Australia’s Environmental Policy Crisis: A Closer Look

14 Comments

1. I don’t know what you’re taking David Tyler,but it’s another ball biter of an article.Makes one angrier than ever.Convenient for Abalone to be doing his international statesman act while leaving all the dirty work to his best toe cutters,Like Murray the Talking fire hydrant and Don ‘the weasel’ Farrell.
   The one and a half parties of the duopoly have been screwing the country blind , even with the momentary relief of ditching the Liar,we’ve ended up with someone shaping up to be even worse.
   Fuck them all.

2. Australia has tracked the US with the shared architecture of influence via LNP, Howard et al, NewsCorp led RW MSM etc. with ALP following; whoff of fossil fuels and ‘segregation economics’.

   Fossil fueled Atlas Koch climate science denial and anti-renewables via IPA etc., Tanton Network anti-immigration as an environmental greenwash, with FoxNews doing PR/comms and nudging RW MSM further right; Koch + Tanton = Project2025.

   Ably supported by heaving mass of low info and monocultural middle aged and older Australians, for now, before ‘the great replacement’.

   However, we will still need to deal with consequences of Brexit, Trump, The Voice, Putin etc. and attempts to take us back to the 19thC?

3. Harry,
   Appreciate that; anger’s the only sane reaction left, really. Albanese’s “global handshake tour” would be far easier to swallow if the home front wasn’t being strip‑mined by his own backroom bruisers. Murray and Don seem to relish playing the heavies while pretending it’s all for the greater good. And yep, the old one‑and‑a‑half‑party pantomime rolls on; swap the actors, same script, same audience left picking up the bill.

4. Andrew,
   That’s a sharp read. Australia really has mirrored the US playbook, right down to the media machinery and fossil‑fuel money pipelines. The same culture‑war distractions keep the electorate divided while the resource barons and media moguls consolidate power. Project2025 isn’t just an American fever dream; its talking points are already being test‑marketed here through the usual “think‑tank” channels.

   You’re right. Even if the political tides shift, we’ll still be mopping up the fallout from Trumpism, Brexit, and our own culture war flops like The Voice referendum. The bigger question now is whether we can drag the political imagination out of the 19th century before the climate and the democracy run out of runway.

5. JANUS IDEOLOGY

   Blinded disciples
   Spin climate catastrophe
   Pulverise the forests

   Selective logging
   Maintained all ecosystems
   Green groups protested

   Wind renewables
   Rewrite ideology
   Smash all tree ridge lines

   Scarred eroded landscapes
   Bladed monstrosities –
   Greens, ‘The Price to Pay’

6. As a young teenager in the early-mid sixties living in the Upper Murray district in SA and just getting started in a lifelong interest in birdwatching, out hiking along the river’s edge heading west from Waikerie, I struck up a conversation with an old fella, a man in his nineties; he’d lived in a double-decker bus in the edge of the river at Ramco for years and had a small patch of citrus.

   At that time, it was still possible to see Musk Ducks on the river, along with Grey and Chestnut Teal, Pacific Black Ducks, Australian Shelducks, Freckled Ducks, Wood Ducks, Hardheads, Australasian Shovelers, even, occasionally, Pink-eared Ducks and Blue-billed Ducks, along with other waterfowl like the Royal and Yellow-billed Spoonbills, Straw-necked and Glossy Ibis as well as the ubiquitous (white) Sacred Ibis, also Bitterns, Herons, Cormorants, Darters, Egrets, Pelicans – all added to this rich exposure to the feathered wildlife on the river… and for a kid who was still within his first year of birding it was a wonderland and a thrill to have this resource in the backyard.

   The old fella spoke of his childhood. He’d lived on the Murray his whole life, which meant that he knew that river as a boy and young man in the last twenty or thirty years of the 1800s. He told me of the flocks of ducks that would pass by, teeming in their hundreds of thousands, so many that it would take half an hour for the flock to pass, so dense in numbers that they would occlude the sunlight, like a cloud does. I think I sort of understood that those days were over, that we’d never see anything like that again.

   And indeed, the passage of the subsequent sixty years has only been more of the same, a turbocharged razing of the natural world and an apocalyptic (and the word is used here correctly) decline in species numbers as habitat is destroyed. Many if not most of the species cited above are now vanishingly rare. In less than a century, wipeout. Replaced by almond orchards that suck enormous amounts of water out of the system, consigning the mighty River Red Gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) forests to terminal decline. Almonds for eucalypts, and nobody blinked. Lose the forests, lose the inhabitants – birds, mammals, reptiles, insects – swapped for almonds, for almond milk and lattes for the city set who have zero awareness of the environmental cost of their choice of lifestyle beverages.

   Australia’s largest river system… ruined. Who knew? Who cared?

   Around that same time, mid-sixties, I visited the Flinders Ranges for the first time. Chambers Gorge, specifically, along with a bunch of schoolmates and a couple of teachers who were our mentors in this business of learning about the natural world of plants, animals, birds and more. We saw Wallaroos, (also know as Euros), as well as the highlight marsupial, the Yellow-footed Rock Wallaby, but we did not see feral goats. Rabbits, yes, but no goats. I revisited that district in the 1980s… only twenty years later. The damage due to goats of the flora in that region was appalling to behold. Twenty years, wipeout.

   In the early seventies I’d worked on pastoral properties in the upper northeast of SA. I learned of the damage done to landscapes through the overstocking with sheep in the early years of colonial expansion, that the fragile saltbush and bluebush regions had to be carefully managed to prevent total species loss and to minimise the erosion that followed the razing of plant life across the landscapes. I saw regions that had suffered this fate in the 1800s and never recovered, and I saw regions that had been well-managed and the contrasts were painfully evident.

   I also saw D7 bulldozers paired together with a humungous chain tearing down pristine wilderness on the western edge of the Darling Downs in Qld; another apocalyptic vision unfolding before my eyes; a complex ecosystem that existed for possibly millions of years, replaced with a monocultural crop, cotton, an exotic species that required massive amounts of water, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides in order to grow; dollars in the bank for the multimillionaire farmers and the irreplaceable loss of hundreds if not thousands of species from micro to macro. Insanity, really, at all levels, whether it’s the ruination of river systems – not only the Murray but most of them in this country. – or the wholesale clearing of land for the purpose of farming or grazing – and let’s not overlook that the farming community in this country is not large, there’s only around ~135,000 farm enterprises, only around 420,000 people employed, including fisheries and forestry, a bit over 1.5% of this country’s population. Doesn’t quite seem right, does it, that that small number of people, the custodians, as it were, of the natural landscapes of this country, have been given licence to wreak the extraordinary amount of damage inflicted across the continent. All the while, politicians seem in thrall, the great mass of citizens ensconced in their coastal homes with their urban concerns and their cost of living and other pressures preoccupying their outlooks on life and their ‘don’t talk to me about what’s happening out there across the country, it’s not my concern’ attitudes… it’s not hard to be despondent and in despair. Albanese willingly sacrificed the Maugean skate, endemic to and only found in Macquarie Harbour in the southwest of Tasmania, in preference to the continuation of the salmon farms in that body of water, knowing the consequences vis-à-vis deoxygenation, knowing the extreme risk of extinction, for what? To save a few jobs, to ensure an ALP member’s position, to allow a foreign-owned corporation to continue its toxic and far from best practice industry continued operation. One can only derive from these examples that the political classes – at all levels and of all colours – just don’t care. Business as usual, and we’ll all go down in a screaming heap when it’s over and done with.

   To ram the point home, in my first year at uni studying Agricultural Science, one of our subjects dealt with the history of agriculture in this country. We were told of the development of what became the MIA, the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area. The federal government around the time of WWI commissioned agricultural scientists to survey this district in the southwest of NSW, then majorly unpopulated, as a potential site for returning soldiers, who were to become what became known as soldier-settlers. It was the government’s position that this was to be some sort of recompense, to recognize their service and provide a pathway back to civilian life.

   In due course, the report came back. The designated area was unsuitable for the proposed purpose. Duplex soils, underlying salt, poor drainage, risk of salination of the native trees were removed… in short, unsuitable.

   The government shelved the report, ignored the scientific advice of experts, and shipped thousands of returned soldiers into that region. It was a disaster… within a decade or less, most of these returned servicemen walked off their land and returned to the cities. So much for the ‘Lucky Country’ and its second-rate society of so-called ‘managers’.

7. Canguro,
   I felt so moved by your reply..an article in itself really. I can see you seeing all the destruction. It brought tears to my eyes. When I was young I spent a lot of time around the Murray. It was one of the deepest pleasures of my life. To see it plundered and ruined makes me angry and sad. But well done you. Truth teller.

8. Dear Canguro,

   Thank you for this extraordinary reply; part memoir, part ecological witness statement, part indictment of a system that has long traded biodiversity for short-term gain. And sheer poetry. Your words carry the weight of lived experience, and the clarity of someone who’s seen the arc of decline firsthand; from wonderland to wipeout.

   The image of the old fella at Ramco, recalling duck flocks so dense they occluded the sun, is haunting. It’s a metaphor for abundance lost, and a reminder that memory itself becomes a form of resistance when the landscape forgets what it once was. Your early birding days read like a catalogue of a fabulous richness now rare or gone; each species a feathered footnote in the story of a river system sacrificed.

   You’ve mapped the damage with precision: goats in the Flinders, bulldozers in the Downs, almonds replacing red gums, cotton replacing complexity. And you’ve named the political cowardice that enables it; the wilful ignorance, the sidelining of science, the sacrifice of species like the Maugean skate for the sake of salmon profits and political expediency.

   Your account of the MIA debacle is especially telling. It’s not just environmental mismanagement; it’s a pattern of ignoring expertise, erasing consequence, and calling it progress. Soldier-settlers were promised land and dignity; they got salt and silence.

   I share your despair, but also your fire. Your voice is not just a lament; it’s a ledger, a reckoning, and a call to remember what was, so we might fight for what’s left. If you’re open to it, I’d love to collaborate further; perhaps build a companion piece that turns your testimony into curriculum, or a visual map of ecological amnesia across the regions you’ve named.

   Let’s keep the conversation going. The ducks may no longer darken the sky, but your testimony, the moving words of a gifted naturalist, lynx-eyed observer and historian are straight from the heart and they deserve to be heard.

   Warm regards,
   David

9. Shay is right, Canguro. Your comment would make a great article. All I need is your nod of approval.

10. Thanks to all – Shay, David, Michael – for your generous replies. I think anyone who’s paid attention to the trajectory of this country’s ecological decline could have a similar tale to tell. For the soft-hearted, it is quite difficult to bear, to comprehend, and for those of tougher mien, perhaps grist to the mill, gird the loins and all that, fight the bastards whatever the cost.

    It seems, understandably, a David & Goliath contest… how can ‘little people’ take on corporations, multinationals, mining billionaires and farming dynasties, along with complicit state & federal governments that aid & abet the destruction that seems to be everywhere and all at once?

    I see all this, and I have empathy for those who say it’s all too hard, all too late, the battle is over, and we’ve lost, big money has won, the ruthless momentum of capitalism and its mindless protectors and supporters have won the day.

    What I’d really like is for somebody to grab me by the neck and say, forcefully, ‘Mate, you’re wrong. The fight is worth it, and we will prevail.’ But, sadly, I scan the landscape, as I have forever, and the evidence of the cost of the never-ending momentum behind the urge to convert resources into dollars is stark, confronting, shocking even, and antithetical to all that one holds dear in the sense of alignment as a creature held in the bosom of Mother Nature, or Gaia, our little planet and god-given home in this infinite universe.

    Michael, by all means, promote and publish this if you wish.

11. Canguro,
    Yes, please authorise to give Micheal the nod of approval.We all need more voices of authenticity from lived experiences. Both you and David and Micheal and Carol would be great collaborators in future articles on the environment. David and I and Micheal and Carol are passionate about it as you are. Add your voice. Get your articles on the AIMN. David and I read your response over and over and I can’t begin to tell you how much it meant to us.
    Your knowledge of wild life was wonderful. I’m a twitcher btw but mostly have brought sick or abandoned magpies up to adulthood. I can’t tell you how much joy it brought me.So…write more.

12. Canguro,
    Oh and yes the fight is worth it

13. Excellent article and appropriate comments.

    I’m over 70 now, and my body is riddled as could be expected. I was told I have a vulnerable gene, never mind exposure to the man-made things predating on that gene.

    I grew up in the bush in a riverine environment on the fringe of Melbourne. I loved that ‘natural’ environment, the quietness and the beautiful creatures, large and tiny. It was my playground and my learning. As I grew, I became saddened to learn of buried dumps and scourges from the 1800s through early 1900s. I had been fooled by secondary re-growth. I saw the stacked firewood roots from the erasure of the Malley & Wimmera, plagues of mixo-rabbits, the vile Roach on the end of my hook, felt the burning eyes nose and throat from the horrendous pollution in the river, saw the river yellowed by the clays scoured from the hills where reckless logging of mountain ash left the earth bare. There were no more tree-ferns along the river, they had been taken by sub-urban savages – replaced by choking willows. The ‘ghost gums’ (River Red Gums) started tumbling. In abject ignorance, the important regenerators, the tea trees, were being flattened for panic-fear of fire, and along with them the small ferns, mosses, lichens and lizards and amphibians that thrived in their micro-climate. Oh, and for the sake of gold they inoculated the ground with cyanide and mercury, and for leather, into the river, the industrial toxins of tanning – wattle sap wouldn’t suffice. For their rampant blackberries, and whilst at it, termites, the manic spraying of DDT, later dieldrin, and later again 245T (Agent Orange) spreading a man-made plague of illness and birth defects in all creatures. It’s no worry for them, they’ll manicure it and pave it until it’s indistinguishable from western European / British dead land. And ‘Rally-Ho’ like the blithering elite, as the wildlife fled, they fixed it by injecting for their pleasure, cats, dogs, foxes, deer, trout and all manner of Euro-delights.

    As an over-35 adult, I traveled working far and wide in Oz, and noted the same recipe at play, but on a more industrial scale, bringing with it perceivable toxification and desertification. In my childhood locale, I tried to fight back, but it was in vain against the institutionalization of such recipes in the short-term quest for money. And, again in vain trying to enlighten the mind-blown sub-urbanites not looking over the horizon and expecting everything on a plate to slake their mythical notions of paradise. They like bling, cars, pavement and flushing dunnies and ballistic security. Little do they know it may only take a few years to wreck and toxify the joint, but at least 100s of years to revive it, sans many species.

    But their children are awakening them, and suspicions about govt stupidity and rhetoric, and the costs of convenience are rising. The really old folk know, but they are interminably wounded and saddened and are reckoned not to count.

    Regarding the EPBC, this Oz community is on tenter hooks after Tanya Plibersek almost forged cross-party agreement to enable a Bill to be introduced, but Albo intervened. He brought in the notorious Murray Watt in re-negotiate, re-craft, and drive through a (new) better Bill. Particularly poignant after Watt’s first actions (and obscurities) in fossil-fuel processing in NW Western Oz. And not forgetting Albo’s rush on critical minerals and energy deals to give a raison d’être to the ‘Future Made In Australia Innovation Fund’ and for his version of geopolitical alignments.

    After consulting with the oligarchy and the international relics of the Industrial Revolution, Watt is playing politics hard, drip-feeding the draft Bill, splitting out (future) regulation (containing national environmental standards) and mode of operation of the new national EPA. And playing both sides against the middle, running separate negotiations with LNP and Greens who publicly express ideological polaric interests. And saying the final 25-30% of the Bill is work-in-progress.

    And today (29 Oct) it is mooted by Environment Victoria, “Labor’s environment laws look set to fast-track development, whether it’s mining, fossil fuels or housing developments, by handing approval powers back to state governments who have shown they can’t be trusted to protect the environment or listen to communities.”

    Suffice it to say, the new EPBC Act is urgent, and Labor says it wants it through before the new year (with haste and rush). A scary proposition given the current state of play, and where Watt can choose to assign political blame for failures and delays.

    It’s looking like a horror story on the spectrum, as thirsty, with pocket fulls of crypto, we head for life-support before realizing we’re going the way of leaded children, die-back, bleached corals and the Maugean skate.

14. Good response, Clakka. The horror stories just keep on writing themselves… no shortage of raw material.