NSW

www.happypawsgrafton.com.au

www.happypawshaven.com.au

www.facebook.com/pages/Happy-Paws-Haven-Inc/76224320885

Just because it is beautiful......(12)

Green Sea Turtle, Kona Coast, Hawaii

What will happen to the more than 40,000 year-old fishing rights if the NSW Clarence River Estuary is industrialised?

Dredging activities impact on the marine environment by smothering benthic biota and habitats and degrading water quality through elevated turbidites and bioavailability of pollutants. In addition, alterations in seabed morphology and bathymetry, and consequently to wave energy and water circulation, result in modified patterns of littoral drift (NSW Fisheries 1999, Watchorn 2000). The effects of this can include progressive accretion of sediments on some parts of the coast, and erosion in other areas (Winstanley 1995). Biota are obliterated during dredge removal and may take months or years to recover (Coleman et al. 1999). Species directly affected include invertebrates, fish and seagrass, although mangrove and saltmarsh communities are indirectly affected through altered water flows within estuaries (Edgar 2001). Dredging has been implicated in the disappearance of some invertebrates from port environments, such as a number of hydroid species that have not been recorded in Hobsons Bay, Victoria, since the advent of dredging programs (J.E. Watson, pers. comm., cited in Poore and Kudenov 1978b). Studies elsewhere have shown that the long-term influences of dredging on benthic infauna occur through permanent modification of the sedimentary environment (Jones and Candy 1981). [Commonwealth Dept. of Environment, National Oceans Office, Impact from the ocean/land interface, 2006]

Many North Coast Voices readers will be familiar with reports that deep and/or sustained dredging of tidal rivers and ocean harbours negatively impacts marine biodiversity resulting in species richness and abundance declining over time.

Environmental problems in the Port of Gladstone around 794kms to the north of the Port of Yamba have been in the news for years.

The Clarence River estuary is the largest combined river-ocean fishery in New South Wales and home to the biggest commercial fishing fleet in this state.

It is also a river which for a significant part of its length is held under Native Title by the Yaegl people (Yaegl People #1 & Yaegl People #2) of the Clarence Valley - from the waters approximately half-way between Ulmarra and Brushgrove right down to the eastern extremities of the northern and southern breakwater walls at the mouth of the river.

Here are the official maps outlining in green Native Title officially held to date:

On 2 June 2016 the CEO of Australian Infrastructure Developments was careful to note that this speculative company - lobbying for heavy industrialisation of the Clarence River estuary via a mega port covering 36 sq. kms or 27.2% of the entire estuary area - was yet to approach the Yaegl community or the trust created by traditional owners to manage these native titles.

Surely, with indigenous fishing rights recognised at law as existing on the Clarence River since time immemorial, any responsible company with a plan to extensively alter the riverine and marine environment should have asked the Yaegl people first before approaching the NSW Government with this:

Based on preliminary mapping published by Australian Infrastructure Developments Pty Ltd, yellow block overlays indicate bulk, liquid & container cargo terminals and shipping berths with grey overlays indicating proposed industrial areas

But then, Des Euen and his small band of backers have not yet publicly approached any of the Lower Clarence communities most affected by this prime example of environmental vandalism.

Challenging revisionist claims concerning Australia's decision to go the war in Iraq

On 20 March 2003 the first of the Coalition of the Willing strikes against Baghdad occurred. What went down in Australia on that first day of the Iraq War is now part of official records.

As one can see below the contemporary quotes differ markedly from Liberal Deputy-Leader Julie Bishop’s post-Chilcot Report assertion that; “The Australian government - both Labor and Liberal - the Australian parliament would take responsibility….I recall very well at the time Kevin Rudd [who was then Labor’s foreign affairs spokesman] urging us to continue to support the United States. So it was a bipartisan position up to a point in relation to Iraq.” 

20 March 2003 Quotes

Robert ‘Bob’ BALDWIN (Liberal Member for Patterson), Hansard, 20 March 2003:

Members opposite have been completely silent on these atrocities, but many Australians heard this week a broadcast on the John Laws program when he read a report that was published in Britain by a group called Indict. Indict were recent 13120 REPRESENTATIVES Thursday, 20 March 2003 observers in Iraq and their report details some of the most abhorrent abuses of humans known to man. One example is of opponents of the Iraqi regime being placed alive, head first or feet first, into a shredding machine and the remains of bodies later being used as fish food. Not only is it terrifying that a regime could subject its own people to this sort of treatment, but it is also terrifying to think that a regime like this has weapons of mass destruction.

Prime Minister John Howard, Address to the Nation, 20 March 2003;

Another point I'd make to you very strongly is that we're not dealing here with a regime of ordinary brutality. There are many dictatorships in the world. - but this is a dictatorship of a particularly horrific kind.

His is an appalling regime: its torture, its use of rape as an instrument of intimidation; the cruelty to children to extract confessions from parents. It is a terrible catalogue of inflicting human misery on a people who deserve much better.

This week, the Times of London detailed the use of a human shredding machine as a vehicle for putting to death critics of Saddam Hussein. This is the man, this is the apparatus of terror we are dealing with.

Excerpt from Federal Labor Opposition Leader Simon Crean’s Address to the National Press Club, 20 March 2003:

As I speak, we are a nation on the brink of war.

A war we should not be in.

A war to which 2000 of our fighting men and women were committed many months ago but were told about last Tuesday.

A war to which we are one of only four countries prepared to join the U.S. in putting troops on the ground, despite claims of a coalition of up to thirty.

A war which, for the first time in our history, Australia has joined as an aggressor.

Not because we are directly threatened.

Not because the UN has determined it.

But because the U.S. asked us to.

A war our troops will engage in when Commander Tommy Franks of the United States gives the order.

A war which exposes them to great risk.

A war which will cause great humanitarian damage to innocent men, women and children in Iraq.

A war unnecessary to achieve the disarmament of Iraq because there remained an alternate way.

Saddam Hussein must be disarmed, but this is not the way.

I speak to you today, not only as Labor leader and Leader of the Opposition, but on behalf of millions of Australians who share opposition to this war….

John Howard in the House of Representatives at a later date:

https://youtu.be/8R9eZ8c1EDo

Take a bow Twitter in Australia - a large part of the reason Turnbull & Co weren't unconditionally loved by the electorate on 2 July 2016 is your fault!

Excerpt from Sky News Australian Agenda 3 July 2016 interview with Liberal Senator for Tasmania George Brandis:

PAUL KELLY:

Can I just ask, do you think we are seeing deeper changes in Australian politics? We have now gone for a decade and the evidence is that it's very hard for a first-term government to it be re-elected. The electorate seems to be more impatient and more critical. Do you think that's right?

ATTORNEY-GENERAL:

I do, and there are a lot of reasons for that. I think one of the drivers of this is the increasing velocity of events. Another is the trivialisation of political communication through Twitter and things like that. There are a lot of phenomena that sociologists and political scientists will no doubt write about, but I do think that the velocity of events, the increasing accelerating velocity of events and the trivialisation of political discourse have a lot to do with it.

Take a bow, Aussie twerps.