Is Australia’s psyche at risk if we don’t save every farmer?
In amongst the stories of genuine distress from many rural areas in Australia, the debate is emerging again of how far should we go to keep farmers on the land. The widespread acceptance that climate change is a reality which may be exacerbating current and future droughts adds an extra layer to the debate.
Agriculture Minister, Peter McGuaran, has said the government is “going to fight to save every farmer.” He has also said that “farmers “are the stewards of the natural landscape, 60 per cent of Australia’s land mass is in the hands of farmers, if they walk off the land then the land will be swept away and become barren.”
Now to top it off, the Prime Minister has said fewer farmers would damage Australia’s psyche.
“It is part of the psyche of this country, it is part of the essence of Australia to have a rural community,” Mr Howard said. “Not only would we lose massively from an economic point of view [but] we would lose something of our character. We would lose something of our identification as Australians if we ever allowed the number of farms in our nation to fall below a critical mass.”
I think it’s time for some balance in the debate. Saying we should save every farmer, that they are stewards of the natural landscape and an essential part of our national psyche is just as extreme as saying farmers are all destroying the country and sucking the taxpayer dry.
Making Holden cars in Australia used to be part of our national psyche (or at least part of the mythology that makes up a national psyche). That is no longer the case. No other industry can expect to have every single worker maintained in it, regardless of economic and environmental reality.
Nobody wants farmers and their families to starve, or the towns and communities they are a part of to close down. But no one wants people to lose their jobs when manufacturing plants close down either. There is only so far we should go in propping up economically and environmentally unviable activities. We are in a state of semi-permanent drought in some parts of the country. It would make more sense socially, economically and environmentally if we were provide adjustment assistance – whether into different activities or different areas.
We must have pretty fragile national psyche if we have to preserve it by funding farmers to keep farming economically and environmentally unviable land.
UPDATE: Here are links to items in the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun which touch on the human impact and some of the economic factors.
212 Comments, Comment or Ping
DrJon
Personally, I wonder how much of our resources go towards endeavours like cotton agriculture, which as I understand it is an enormous drain on our water…
Oct 17th, 2006
The Editor
But how will we incorporate the role that farming plays in our “national psyche” into the immigration values and culture test?
Oct 17th, 2006
Geoff
Exaggeration or beat-up? Maybe both.
Your title is much like the article opening… wrong. I heard the PM yesterday and he didn’t say what you are saying he said. In fact here is what he said…
“It is part of the psyche of this country, it is part of the essence of Australia to have a rural community,” Mr Howard said. “Not only would we lose massively from an economic point of view [but] we would lose something of our character. We would lose something of our identification as Australians if we ever allowed the number of farms in our nation to fall below a critical mass.”
Now what that critical mass is i don’t know. But I do know what he said doesn’t mean… “Australia’s psyche at risk if we don’t save every farmer”…
Oct 17th, 2006
Evil Pundit
It’s not about “psyche”, it’s about retaining a viable population in rural areas. Too many of us live in the cities already.
Then again, food is more important than money, and it’s important to keep our food production capabilities in place. These are better reasons for subsidising farmers, but may not play as well on television.
I’m willing to sacrifice all the funding given to the ABC and the uselesee Yarts to save more farms.
Oct 17th, 2006
Guy
It certainly shows what the government really thinks about free trade when it so blatantly subsidises industry. Apparently the free market is only for those constituencies who do not vote for the Libs or the Nats.
Oct 17th, 2006
muzzmonster
Geoff, you didn’t read all of Andrew’s post, which quoted Peter McGuaran who said the government is “going to fight to save every farmer.”
Editor, you’ll of course know that Italian immigrants played a prominent role in farming in areas like Grafton, Mildura and Mackay. Besides, many cultures have a romantic view of an idyllic rural golden age (most of which is suspect is seen through rose-tinted glasses), so I suspect most will have no problem with identifying with this aspect of farming.
Oct 17th, 2006
Deborah
Yes, the farmers seem to have bottomless welfare funding, but everyone else has to be competitive and do more with less.
No longer does Australia live off the sheep’s back. 3% of the country’s population is employed in farming. Only the black armband view of the squattocracy remains.
Can we get farmers on AWA’s of some kind so that we, the supporting taxpayers, can dictate the terms of their subsidies, grants and loans, their hours worked, the amount of water used and some conservation programs?
Farming is the only industry (other than the companies that have the PM’s relatives on the board of directors), that is able to privatise their profits then socialise their losses.
Oct 17th, 2006
Coalition Unity
Andrew,
If you’re after a balance between supporting Australian farmers and “propping up economically and environmentally unviable activities,” why not put forth a private members bill what would achieve such a balance?
Oct 17th, 2006
Yobbo
Only certain types of farmers get subsidies. Farmers in WA receive neither subsidies nor irrigation.
The trend is that family-run farms are on their way out, being replaced by large corporate entities a la the USA.
It is quite analagous to mining, which back in the “golden days” of the gold rush was a small-business affair, with sole operators or families taking out claims and mining them themselves.
After a while it became apparent that economies of scale were necessarily to keep it profitable, and all the small claims were bought out by large mining corporations, and now no mining worker owns the mine they work in.
In 20 years time farming will be a fly-in, fly-out affair as mining is today. I don’t see any reason why this should not be allowed to happen, and I am speaking as the last generation of a farming family.
Oct 17th, 2006
Geoff
muzz, the title doesn’t say that either. I believe there’s been a mixing of at least 2 different people saying different things.
You are kidding Deb…? Such cynicism.
Oct 17th, 2006
ken
Good to see eevryone fitting back inot their ideological boxes agian Anderw – even if certian peole don’t have the courage to fall on their swords.
Faremrs do get a lot of subsidies and probably a rationlasiation of the indusrty should take place. Everyone knows that – of course the statemtns being made aer all about politics. Indeed that has already happended – any one try to find a 50 acre (sole income) dairy farm these days – tell me where other than france.
As anyoen with even a passing knowledge of gveornment funds knows, the vast bulk of taxes go inot aged pensions, welfare, health adn educaiotn. Throw in defence and thats about all. The ideological welfare is just a pittacne around the edges – and is just redistributed to the other lot of inetrest groups in the line when goevrnments chnage.
Oct 17th, 2006
Deborah
The farmers get their subsidies whichever political party happens to be in power don’t they? Are you suggesting that if Labor got in power tomorrow, the farmers would have their subsidies taken away and then given to some other group?
“Good to see eevryone fitting back inot their ideological boxes agian Anderw – even if certian peole don’t have the courage to fall on their swords”
Meaning? Is this some kind of bait or the usual snidey potshot taken gutlessly, under the cover of another thread?
Oct 17th, 2006
ken
Of course not the subsidies to Faremerrs would continue – maybe reshaped a bit but in general they dont chnage much.
It was more the replacing of the snidey (nice word) potshot at the pm’s family, that would be replaced by some useless collective or union body where the rejigging would occur
Oct 17th, 2006
nasking
>>Then again, food is more important than money, and it’s important to keep our food production capabilities in place.
Cotton is not food…or perhaps it is for some eh?…:)
Oct 17th, 2006
nasking
>>In 20 years time farming will be a fly-in, fly-out affair as mining is today. I don’t see any reason why this should not be allowed to happen,
it should be scrutinised intensely to ensure properties & graziers working for fast food companies & unethical corporations don’t get away w/ uncompetitive practices like using donations & influence to ensure they have water redirected away from smaller farmers & outback communities & indigineous groups…nor receive corporate welfare off the back of the average taxpayer…nor get away w/ animal abuse.
That’s why!
Oct 17th, 2006
Lynette2
What’s the point of subsidising farms when what they claim they really need is rain?
All the money in the world isn’t going to put Australian farmed food on our tables if it doesn’t rain.
If money can’t make it rain, which I presume it can’t, yet, then we’re paying farmers to be symbolic of a great Australian myth.
What about the other great symbolic Australians, like returned service men and noble savages? Or convicts? Barry Humphries and Paul Hogan? Kath and Kym? Kylie Minogue? Victa lawnmowers? Hills hoists?
Oct 17th, 2006
Deborah
Andrew, shut down quicker than a union rep at a Brethren work site!
I note that you censored my apparently offensive reply to Ken re child protection advocacy, I’m aware it was off topic – but note that the flaming and offensive bait which produced the reply, #13 has been left up.
In the interests of fairness, natural justice, and balance, I would appreciate a correction to that also.
(Editor: Yes I deleted it as it was totally off-topic, and could have just re-started on this thread a previous argument from elsewhere. I’ve now taken the relevant (also off-topic) part of comment #13 out too – I’m sure you’ve already both got your messages to each other in nay case)
Oct 17th, 2006
Graham Bell
Everyone:
I know a lot of places have been hit by severe drought but I do wonder if the sudden emergence of this as an issue just now may be more political than economic.
Is the Prime Minister about to ditch the National Party and to have his United Australia Party, Mark II, the so-called Liberal Party, take over its voters?
Just a thought.
Oct 17th, 2006
Oz
I have some sympathy with the views of Clive Hamilton. I mean any other industry wouldn’t get it as easily. They would have to prepare for the bad times and deal with variables.
His views seem to be a variation of ‘moral hazard’, the fact that they will be bailed out, farmers won’t try to do sustainable management which I don’t think is necessarily true. I also think the response to his views have been a bit unfair.
Either way lately the Australia Institute seems to make right-wingers more angrier than ABC bias.
Oct 17th, 2006
John Tracey
Dear senator, you said “We must have pretty fragile national psyche if we have to preserve it by funding farmers to keep farming economically and environmentally unviable land.” May I humbly suggest that it is european agricultural practice that is unviable, not the land. The land is fine but is just not being used properly, even damaged land can be developed.
Stone the flamin crows!
I must be turning into a RWDB, whatever that is. Either that or E.P is becoming a utopian communist.
This is the most profound thing I have heard E.P. ever say, and a comment that I whole heartedly agree with.
“It’s not about “psyche”, it’s about retaining a viable population in rural areas. Too many of us live in the cities already.
Then again, food is more important than money, and it’s important to keep our food production capabilities in place. These are better reasons for subsidising farmers, but may not play as well on television.”
However in the interests of traditional rivalry, I must question John Howard’s sentiments about the cultural importance of preserving “unviable” agricultural communities but is swift to condemn remote Aboriginal communities as unviable.
The reason the agricultural and rural communities are stuffed is because we are totally locked into foreign trade and multinational agribusiness to supply basic goods and services including food.
National self sufficiency in basics, which is very possible, is our best opportunity for economic stability as well as our best option in terms of transport energy and carbon emmissions.
Another exmaple of self sufficiency, even if with some subsidies, would be to retrain farmers and remote Aborigines alike to operate call centres from their homes instead of contracting cheap Indian labour to ring Australian homes.
Oct 17th, 2006
John Tracey
And EP the yarts is a good rural industry too. just look at the success of Aboriginal yart. outback ocker yart could be just as economically successful with a dash of the colour of the urbane Ken Done. We have lost Pro Hart and no other non-Aboriginal bush yartist has yet raised to his heights as an export producti – yet!
You underestimate sir Les’s legacy!
Oct 17th, 2006
John Tracey
Ken done has developed a whole industry around him including printing and textile manufacture and clothing manufacture
flow on, value adding and all those sorts of words.
Oct 17th, 2006
John Tracey
It is small minded arts bureacracies and policies that institutionalises yart as a welfare strategy to the detriment of an economic strategy, despite fine policy prose to the contrary.
spend money on developing yart infrastructure especially in remote areas instead pf “community arts workers”. rural artists, so important to John Howard’s cultural vision, need access to art supplies, exhibition and market avenues as well as commercial skills training. But they get arts workers instead. It is the same as the homeless who need homes but instead get housing workers.
welfarism.
(that’s all. sorry)
Oct 17th, 2006
Andrew Bartlett
I agree with that comment of EP’s too! (not sure if that makes me a RWDB as well)
I agree we need more people outside of the capital cities, but I don’t think we should indefinitely use taxpayer’s money propping up economically unviable businesses to do it.
One of the concerns expressed more and more about ongoing drought funding is that it applies only to farmers, even though droughts can harm many other types of businesses (for example the impact on nurseries due to the water restrcitions in south-east Qld at the moment).
Even in many regional communities, farming is a minority part of the local ecomony. That is not to say that it wouldn’t hurt if farming was removed, but there are many regional communities that are growing as the result of businesses other than farming.
Rather than spend money propping up unviable businesses – not that all drought assistance does this – how about spending that money helping regional communities as a whole remain viable, which could include adjustment assistance where necessary to marginal farmers.
(real broadband to rural and regional areas would help too – short-term subsidy, long-term gain.)
Oct 17th, 2006
Louise
I haven’t yet completely formed my own opinion on this matter, but provided farmers aren’t forced off their land, I think it could be a good move.
It seems to me that farming should fit in better with the realities of our land.
Something called “Natural Sequence Farming” may be a good thing to research further.
High water-use crops are obviously absurd for our environment. I do also think that small-scale and diverse farming would be better than farming on a large scale. It’s just mass production applied to the land and I don’t think it’s a good idea. Anywhere. Ever.
I think Evil Pundit has a point about a viable population in rural areas, though.
And he’s right to be considering the importance of food production. Money’s okay as long as there is actually food to buy.
I believe nations and even regions should be as self-sufficient as possible.
Oct 17th, 2006
Yobbo
“May I humbly suggest that it is european agricultural practice that is unviable, not the land.”
What “European” practices are used in Australia?
Are you at all aware that Australian leads the world in broadacre cropping and livestock management practice?
If anything they are copying us, not the other way around.
If you are going to join in a thread about farming you should at least teach yourself some very basic things.
It is better to shut your mouth and be thought an idiot than to open it and prove it beyond all doubt.
And yes, genius, it is the land that is unviable. Specifically Australian land is not viable for high rainfall crops like rice, cotton, fruit, etc. It is very viable for cereals like wheat and barley.
Perhaps you should consult aboriginal history to see what agricultural use they made of the land here?
Oh wait, I think I can remember for you: Absolutely none. They were Hunter/Gatherers with the emphasis on hunters.
There are no native Australian plants suitable for a staple diet. The only native plant that has successfully been commercially farmed is the Macadamia Nut.
Oct 17th, 2006
John Tracey
Yobbo – european vs. indigenous modes of agriculture
Oct 17th, 2006
John Tracey
e.g. cows or kangaroos
Oct 17th, 2006
John Tracey
Yobbo, if there are no native plants sutible for a staple diet, how did thousands of generations of Aborigines survive? you are sounding absurd by distracting from the obvious.
A sustainable agricultural base was demolished and replaced by dysfunctional modes inappropriate to the Australian climate, soil types and structure. Thats why we are in trouble with salination, erosion etc.
The old climate and land appropriate aggriculture including the propogation and harvesting of no-cholestrol kangaroo meat and land appropriate crops within broader ecological processes such as native herbs, fruits and vegetables is a strong stating poit to agricultural reform and new industries.
This might require a marketing campaign to change diets but it is that or ride the titanic to the bottom.
Oct 17th, 2006
John Tracey
new non-traditional non-Aboriginal agricultural modes too.
the development of new exotic crops such as non drug hemp that can be used to”grow” cement bricks in remote areas creating a local brick industry with minimal transport cost and cheap building materials in remote areas.
cows, pigs, sheep, wheat, sugar need to be replaced as our major agricultural mode and therefore the market needs to change its diet too.
Oct 17th, 2006
John Tracey
Australians were too stupid to even recognise the value of macadamia nuts. it took the hawains to do that and sell them back to us. Duh! we have just recently developed a viable local macadamia industry that competes globaly with the bigger Hawain macadamia industry. It could have all been ours if we did not obsess on European modes.
Oct 17th, 2006
John Tracey
it is illegal to kill wild crocs. Bigger rogue crocs are moving in on human territories more and more. A croc skin and meat under government licence can fetch up to $30,000 dollars. The price artifically high because of government control and restriction through licence. But none the less a viable base for an industry based on ecological culling and propogating croc habitat and breeding places. for example.
Oct 17th, 2006
John Tracey
no cholestrol in croc meat too
Oct 17th, 2006
Graham Bell
Ken [post 11]:
Rationalizations, amalgamations, the get-big-or-get-out thinking, short-term policies, single product or single industry schemes: these have all exacerbated the problems for decades now. From what I’ve seen, subsidies tend to help those who can get by just fine without much help and to hell with the rest. Then add to that, banks that seemed incapable of planning beyond the next financial year. For Pete’s sake! Even Stalin had FIVE YEAR plans! Couldn’t Australia’s marvellous banks count to five?
Nobody seems to want to sit down and work out long-term sustainable, attainable and integrated plans for developing rural communities and the industries that make those communities work. There have been lots of conferences and truck-loads of documents churned out but all for few useful outcomes; farms and rural businesses are still going broke and rural communities are depopulating at an alarming rate.
Let’s get off the roundabout and try something radical that might work for as change.
Andrew Bartlett [post 24]:
You are one of the few people in a position of influence or authority who has mentioned the effect this drought has on industries other than farming.
Yobbo [post 26]:
You are dead right about Australia leading the world in some fields …. ((but did you have to be so insulting?))
Oct 17th, 2006
John Tracey
the Wilderness society and Beattie government have stalled or confused a lot of tank aquaculture projects of Cape York traditional owners with the Qld. Wild Rivers legislation restricting such enterprises, even though they are based on indigenous knowledge of indigenous species and expert local knowledge of river systems.
This engagement in the ecology is a model for regional Australia, especially though direct interaction with watercourses rather than “protecting” them – all within the best indigenous and European science behind innovative economic projects. We have to do it anyway, it is not as if urban areas are any example of sustainability.
thats all, again.
Oct 17th, 2006
nasking
>>the development of new exotic crops such as non drug hemp that can be used to”grow” cement bricks in remote areas creating a local brick industry with minimal transport cost and cheap building materials in remote areas.
you’re right John…Hemp is the ‘go’. I’ve thought the same for years. Multi-purpose stuff. But how would it go down w/ this Federal Government?
Oct 18th, 2006
John Tracey
i’m a bit out of date but as i understand there have been a number of successfull licenced experiments including for building materials. the hippies have weird and wonderful ideas too, from fuel to fibre glass but I am fascinated by growing bricks. You have to add other stuff, lime I think and sand, which canof course be local, but the basic fibre and chemical reaction of the brick giving it both strength and a lighter weight than traditional cement bricks e.g. bessa bricks, is th hemp and I think that has enourmous possibilities.
just to pontificate some more, the propogation of hemp within sustainable ongoing systems such as permaculture as well as traditional crop rotation gives ongoing resources. Or as a temporary system of land cover and compost to propogate an evolution of reafforestation. Build your house and the ecology at the same time. K.I.S.S.
Oct 18th, 2006
John Tracey
people on the dole are not allowed to move from the city to the country so many long term unemployed rot away and descend into charity cases in the city. Put them in a low cost hemp house in a bush town so that there welfare money rejuvinates the town – they gotta eat somthing. Maybe a local farmer could invest in a hemp house or eco-village and rent it to them – more local money. Invest innovative local industry including priming and catalysing new technology industries to employ all these dole bludgers! make them plant trees while they wait for a job. make jobs out of planting trees – timber, tax credits, fuel, habitat for other nature industries. Job training and TAFE courses based on the new industries.
better than digging holes and filling them in again in urban work for the dole programs. get some real skills, like how to build a hemp house.
build up regional economies and communities.
hemp of couse is not the only cheap and sustainable building material. It is just an example of possibilities.
Oct 18th, 2006
Yobbo
“Yobbo, if there are no native plants sutible for a staple diet, how did thousands of generations of Aborigines survive? you are sounding absurd by distracting from the obvious.”
They certainly didn’t survive by agriculture, John. Aboriginal society at the time of European settlement was a stone-age one. They had not yet discovered agriculture – no doubt in large part due to the native species of this continent not having any suitable candidates.
They survived like other hunter-gatherers did. By hunting animals and gathering various plants to eat. This is different from having a staple food – e.g. the potato and maize of the incans and aztecs, the wheat and barley of Europe or the rice of asia. They had no staple crop that formed the base of their diet. They ate whatever was handy at the time.
“A sustainable agricultural base was demolished and replaced by dysfunctional modes inappropriate to the Australian climate, soil types and structure.”
100% Bollocks. The aboriginal inhabitants of Australia had no agriculture. Some tribes in the Torres Strait Islands did, but none on the Continent of Australia.
The rest of your comments are repetitive blather about non-existent aboriginal agriculture. Hunting wild animals for meat is not agriculture. Picking berries from a wild tree and eating them is not agriculture.
There was no agriculture in Australia before European settlement, period.
Graham: John was the one insulting farmers by suggesting they copied European methods. I was merely returning the favour.
Oct 18th, 2006
John Humphreys
What are you talking about TJ… the aborigines didn’t domesticate any crops in Australia. They lived for many generations by hunting and gathering, as the name “hunter and gather” sort of implies.
See “guns, germs & steel” by Jarrod Diamond for a good discussion of the spread of domesticable plants and animals and this link to the rise of civilisations.
JT: Australians were too stupid to even recognise the value of macadamia nuts.
Are you talking about the aboriginals? Or did you mean to write “white people were too stupid”?
Oct 18th, 2006
John Tracey
No John H. I think you will find the Aborigines utilised a range of bush foods including macadamia nuts.
I see no point in a semantic argument about wheter a systematic cultivation of animals and plants constitutes agriculture.
It is a colonial illusion that people who do things the same way as traditional European modes of food production are agriculturalists and people who produce food in different modes are not agriculturalists.
it is sheer blind ignorance to say hunting and gathering is not a mode of agriculture any more than cropping or herding. Indigenous land practices deliberately encourage the ecosystems that provide abundance in food species, the same way a farmer breed sheep or lets a percentage of their crop to go to seed.
Yobbo, for someone so keen to resist arbitrary definitions of human lifestyle in that other forum, you seem pretty stuck in an indefensible dogmatic opinion on this issue.
however if agriculture is such a sticky word then i am happy to say that hunter gatherer knowledge of indigenous land and species is a great assett to developing new crop and herd enterprises. e.g the Hawain development of the macadamia industry.
Oct 18th, 2006
John Tracey
and hospitality – have you seen the Black Olive chef on message stick?
Oct 18th, 2006
Graham Bell
John Tracey [post 38]:
You said ….” people on the dole are not allowed to move from the city to the country so many long term unemployed rot away and descend into charity cases in the city. Put them in a low cost hemp house in a bush town so that there welfare money rejuvinates the town ….”
You have hit the core of a long-standing major problem. Well-intentioned but horribly counter-productive Social Security policies and practices – from both sides of politics – have done terrible damage to the economy of rural Australia; nobody seems to have thought through the consequences of such policies and practices.
And you also said ….. “Invest innovative local industry including priming and catalysing new technology industries to employ all these dole bludgers!”
My oath! But it will never be allowed to happen for this is The Clever Country …….
Oct 18th, 2006
John Tracey
but the bottom line is “agriculture” by yobbo’s definition has stuffed this country up. Those silly blackfellas managed to chase furry animals and pick berries around this country and feed themselves for thousands of years while maintaining plenty of more furry animals and berries for future generations.
they also managed a complicated system of exchange, currency and trade to share around the furry animals and berries.
When Banks and Cook turned up here they believed that Aboriginal people only ate sea food as they were not sophisticated enough to develop agriculture. This, according to the the science of the time, explained why Aborigines only lived on coastal areas. The further inland they lived the more they had to rely on canibalism to suppliment the fish diet which became more scarce further from the coast.
Banks, a key figure in the development of modern agriculture through his botany work, including being the architect of the Australian Merino industry, had this much knowledge and respect for indigenous food systems.
Oct 18th, 2006
John Tracey
I think it was Banks who took the macadamia tree to Hawaii and developed it to build wind breaks. The locals had to figure out what to do with all the rubbish they drop on the ground.
Oct 18th, 2006
John Tracey
Graham,
“the times, they are a changin”
I must however qualify this by saying the change might be good or it might be bad.
Sometimes desperation brings out the cleverness in people. Again, might be good, might be bad.
Oct 18th, 2006
Dan Hill
About all we’d lose is the constant whining about how tought it is in the bush and why they need another handout. If life is so tough, move to the city. What, don’t like all the people and the traffic and the ridiculous price of housing? Oh, I see, you choose to live in the bush but somehow the rest of us are morally obligated to subsidise your choice?
The state of constant drought declaration in much of the country is a joke. Time to recognise that much of our current agricultural practice is unsustainable, help those who want to leave for the city to do so, and put any future money into environment restoration instead. Anyone who stays in the bush on those conditions must truly love it, so why would they need our sympathy or any more of our money?
P.S. Another pathetic example of the PM looking for a non-issue that resonates with One Nation crowd.
Oct 18th, 2006
Yobbo
“It is a colonial illusion that people who do things the same way as traditional European modes of food production are agriculturalists and people who produce food in different modes are not agriculturalists. ”
You are insane. There is no “semantics” here.
Agriculture definition: Another Another Another.
You haven’t really covered yourself in glory here.
“but the bottom line is “agriculture” by yobbo’s definition has stuffed this country up. Those silly blackfellas managed to chase furry animals and pick berries around this country and feed themselves for thousands of years while maintaining plenty of more furry animals and berries for future generations.”
Yeah, and at the time of white settlement there were less than a million of them surviving in this fashion. And by most reports not even half of 1 million.
And that is the point. Agriculture is an enabler of civilisation. It is the key that enables a population to grow beyond the limits of a small clannish tribe. Without agriculture there is no human civilisation.
“hunter gatherer knowledge of indigenous land and species is a great assett to developing new crop and herd enterprises”
You simply have no idea what you are talking about and are suffering from verbal diarrhea.
No native Australian animals have a herding instinct. Kangaroos are the most likely, but they typically herd in numbers of less than 20. Marsupials in general are not great subjects for commercial farming because of their ability to diapause, and Kangaroos are especially troublesome because of their ability to jump fences, and the fact that they just don’t produce enough meat.
Oct 18th, 2006
Yobbo
There is no such thing as commercial Kangaroo farming, because they simply are not economical. Every piece of Kangaroo meat you see for sale is the result of culls of wild Kangaroos.
Again I will repeat: Exactly zero native animal species (excepting fish) are suitable for commerical production. For plants, only the Macadamia nut has proven viable, and Macadamia nuts are a luxury item, not a staple food.
Oct 18th, 2006
John Tracey
Oh Yobbo, so much to answer.
Fisrtly the forst fleet estimated there were 3 million Aborigines in Australia based on the assumption they onluy inhabited the coast and based on population densities in the sydney area. There is considerable evidence for a smallpox plaig that wiped out up to 90% of the population prior to that time.
It is true that native game such as kangaroos cannot be herded, so we must look at non-herding modes such as culling which you correctly identify as an alternative mode. I say increase the habitats to increase the cull. obviously not agriculture, but whatever it is. How is it that sud farms work again for cows?
Emus can and are herded.
and the protein content of macadamia as well as other nutrients makes it a viable candidate for a staple rather than a luxury from Hawaii. It is better than wheat.
Oct 18th, 2006
John Tracey
The Nunuccul of stradbroke Island had trained dolphins to herd in schools of fish, especially the massive seasonal mullet shoals. just like dogs and sheep.
Oct 18th, 2006
John Tracey
the semantic and legal argument about agriculture boils down to issues of fences. This is the crucial point of differentiation between indigenous and European agriculture and this has long been reflected in european property law and land managemet principles.
Oct 18th, 2006
John Tracey
stud farms, not sud farms – the science of agricultural culling
Oct 18th, 2006
John Tracey
kangaroo stock are drought adaptable, if not drought resistant because of their non-herding nature, So are emus and crocodiles when they are culled and not herded. living off natral watercourses and even puddles instead of centralised pipes, dams and tanks.
culling is a basic principle of any herd management, it can be applied to non-herd agriculture too.
culiing is like living on the interest of a bank investment rather than eating into the actual invested amount in the hope it will be covered by future profits. Living on the excess of the natural productive process rather devouring it all. this is sustainable economics.
Oct 18th, 2006
John Tracey
Funny, a lot of farmers have to cull kangaroos to protect their cattle and sheep feed because their dams multiply kangaroo populations. Instead of killing the kangaroos, get rid of the kows. A lot less work per gram of protein. did I mention cangaroos have no kolestrol?
Oct 18th, 2006
John Tracey
too much meat talk. same thing for seed propogation e.g. the massive bunya plantations in S.E. Queensland. or In North West Queensland where the arid ecology is perfect for growing the narcotic pituri, which was a regular economic currency throughout the continent, there were fields with rows of pituri plants which, like avocados (and macadamia) hava a seven year cycle to maturity.
Itinerent workers following dreaming trails would work in these fields, managed by traditional owners. described by anthropologists as carrying bags on their back into which they put the picked produce as they worked their way along the lines of pituri bushes.
Oct 18th, 2006
John Tracey
and Yobbo, havent you ever wondered where Tee tree and eucaliptus oil comes from?
Oct 18th, 2006
John Tracey
actually kangaroos are herded too but they need better fences than kows.
Oct 18th, 2006
Graham Bell
Yobbo:
This thread is about sustainable farming, not about bank bashing; however …..
There is a long history of people seeking to build businesses out of Australia’s native fauna and flora.
A few have been quite successful commercially while they lasted: timber-cutting, kangaroo shooting, sealing, crabbing, fishing, koala hunting, eucalyptus oil extraction.
The rest, no matter how promising, failed to get started …. anectdotally, the blame for this has been put on the timidity of Australian banks to finance innovative businesses. Perhaps the attitude of Australian banks over the years could be summed up in the old proverb “Give a Chinaman one pound and he’ll do ten pounds’ business; give an Australian ten pounds and he’ll do one pound’s business”. I really don’t have any hard data: maybe there’s a PhD in there just waiting to be won by someone who wants to research the strange failure to develop businesses out of more than just a few of Australia’s diverse flora and fauna..
Oct 18th, 2006
Andrew Bartlett
(by the way – hint to JT: whilst the short rapid fire sequence of comments may have its own certain appeal, if you send too many comments one after the other in a short space of time, it increases your chances of getting caught in spam filters and having one of your comments disappeared. I think this may have happened to you once or twice.
If you saw how much spam I get you’d understand)
Oct 19th, 2006
Yobbo
Graham: I find it hard to believe that the reason no native plants or animals have been commercially farmed in over 200 years is all because of a lack of finance.
If there was a profit in it, someone with large capitalisation would be doing it as we speak. There is no profit in farming Kangaroos (or at least, any land that could be used to farm Roos could be more profitably used to farm anything else).
Oct 19th, 2006
John Tracey
yes sorry about the rapid fire stuff, that is just how the ideas hit sometimes.
Yobbo your conceptual conservatism, shared by many, is the very reason the Australian bush ecology, economy and communities are in such a bad situation
Oct 19th, 2006
John Tracey
Todays Courier Mail
“RENTAL properties in southeast Queensland are now in such short supply some accommodation help agencies are handing out tents to desperate families.”
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,20607201-3102,00.html
Is it really a viable option to resettle failed farmers in cities?
Oct 19th, 2006
Yobbette
After reading the above comments I would like to know whether any of the contributors have ever worked on a farm or lived in a rural community. The insulting comments of Deb in particular serve only to display her ignorance and heartlessness, particularly the one about taxpayers dictating the hours farmers worked.What a joke! Have you ever worked an average of 80 hours a week 365 days a year, year in year out. I was going to reply at length to some of these comments but it just isn’t worth it and I’ve decided it’s not worth trying to save Australia’s farmers either if you are the sort of people we’re feeding. Let’s sell out now to foreign ownership and international corporations. I recommend all farmers leave asap, find a couple of acres of productive land if there’s any left after all the mindless urban development over our most fertile soil. Grow your own veges and run some chooks (free range of course!) get yourself some dead end job in the valuable service sector shuffling paper and producing endless and meaningless printed verbiage (let’s help the paper industry increase their profits as they don’t whinge all the time and suck the poor taxpayers dry) and then sit back and enjoy everyone whining about the cost of food. If paying $50 for a printer cartridge is OK $10 for a tomato should be reasonable. Alternatively you could consider the call sector option. I’m sure that thriving sector must be doing wonders for our national psyche and setting the standards for meaningful work practices. Finally there is always the option to keep blowing your brains out. A lot cheaper for the taxpayer and that way not adding to the problem of short term unemployment and the urban sprawl.
For those people without a dictionary agriculture means cultivation of the soil and cultivation means to till or break up. Cultivation can also mean to improve and cherish. Not all farmers understand that…they are too obseesssed with financial viability but that is the priority in your world
Oct 19th, 2006
Deborah
Ok Yobette, lets look at farmers, let’s look at the farmers and mateship. In particular lets look at their representative body the NFF and it’s actions.
Actually, I do come from rural Australia, have lived there for more years than I have lived in the city. My parents lived and worked on stations and so has my brother.
Love a good stoush: farmers’ group notches up 25 years:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/18/1090089038839.html?from=storylhs
“Indeed, the federation has been enthusiastically involved in every great union-busting stoush since 1979. Dollar Sweets (1985), Mudginberri meatworks (1986) and the waterfront dispute (1998) are three notables.”
“…For Mick Madden, a former shearer who was in the thick of the wide-comb dispute, bitterness towards the federation still runs strong.
Now the state president of the Australian Workers Union, he says the union was also at fault in the dispute, but the federation committed the greatest crime of betraying the bush ethos of mateship. “They turned mate against mate. I saw people I knew [in the strike] lose their houses over it and lose their marriages and families over it. Several … took their own lives because of the pressure.”
Mr Madden believes the wages and conditions of rural workers are now the equivalent of what they were in the 1890s.
Aborigines have bitter memories of the federation’s 1997 Wik anti-land rights advertising campaign, which was labelled racist and divisive.”
Let’s not forget the farmer’s role in the waterfront dispute. The attack dogs and black hooded guards. NFF scab labour training in Dubai and a secret farmer union busting labour company.
I haven’t noticed the farmers objecting to the NoChoices IR legislation, supporting other Australians in their work and business battles. Actually, how many would be using the 457 visa rort to undercut Australian wages and conditions?
Oct 19th, 2006
Yobbette
Sorry I haven’t got time for a good stoush. Have to go and pay bills and send food to market… and the union issue is a whole other story. Yes a lot of the old farming guard aren’t big on unions but they are small fry in the big picture. Interesting that you’ve come from a rural background… perhaps you are out of touch with the contemporary scene, still living in the days when the squattocracy ruled the land.
The demise of the union movement is just as sad as the demise of the family farm and perhaps the demise of the Democrats. Too many zealous members in the ideological minorities at both ends of the spectrum ruining a good thing.
Oct 19th, 2006
ken
While It is good to be able to lay the ill s fo the qworld at los of peolpes feet – isn’t the real; issue here how and in what fashion is this country going to be able to feed its 20 million people.
Easy to say just walk away from the famrs and let them all rot in hell – but when the butchwers got no meat left and the supermaket is empty what do the farmer haters propose
Oct 19th, 2006
Deborah
We’re all pressed for time and have livings to earn.
“perhaps you are out of touch with the contemporary scene, still living in the days when the squattocracy ruled the land.”
But hasn’t the call gone out to support more drought relief funding for farmers on the basis of “It is part of the psyche of this country”
-it’s not me who is living in the past.
I haven’t heard the contemporary farmers voicing their concerns about the IR legislation, their support for other (non corporate) welfare recipients, decent wages and conditions etc.
The waterfront dispute was pretty contemporary too, and whilst you say that the demise of the union movement is just as sad as that of the family farm, you fail to acknowledge that the farmers union actively works to bring about that demise.
I believe that relief funding should be like the HECS scheme, the money should be readily available, but when times are good and profits are made, the money should be repayed.
Oct 19th, 2006
Yobbo
Yobette: I grew up on a broadacre wheat farm which my father and brother still run.
Deb: The NFF does not represent all farmers.
I believe that relief funding should be like the HECS scheme, the money should be readily available, but when times are good and profits are made, the money should be repayed.
Can’t argue with that.
Yobbo your conceptual conservatism, shared by many, is the very reason the Australian bush ecology, economy and communities are in such a bad situation
John, all I have done in this thread is point out how little you know about agriculture. I haven’t offered any opinions, conservative or otherwise.
Your answer to everything is “lets look at what the aboriginals did!”, when in reality they did nothing.
I am sorry that you can’t admit you are wrong and have to make stuff up to make yourself feel good, but it’s really not my fault.
Oct 19th, 2006
John Tracey
Yobbo, this is a direct cut and paste from the first definition link that you so graciously provided earlier. You may notice that even this wiki entry acknowledges farming as beig just one form of agriculture.
“Agriculture (a term which encompasses farming) is the process of producing food, feed, fiber and other goods by the systematic raising of plants and animals.”
The problem is not disagreement about the meaning of the word but disagreements about whether this land has been managed for a long time, or only in the last 7 or 8 generations?
The fight between farmers and greenies over fire management was interesting in that farmers spokespeople could go as far as saying that the Australian bush had allways been managed by fire, but could not go the next step as to say by who? The super fires we have today is because there has been 5 or 6 generations where bush litter has not been burnt, so these super fires are bigger than the continent has seen fo a hundred thousand years.
Many farmers are seeing the sense of different ways of farming, not out of any green ideology but because they more than any city greeny have a relationship with land and can see first hand what is happening to it. Even conventional farmers are being encouraged to reafforest areas to retain water or minimise salination. The traditional aussie concept of society struggling against nature has to change. we have to engage with it for the survival of the whole lot. Not going back to museam Aboriginal stereotypes. Talking innovative and very clever solutions appropriate to Australia’s specific conditions.
Oct 19th, 2006
John Tracey
And Yobbette,
fair comment about the spirituality of call centres, but you would be surprised how a bit of cash can cheer you up.
And on the tillage thing, which is an irrelevent semantic distraction, but anyway. If the legal definition is tilling the soil, then certainly you have seen images on T.V. of aboriginal women with their yam sticks? harvesting tubers, aerating the soil and allowing space for water to flow to the roots next rain. No tractors but it is, I would argue in court if it came to that, tillage.
Oct 19th, 2006
John Tracey
and such “broadacre” aeration and hydration management techniques as yamsticks have been neglected as the land hardens and drys.
Yamsticks dong furry animals on the head increasing their agricultural value. They dong abusive husbands on the head increasing their social value. A sophisticated piece of agricultural equipment.
Oct 19th, 2006
John Tracey
how could I forget? you can crack macadamia nuts with a yamstick too.
Oct 19th, 2006
nasking
What about the sheep?…by crikey I was pissed off tonight hearing the winging of sheep farmers on ABC news, who couldn’t make more than $2.50 per head…it was all about ‘the poor farmer’!…gimme a break!…what about the poor animal who gets treated like a bloody NOTHING…no choice for the poor sheep!…it’s all ‘the drought is a real problem for me & my family, I’m so depressed’…well boohoo!!!…ever thought how the sheep might feel as it’s sent off to the execution abattoir?…
…& don’t tell me sheep don’t have personalities. I had one as a companion for years, luved to dance to music (jumpin’ around like a disco dancer)…nosed his way thru the door whenever he wanted to chat…& they do in their own way…& would nuzzle up for a good pat now & then. Would play w/ our dog…& enjoyed himself immensely. Followed me everywhere. A good friend. I found him in the paddock of a farmer who used to let me ride my ag bike there…his Mum died after running into a post…I hand reared him. Wonderful little bugger who grew up to be a big, fun, healthy adult.
Bloody riles me when I see sheep & other species bein’ treated like a piece of crap…herded like Jews into the concentration camps.
Oct 19th, 2006
John Tracey
what about the grass that the sheep eat! let the grass live free!
I’m not joking. sheep do enourmous damage, especially in drought when they eat so much of native grass and herbs that there is not a viable seed stock for the next generation, when the rain comes. Especially if they eat the plant before it even seeds – nice green shoots.. drought after drought the lands natural capacity of native stock feed reduces through overgrazing and canot regenerate itself.
Sheep are like cats. Cute and furry and should be eradicated in order to protect the bush as they compete with native species. Unless you can keep them inside the house.
You can keep a sheep in the house, you cant stop a cat from wandering.
If your landlord wont let you keep sheep in the house you can properly mange them with such things as fences and including them in pasture rotation within organic fertalisation frameworks. Try doing that with cats!
sorry I’m turning the computor off now.
Oct 19th, 2006
Graham Bell
Yobbo [post 61]:
Just because there is the potential to make huge profits from innovative enterprises, you cannot assume that such enterprises will be financed. Despite the impressive track record of Australians for inventing and adapting; the Australian financial industry has always been shockingly timid and stick-in-the-mud when it comes to financing anything new. Especially in rural industries.
Are the majority of firms running around now grabbing what they can of Australia’s biodiversity Australian ….. or off-shore firms?
Oct 19th, 2006
John Tracey
can’t help myself and had to turn it back on.
Did anyone just see Catalyst on T.V.? Traditional owners in Arnham land being paid ($1 mill a year I think the figure??) to re-institute traditional burning practices -which reduces the carbon emmissions of super fires, through carbon credits paid by an energy company.
A “new” industry and a combination of indigenous and European land managment science.
Oct 19th, 2006
Andrew Bartlett
Yes, JT. And also worth noting that it is stuff being pushed by some people within the Wilderness Society. Even some greenies get it right sometimes (having had a shot at some of them, including some in TWS, in a speech in a speech in the Senate this week)
Oct 19th, 2006
John Tracey
Now I understand what centrism means.
It’s RWDB flaming such as naming the green movement in parliament and labelling it racist….
Then thinking he can get away with it by saying on his website “they do some good things”
lar dee dar.
Hitler youth did some good things too!
But you are right Andrew, the green movement and its organisations do not share any unity of opinion on these things – mostly no opinion at all. Indigenous specific campaigns, departments and workers often learn heaps from their contact with Aboriginal people but the main organisation and movements tolerate this as token consultation but do not take the implications seriously. Same thing with their work with farmers. Instead they just brag about their work with the Aborigines and farmers like missionaries do at missionary conferences.
Oct 19th, 2006
John Tracey
Andrew, or anyone , Do you know the role TWS played in the carbon trading in Arnhem land?
between the northern territory government, traditional owners and the mining company, what role did the greenies play? Were they key in mediation and negotiation, or as stakeholders or were they just hanging around like blowflies taking notes and issuing media statements like they do in queensland?
Oct 19th, 2006
John Tracey
But Qld. TWS do some good things too.
I too have a critique of Line’s article.
Mine of course is better than the senators speech.
“Creating Aborigines in our own image”
http://johntracey.blogspot.com/2006/10/creating-aborigines-in-our-own-image.html
I believe it bears some relevence to parts of this discussion in terms of European and indigenous paradigms.
Oct 19th, 2006
nasking
>>I’m not joking. sheep do enourmous damage,
yer absolutely right…as do humans…but we don’t line them up, murder them & then eat them…& then callously winge about how much they cost us & how little we gained from their carcass. Not here at least. Not for a long time.
>>Sheep are like cats. Cute and furry and should be eradicated in order to protect the bush as they compete with native species.
‘eradicated’…is it the fault of the cats & sheep that they were introduced to this land? By Gaia, do you know how you sound?…my wife & I over the years ended up adopting a coupla cats because an owner died, another was to be put down. We luv their company & regret everyday, & I mean everyday, that we’re forced to give them food containing fish & other species…we know it makes us look like hypocrites, everytime I give them food I ask the energy/spirit of these creatures to forgive us for contributing to this tragedy. Most of us are complicit in this death march…it’s a horrible, complex situation, that must be addressed.
I have no problem pointing the finger at myself, realising the mistakes we made in saving the cat’s lives…how freakin’ convenient it is that i can grab the food at Coles & someone else has done the killing. The ethics of it are enuff to turn the brain inside out…but it doesn’t prevent me from showing concern about the horror of it…& I believe wholeheartedly that you are right to question my hypocrisy…query my actions & motives. In doing so we contribute to a debate that hopefully creates more awareness & eventually leads to the end of some of this barbarity.
Assist Humanity in progressing morally to the point we look for ways to have less destructive impact. It’s too easy to put it in the ‘too hard’ basket.
Oct 20th, 2006
John Tracey
Sorry for going overboard, but i gotta tell you all this story.
About a year ago, cant remember exactly, the wilderness society held a celebration of the success of the ALP’s acceptance of the wild rivers legislation.
The aboriginal input into the procedings was a video of a Cape York elder with whom TWS had been “consulting” on wild rivers business.
The elder said in the video that if the rivers weren’t managed in accordance with Aboriginal ways they will die. He went on to say that this new law did not incorporate Aboriginal ways.
Then the TWS leadership and an ALP backbencher congratulated each other on their environmental success and sliced up a cake in the shape of Qld. for the photographers. mention was made during the congratulations of the consultation with Aboriginal people.
This ignorant dismissal of indigenous opinion exists at the core of the wilderness society and indeed the Greens party, their antipodean outpost offices are continuing to claim credibility because of their good work with the natives but this contact with the pagans is never allowed to infect the organisations hierarchy or new recruits.
worse than christians!
but the missionaries did some good things too.
greenies, RWDB’s, farmers, socialists and indeed some Aboriginal pople are locked into rigid boxes. They think they can miraculously pull solutions out of that same box that entraps them.
A subconscious sense of defeatism and powerlessness in the ecological crisis allows for us to cling on to the illusions as if it doesn’t matter as we are all going to die anyway. Preserve the trees in tree museums and dont let anyone touch them and that is our ecological legacy for the future. Propping up destructive farming practices as an agricultural legacy.
Hope lies in innovation and adaption to and of the environment. us higher primates are supposed to be good at that sort of thing.
Oct 20th, 2006
John Tracey
nasking,
you suffer the same racist dellusiones as Yobbo and william Lines. You do not understand that human beings are one of the species native to this continent. Sheep and cats are not. Human beings have lived symbiotically with the landscape whereas cats and sheep destroy it. I have more sympathy for sheep than cats as you can keep sheep in houses and make football beanies out of them, but both of them are species that the environment does need to be protected from by strict management practices.
Human beings cultivating the landscape, eating shitting and composting naturaly increases both the fertility and the water retention of the landscape in which they live if done properly e.g. permaculture or traditional Aboriginal lifestyle. management practice for humans is about orgainising the way we engage with the environment, not protecting it from us. Stop putting your self down.
Oct 20th, 2006
Yobbo
The super fires we have today is because there has been 5 or 6 generations where bush litter has not been burnt, so these super fires are bigger than the continent has seen fo a hundred thousand years.
And this is relevant to agriculture how? Bushfires do not occur on Agricultural land, because agricultural land is already cleared.
It seems to me that you are desperate to put anything at all you know outside of a concrete footpath into the public record on this blog.
No matter how many useless strawman you construct, the public record (i.e. Andrew’s blog) will forever show that you are completely ignorant of the entire subject of Australian agriculture.
You should have quit when you were behind about 70 comments ago. Now you’re just like a gambling addict, desperately trying to win back the 5 grand you’ve already dropped by putting your entire life savings on number 22.
You are sad.
Oct 20th, 2006
Andrew Bartlett
Hmmmm
yes and no and other things.
True enough re wild rivers campaign and major irrits with many indigneous people on the Cape about the whole thing …. but you have also acknowledged at other times the value/importance of playing (up to) the media game with all its hollowness. That doesn’t excuse verballing, railroading or misrepresentation, but does acknowledge that media stunts are always at risk of being shallow/hollow (or both if that is physically possible)
far be it from me to be a Greenie defender, and it also doesn’t negate the genuine irrits of others, but still shouldn’t ignore that Murrandoo Yanner has expressed publicly the support of his mob for the wild rivers stuff.
Oct 20th, 2006
John Tracey
And while I’m in the swing and talking about labour history.
Are hunters and gatherers workers?
No! they are capitalist land owners who control the mode of production.
anyway
one of the slogans of the great shearers strike and the developing union movement “Australia for the white man” the workers did nothing as thousands of Aboriginal people were herded onto concentration camps. In particular in N.W. queensland where the shearers got organised and the first protection acts were written – same time same place, not as if the workers could do nothing about it.
it was the shortsightedness of the unions that pushed for equal wages for Aboriginal workers that forced them off their traditional lands into places like the Alice Springs town camps. A blind ideological and cultural box that prohibited possibilities of joint management of land.
let us remember past this current I.R. battle back to Bob Hawke’s “concensus” politics that has seen unions become the lackies of management assisting them in their human resource management. they have failed to defend against the demise of award conditions in particular wage scales. All this while the ALP sold of the commonwealth bank and other public assetts and now whines hypocritically about telstra.
Look how John Howard so easily manipulated the forrestry workers in Tasmania to justify forest destruction and rejection of sustainable forrestry..
the unions now have a crisis of their own existence and have brought themselves back to some relevance, but they, like the public service, will be an unnecessary anchor around the process of rural innovation and community development with the exception of facilitating workers in extractive industries.
Oct 20th, 2006
John Tracey
Yobbo, I can’t think of any more to say because you have obviously demolished me completely.
I am flat on the floor.
Winded.
seeing stars.
I dont think I have ever been humiliated quite so thoroughly before.
you indeed are my master
i succumb totally to your superior perspective and please accept my apologies for being so totally and absolutely stupid as to challenge the truth of which you speak.
Andrew, you said “Hmmmm
yes and no and other things.”
I suppose this is centrism?
i am of course being provocative to make a point. That perhaps is also a viable media strategy for those in the public debate. To put issues on the agenda for discussion that are usually dismissed by Greenies and welfare bureacrats alike as in the 2 hard basket and too often avoided.
TWS have tried to repent with lobbying for indigenous rangers etc. but the essential breach of racial discrimination law has not been remedied.
Within the principle of the devil is in the detail, I am sure that Murrundoo as a mainstream shire councillor and land council executive member will try and get as involved as he can and achieve as much as he can in defineing what that detail might actually be. He comes to the negotiating table with consderable power in his 2 elected roles and I am sure will set some administrative precedence in how it all works. Especially if he has support from Queensland senators. But Beattie has made him as bad as Bin Laden and any bureacrat that talks to him is likely to lose their job like Liddy Clarke.
This is the same Murrundoo Yanner However who rejects conservation law as it restricts traditional hunting and has been arrested for having crocodile meat in his fridge.
Oct 20th, 2006
nasking
don’t think you read my entire comment.
But moving on…from what i’ve read, the original inhabitants were travellers who arrived here many yonks ago (possibly a hundred thousand years ago), perhaps when parts of the land were connected w/ other bits that are now underwater…a move of individuals/tribes? either due to a need to find new water holes, food etc…or due to climate change…or perhaps to get away from other less amiable types, who knows?…certainly some of these early inhabitants, most now refer to as Aborigines, due to a combination of necessity, spiritualism & respect for their environment constructed a symbiotic relationship w/ other species that was a darn site less impactful & destructive than much we witness today…& trust me, i have deep respect for a number of the practices utilised, belief systems etc..& accept their is much we can learn from Aboriginal culture. But that doesn’t preclude me from examining other means & ways…nor be comfortable w/ your use of the word ‘eradicate’.
Nor am I comfortable w/ Australia being used to enslave species en-masse, export them live to be killed in barbaric fashion, particularly those non-carniverous in order to gain profits.
I’d like to see more compassion shown by those who are the guardians of these animals. Winging about the need for assistance whilst deciding to send their sheep to the abattoirs en-masse because they’re gonna run out of water only makes me question the decision making processes & moral standards of some of these graziers/farmers/corporations. That was generally my point.
Seems to me most must be aware this is generally a heck of a dry nation, so why continue to breed introduced species they know damage the environment & may starve to death? Seems crazy.
Oct 20th, 2006
John Tracey
sorry,
dont panic – Im tired I will have to stop soon.
But just on media stuntism.
it is one thing to speak up for Aborigines, Farmers, Greenies, War veterans, people with disabilities, the homeless etc.
it is another matter totally to speak on behalf of them, to represent them to the legislation building process as TWS did, and i believe received state funding to do so..
TWS should have advocated for Aboriginal demands and facilitate meetings at the earliest possible opportunity with the highest possible authority to avoid the confusions and contradictions that are still being worked out now before the law can be implemented properly. But they waffled around like social workers and wrote reports and issued media statements, whittleing Aboriginal perspective down until it fitted perfectly with the ALP bureacracy’s expectations and would therefore not obstruct passage of the legislation..
The model was the Cape York Heads of Agreement process that saw noel Pearson rise to mainstream prominance – a working arangement between traditional owners, pastoralists, environmentalists and mining companies. But who pulled the plug and collapsed i? Wayne Goss and the ALP! The wilderness Society and their co-horts have been trained not to demand too much in terms of indigenous interests and they obediently comply wih their master’s voice.
There needs to be media stuntism of people with profile and integrity representing grass roots reality to the public service and government, not representing the public service and government to grass roots reality. In terms of wild Rivers and colonial impositions, the human face of the beast was TWS.
apart from Murrundoo, other traditional owner groups have teamed up with the cattle industry to oppose Beattie and the Greenies which I find a fascinating development and one that I hope the Greenies learn a lesson from.
Oct 20th, 2006
Deborah
JT, I thought it was the station owners who refused to pay the exploited Aboriginal workers equal wages for their work and the family support, that forced them off their lands.
Make no mistake, conditions were bleak for Aboriginal people then. Requirements to provide food, shelter, clothing & medical assistance were not adequately policed by authorities or adhered to by station owners.
http://www.apo.org.au/webboard/results.chtml?filename_num=95297
I agree re modern labor policy, that is why many people (including me) cannot relate to Labor anymore and don’t vote for them (or the Coalition).
Oct 20th, 2006
John Tracey
Hi Deborah,
firstly I think you will find that the racism and conservatism of the modern ALP is very much in line with its historical traditions.
but anyway
it is not true that the prime culprit of under award Gurindji wages was the station owners. Like the U.S.A. the Australian economy was built on slave labour and those who profited from it were not just the pastoralists but also the industrialists, the working class who were employed by it and the consumers who developed affluence because of it.
The slave mentality of the working class and socialist movement could not see the possibility of the gurindgi as land owners sitting eye to eye with the boss as joint managers. No, they had to raise the Aborigine to the holy status of “worker”. Which meant, and was predictable, that the white boss would employ white labour if it cost the same as black labour.
The ideological imposition of worker status broke Aboriginal society. Only today with the dissipated gains of native title, after all the damage has been done, do we get round table meetings of stakeholders including pastoralists and traditional owners.
The terra nullius non-agriculture myth comes in here too. Aboriginal people working in pastoral enterprises on their own country enabled them to participate in traditional lifestyle which meant eating bush food to supplement the crap that their employers gave them. This traditional lifestyle and food system was of high economic value to be added on to their substandard wage when assessing a family’s income. Equal wages meant giving up the family’s traditional wealth to pursue prosperity as an alienated itinerant worker.
this is why blackbirded pacific slaves wer not popular. The master had to feed them. Aboriginal slaves were cheaper because they could feed themselves.
Oct 20th, 2006
John Tracey
The Gurindgi struggle, which along with the Noonkanbah dispute are the only 2 times in the history of the Australian union and labour movement where workers supported Aborigines industrially.
The Gurindgi history and the degeneration to dysfunctional town camps in Alice Springs is a prime example of the failure of left wing assimilationism.
Oct 20th, 2006
ken
Re Post 91 – the link is worth reading for the meaning of the full article.
Oct 20th, 2006
John Tracey
The article is just stuck in colonial paradigms too. All the commentators are talking about jobs, wages and industry while from day one the gurindgi have said it is about land.
Oct 20th, 2006
John Tracey
And just on the bleakness of the Gurindji before the white union saviors stepped in.
Welfare worker and union organisers alike judge lifetyle from their own consciousness. Even untidyness can be considered a reason to remove children.
After 150 years of guerilla war, small pox plague and seeking refuge on a new cattle station for survival were the objective conditions of the time – a devestated war economy. This was the baseline economy for all Aboriginal Australia – not just the Gurindgi. Yes conditions were very rough. it is only through cultural mechanisms such as family and connection to country that eneabled survival. remember it was not until the 8o’s that suicide rates were even recorded. During these times of more extreme opression than today, Aboriginal people were psychologically stronger than today.
So the bureacrat, who has to deal with their own culture shock in the first place – understanding a different culture language and place, but then they make assesments on their western material moral frameworks,
Then by way of stolen children or industrial relocation transfer Aboriginal people to places where they cannot access family and country and lose the strength that got them through the hard tomes to today when they cannot cope with the ordinary times and escape into the heavenly numbness of alcohol and drugs and suicide mentality.
Oct 20th, 2006
Rob
A question: Did Aboriginal people fight each other over resources with one clan pushing another out of high-resource regions in the same cycle of conflict that has existed world-wide?
If so then the dubious ‘right of conquest’ ownership of the European title deed system is just a more organised domination. A rough analogy is corporate culture eg. MacDonalds annihilation of small businesses who fail to achieve economy of scale efficiencies or to co-operate with an appropriate defence strategy.
Oct 20th, 2006
Evil Pundit
The Aborigines were just as violent and competitive, and environmentally destructive, as any other humans.
However, they remained in the Stone Age while the rest of humanity moved on. And so they suffered the consequences, as a more advanced society took over the land.
This is the way of the world.
Oct 20th, 2006
John Tracey
Rob, firstly
Aboriginal people did not squeeze each other out for resource regions.
they shared in times of scarcity. Kropotkin’s theory of mutual aid is releveant whereby survival of the fittest is based on those species most able to cooperate.
Western Europe has been at war for 10,000 years but it is important to understand the historical context of this warring rather than identifying it as a universal human trait.
Sustainability means political stability, not just ecological stability. Again the socialism without a state based on a laisez faire economy is an economic model worth considering in the innovation process. Just the simple ability to negotiate and trade without going to war – it is an art.
and the ingredients in colonisation that are not in simple corporate domination is the gun, poison flour, poisen water and smallpox. Macdonalds have stooped pretty low but the analogy is not accurate, inless of course you are talking about their current agricultural pracrices in the third world in which case the analogy does have legs.
Oct 20th, 2006
Deborah
JT, Dr Thalia Anthony should not just be dismissed out of hand or her work dismissed as being rooted in colonialial paradigms.
It would help if you could offer friendly information and opinion to us and not dismissals, which just turn people away from your cause, however well intentioned (I say this as a person who has lived in an NT community for 25 years, worked in the health system and lived with a doctor who headed the Aboriginal run, Aboriginal Health Centre and has devoted his life’s work to the improvement of Aboriginal health). I actually agree with your POV.
Submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee Inquiry into Stolen Wages by Dr Thalia Anthony
http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/legcon_ctte/stolen_wages/submissions/sub17.pdf
Indigenous Self-Determination and Crime: Out of Tune and Out of Time
http://www.thiscenturyreview.com/Indigenous_Self-Det.indigenous.0.html
Journal Articles
‘Indigenous Self-Determination and Crime: Out of Tune and Out of Time’,(2006)
(2006) ‘Crime and Transgression on northern cattle stations’ Journal of Aboriginal History (forthcoming)
‘Aboriginal Self-determination after ATSIC: reappropriation of the ‘original position” Polemic (Sydney University Law Society’s Journal), Vol.14, No.1, September 2005 at 4-16.
‘Labour relations on northern cattle stations: feudal exploitation and accommodation’ Drawing Board: An Australian Review of Public Affairs, vol.4, no.3.
‘Postcolonial Feudal Hauntings of Northern Australian Cattle Stations’ Law Text Culture, vol.7, Making Law Visible: Past and Present Histories and Postcolonial Theory.
Conference papers
‘Aboriginal labour and feudal law’ to 22nd Annual Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society (Brisbane)
‘Undressing Keith Windshuttle’, Intercultural Studies Annual Conference (Newcastle)
I’m sure there’s some oral history in that lot! (more writings on her website).
BTW, your qual’s are?
Oct 20th, 2006
John Tracey
Deborah, my quals are adequate and not really relevant.
Outlining a series of references from within colonial academic paradigms is like saying a high IQ gives insight out of our own cultural frameworks. It does not.
There are many ignorant and racist academic articles about Aboriginal Australia. Acadamia of itself does not justify wisdom.
i do in fact believe that lefties, RWDBs, greenies, feminists, farmers social workers and bureacrats operate within a common dysfunctional psychological paradigm and I am sorry I cant think of anything friendly to say about those things.
However I choose not to sweep these issues under the carpet because they challenge peer generated ideologies or threaten social cicles that inhabit and reinforce these ideologies .
you may detect a note of cynical bombasity in my writings, don’t take it too seriously I am simply poking fun at contradictions in the hope that you and others may consider your own bondage to ideology and culturaly created morality.
this cultural bondage and propensity to regurgitate platitudes is a poor alternative to creative dialogue to solve problems.
Oct 20th, 2006
John Tracey
BTW Deborah.
Here is my contribution to the stolen wages enquiry, since that is one of your standards pf qual credibility. It is better than Doctor Anthony’s. The good doctor is not just stuck in colonial paradigms but also one dimensional cow paradigms in her submission.
http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/legcon_ctte/stolen_wages/submissions/sub05.pdf
Oct 20th, 2006
Deborah
“i do in fact believe that lefties, RWDBs, greenies, feminists, farmers social workers and bureacrats operate within a common dysfunctional psychological paradigm and I am sorry I cant think of anything friendly to say about those things.”
You don’t see your own bondage?
Oct 20th, 2006
The Feral Abacus
Returning to the original thread topic, I notice that in SA federal funding is being directed almost exclusively to northern pastoralists, and that the bulk of grain-growers are missing out despite facing a miserable season. Why so?
Oct 21st, 2006
John Tracey
Yes Deborah, I am bound by a society dominated by lefties, RWDBs, greenies, feminists, farmers social workers and bureacrats and I yearn for freedom.
Oct 21st, 2006
Deborah
Sorry to continue feral (just one more JT, because it’s fascinating to me and I’m not having a go, just very interested)
Do you want no cultural restraints at all? a desert island, or do you choose to exist within the constraints of a different (Aboriginal) societal paradigm, accepting of those morals and cultural constraints?
Oct 21st, 2006
The Feral Abacus
Deborah – you’re forgiven. I think the discussion that you and John T are engaging in is informative (to say the least), but I’m hoping that others will re-engage in the original thread topic. In my opinion, one of the great strengths of Andrew B’s blog is that it allows parallel discussions within a thread.
Oct 21st, 2006
John Tracey
I believe the sub topic has relevence to the main topic as I do not see the choice beween abandoning rural society because it is uneconomical or propping up its uneconomicalness for another season. To step out side this dichotomy is difficult because the public debate has too often lined up in football teams within simplistic for or against politics. This adversarialism is instituted in our courts for dispute resolution and in our party system for law making. It arises as hostility between greenies and farmers.
Stepping outside ideological boxes adopted through habit is not easy to do. It requires an abandonment of preconceived notions to look at things fresh and with an attitude to lateral thinkink to identify possibilities not immediately obvious within existing world views. e.g. who would have thought the Cape York heads of agreement process would have been so successfull in building a working relationship between Aborigines and pastoralists who are supposed to be adversaries with competing interest.
So in asnwer to the Island question. No I am not isolated and i have a very strong moral code. However I am aware of what my code is and I constantly challenge and explore it, especially trying to identify where it comes from. I do not abandon my moral code ever but in my intelectual explorations and discussions I transcend that code, recognising it as a preconceived construction amd test i against the reality I observe. if there is a conflict between my preconceived morality and the reality I observe, I adjust my morality rather than explaining or ananlysing reality to conform with a particular ideological framework be it feminism, socialism, christianity.
cont. next post
Oct 21st, 2006
John Tracey
cont from previous post
Any cross cultural relationship requires a capacity to abandon preconceived moralities and ethics. This is not because other cultures have no ethics, it is because they are different and not immediately obvious. It is in this cross cultural difference that we not only find universal humanity but also the freedom of lateral thinking and innovation.
For example, the womens movement has driven the domestic violence agenda but domestic violence is generally an issue for men. But the moral high ground of feminism has restricted development of realistic mens programs including relationship education, in favour of band aid functions like shelters or peer parades like reclaim the street. It is the traditional patriarchy that denies or defends sexual violence on the one hand and the feminists protesting about violence on the other but nobody lets their guard down for a moment to ask what would really stop or reduce this?
Aboriginal mens business is a model that can, has and does reduce the incidence of domestic violence, yet (Qld) funds mens programs by essentially copying the womens refuge and and counselling model and imposing it onto mens groups because there is no funding for anything else.
this mens business is a model that mainstream society can learn from in developing now ways of dealing with violence rather than reproducing the feminist model which has proven a failure to achieve anything in terms of violence reduction.
But this empowerment of men is ideologically unsound for feminists and I doubt they would approve of the advice given to men by men as to how to deal with the issues either.
The principle of open mindedness is simple and essentially the same as meditation. Clear all thoughts and clutter from your mind and what is left is your own inner creative energy.
that is how politics should be done.
thats how rural redovelopment should be done
thats how reconciliation with Aboriginal Australia should be done.
Oct 21st, 2006
John Tracey
Sorry Feral Abacus, my last one
The phenomenon of band aid practices like womens shelters or drought relief is a direct result of trying to repair paradigms that are failing.
We are locked into these hopeless bandaids because the government, public service and public opinon simply cant rearange itself out of dysfunctional paradigms and continues to throw good money after bad into them while the real suffering on the ground increases. – while innovation is neglected totally.
As the J-man says, you can’t put new wine into old wineskins or they burst.
Oct 21st, 2006
The Feral Abacus
John Tracey: Deborah is apparantly too sensible to stay up so late, so I’ll have a go.
In post #108 you speak of stepping outside of simplistic dichotomies: I couldn’t agree more. Yet in #109, you establish/create a dichotomy between men’s & women’s ‘business’. This appears inconsistent with your previous post; surely domestic violence is the business of both parties.
Oct 21st, 2006
nasking
>>So in asnwer to the Island question. No I am not isolated and i have a very strong moral code.
Hmmm…you make sense on so many levels John…but unfortunately I feel you have neglected the stairs that would assist you to leave your lighthouse. ‘eradication’ is a dreadful word if put into practice…it connotes genocide…how would you intend to ‘eradicate’ the invaders?…would they be useful as a beanbag or skin to lay on?…you sound so darn purist & narcissistic.
We’re here, we’re queer & not queer…so get used to it. Every aware energy form has its own unique effect on life…karma & attitude matter…but to who, what, where & when?
Destroy that energy form…& you will eventually pay the consequence, regardless of how long your ancestors have been WHERE…extermination is purely that, extermination…infringing on the RIGHT of another being to EXIST is bad karma…bad policy…bad ways…but shit happens. It’s how we live w/ our decisions. A low cholesterol meal does not make for a morally justifiable meal…survival of the fittest sucks no matter how you look at it.
Oct 21st, 2006
The Feral Abacus
John Tracey, a cross-posting there…
In many respects I’m inclined to agree with you, but overall – like nasking – can’t quite manage it, albeit for different reasons. And you used the abhorrent ‘i’ word, which is nowadays pure bureaucratic/managerial-speak.
My question is whether drought relief – as currently implemented – is a bandaid or a political imperative. And I’m not convinced that equating drought relief with women’s shelters is a valid analogy. Although I consider that shelters constitute just one part of a range of strategies for addressing domestic violence, there’s no doubt in my mind that they provide an invaluable refuge to women and children facing invidious domestic circumstances. I see few parallels with drought relief.
Oct 21st, 2006
Deborah
That is where we’ll have to disagree JT, more power to men!
I think that Aboriginal men have too much power over the women now. I want to see the women empowered not to live in fear.
The men cared a lot about land rights, but the health concerns of the community were usually left til last at the Council meetings (before everyone left), just not given a high priority.
I know that without the women’s shelters there’s some Aboriginal women who would not be alive today. I have enormous respect and admiration for the women. I can only speak of my experience in the NT, don’t know of the men’s program of which you speak.
We had many people come to hospital and the Health Centre from very remote communities who still lived a mainly traditional lifestyle (eg Kalkaringi, Dagaragu, Borroloola, Oenpelli, Nhulunbuy & Maningrida etc).
I’ve looked after the women who’ve had their heads smashed open with star pickets and seen the damage caused by a fire stick shoved up a vagina by a jealous husband. I’ve been threatened with violence from numerous Aboriginal men, even saying that they will knife me, at my workplace when they come in to take their wife and sick child away to get the woman’s welfare cheque. Centrelink had to split the cheques so that the women could keep some money to feed the children, but the men would just forcibly take the money from them.
I’ve also seen how exhausted a woman can be after being up for 2-3 days with a very ill child and then having an all day air med trip to get medical attention. I’ve seen 12 y.olds pregnant (usually to a much older man).
I believe that legal Aid and the police do not protect Aboriginal women as they should.
Legal Aid cannot act on behalf of both husband and wife, so the man gets the assistance and the woman is left without proper protection or else she has the police prosecutor.
Aboriginal men hide behind ‘tradition & culture’ in legal defence when they should admit to DV, GBH and rape.
Oct 21st, 2006
Yobbette
Just thought I’d better redeem myself and would also like to take up the thread of “courage of your convictons” elsewhere.
Apologies for my ealier irrational outburst but the thought of a bureacrat sitting in an airconditioned office keeping tabs on the hours farmers worked was just too much for me…not that there is anything wrong with bureacrats per se! 6 years of drought is very disheartening but it also starts screwing up your head.
Whether saving farmers is good for the national psyche is probably not the point it’s about saving our viability and autonomy as a nation? Is that important. I really don’t have time to type out a reasoned and sensible defence and that is the worry- many people are just too busy on the treadmill making a living to keep informed and get involved in debate.
I don’t vote labour any more either ..in fact I don’t vote properly at all any more. For someone who is a really staunch defender of compulsory voting I have put in donkey votes for the last couple of rounds of elections and feel rather ashamed but honestly that was the only thing I felt I could do. So would like to sign out with a poem which I think reflects how a lot of thinking people are feeling right now..the trick is to hold on to, and justify your convictions without falling prey to passionate intensity which is really difficult when things you care about seem to be slipping away.
Oct 21st, 2006
Yobbette
TURNUNG and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some relevation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Oct 21st, 2006
John Tracey
Feral Abacus and Deborah,
Domestic violence is indeed a matter for all adults.
the feminist model correctly identifies men as being those who usually inflict the violence, it does not look at the relationship of a couple as a causal factor including including undrerlying tensions and trigger and button pushing incidents. (lesbian couples suffer the same way as it is the structure of the relationship, not hormones or sexuality.)
When the violence hits, which is the mans unsophisticated and futile attempt to escape what he thinks is oppression (but is just ordinary relatonship dysfunction) then it is too late because all rationality and sensitivity has dissapeared at this stage.
One of the reasons men bash women in this process is obsessively possesing their partner because of insecurity in the relationship or sense of individual self.
Sometimes many men simply need to let go of their relationship, as the possesive demands and low self confidence of the woman are similarly restricting the man and in the context of mutual dysfunction.
This is the importance of the unmentionable sex education discussion. Boys and girls need to be told that it is OK to walk out of sexual relationships if they dont work rather than clinging to guilt ridden notions of the nuclear family, marriage or fidelity.
They need to be comfortable with their own sexual identity rather than seeing it as being wrapped up in a partner to obsess over.
Deborah – your Aboriginal horror stories exist in white society too. mens business works for white men too.
worth a try instead of ideological dismissal. The sisterhood is obstructing its own liberation through clinging to and promoting ideology and peer opinion.
Oct 21st, 2006
John Tracey
And I cannot over emphasise the role of poor housing and overcrowding as a contributing factor to family violence and good housing as being an essential element of a healing program including safe and private sleeping areas for children.
Oct 21st, 2006
John Tracey
In order to free this thread up for more poetry and get back to the topic,
if people are curious about my ideas, check out
http://johntracey.blogspot.com/
Deborah, you may be interested in this if you haven’t seen it before.
http://johntracey.blogspot.com/2005/12/neo-colonialism-in-australia.html
Oct 21st, 2006
Deborah
Jt, How can you accuse me of ideological dismissal when, in the first instance, that is what you did (which started this whole mini thread)! You need to follow your own rules and accord the same courtesy to be fair in discourse.
I agree with you re housing, overcrowding and sanitation concerns. have to say that yes, the horror stories exist in white society too, but I’m strongly against white or indigenous (or any) women bashing.
Agree wholeheartedly in walking away from dysfunctional relationships, but it is very hard (?impossible) for Aboriginal women to walk away in remote communities. There is no safe place for them.
As we both know, the men are in control.
Oct 21st, 2006
John Tracey
Deborah, remote Aboriginal communities have many safe places for women to go. in particular her own extended family and if in tribal areas, exclusive womens country to go into.
But the feminist model is to remove her from her family. Shelters on Aboriginal communities run differently to white feminist ones. The real damage comes when white feminist services in the cities try to save aboriginal women by removing them from their community and family – basic shelter methodology.
Also, the assetion that men are in control is a patriarchal anthropological myth. Womens government operates on a different dimension to mens government but anthropologists and feminists alike pretend there is no womens government and maintain there focus on mens structures and say that is the nature of Aboriginality.
Open you eyes to Aboriginal women power, open your ears to what these women are saying instead of claiming some trophy of crediility because of your association with Aboriginal womens victimhood to bolster feminist assumptions.
Oct 21st, 2006
Deborah
“No I am not isolated and i have a very strong moral code. However I am aware of what my code is and I constantly challenge and explore it, especially trying to identify where it comes from. I do not abandon my moral code ever but in my intelectual explorations and discussions I transcend that code, recognising it as a preconceived construction amd test i against the reality I observe. if there is a conflict between my preconceived morality and the reality I observe, I adjust my morality rather than explaining or ananlysing reality to conform with a particular ideological framework be it feminism, socialism, christianity”
Every thinking and self aware person does that JT. You’re guilty of defining those around you by the boxes that you put them in. Very bigoted and prejudiced thinking.
Oct 21st, 2006
John Tracey
I’ll stay out of the sequel to this thread if this is getting too much for anyone.
Deborah
This victimhood thing is crucial to justify the band aids on systems that are failing. We must prop up the dysfunctional system for the sake of the victims.
It is the same with John Howard seeing rural australia as victims in need of charity instead of a powerhouse of potential in new technologies and industries as well as relieving many urban crises such as homelessness and exsessive water consumption.
The capacity to feed large populations with minimal transport to minimise carbon emmissions and added fuel costs is in the country alone. As I think yobette mentined, all the most fertile ground around the cities has been developed on.
Band aid rural funding just prolongs the inevitable one more season. Shelters protect women until next time it happens.
we need long term solutions, built to fit the social and ecological environment, not trying to redefine the environment to fit into old modes of agriculture or welfare.
if nothing changes, then all we have to look forward to is more of the same.
Oct 21st, 2006
John Tracey
Deborah,
if thinking self aware people rationally reassess reality, can you answer me why you cling to relaim the night events but have been unable to suggest one positive outcome beyond feminist peer reinforcement. (and I take your responses last time I asked this question as a standard of courteous discourse)
I dismiss ideology because it does not fit into reality. This is very different from dismissing reality because it does not conform to ideology, which I accuse you and many others of.
E.P. is the classic example, but you also with your allusions to the labour movement and feminism and your attempts to some how make the conversation relevent to these ideological reference points.
I could be accused of the same about Aboriginal stuff but I only do so where this perspective is relevant, e.g issues regarding management of the land.
however I have never refered to a correct line and have avoided drawing on Aboriginal quotes and references, I just say it as I see it.
Bartlett goes on about wishy washy centrism within a single dimension of right and left.
I consider myself a multidemensional extremist.
Oct 21st, 2006
John Tracey
And F.A.
by the “i” word. do you mean innovation?
I am sure it is a bureacrat buzz word. However the free marketeers also rely heavily on it as an essential component to enterprise and market advantage. It is in this context that I use it, not streamlining the paper trails or reorganising office furniture..
Oct 21st, 2006
Deborah
I know of Aboriginal women’s government, but what of women’s positions in the councils, the local government, which make decisions for all Aboriginals?
http://www.officeforwomen.sa.gov.au/files/Guide%20-%20Local%20Council%20Candidate%20Information%202006.doc
Women’s law is seperate to mens, but is it of equal weighting in community councils? Are women able to be assertive and effective in decision making. Are the men present?
“…in particular her own extended family and if in tribal areas, exclusive womens country to go into.”
And if her own extended family are threatened and fearful of reprisal? Why should the woman have to go to exclusive country, when she wants the violence to stop, she should be able to stay where she is and be safe and protected. The man should be removed.
I shall take my leave now JT and others, sorry to monopolise the thread, but found it interesting conversation.
JT, I may make references of ‘allusions to the labour movement and feminism and your attempts to some how make the conversation relevent to these ideological reference points.’
because I do think that they may be relevant, even if you (or others) don’t, – that is how I think. But, you may notice that when you enter a conversation, it is almost always to bring up Aboriginal issues and make them ideologically relevant – that is how you think. Yobbette, Feral, Nasking and others here have their own thoughts and they are relevant and make us all think and view things differently too.
I hope you get loads more funding.
Oct 21st, 2006
John Tracey
councils and committees are white statist colonial impositions onto extended family sociologies and fail over and over again, ATSIC being the most spectacular failure of them all. These councils and committees are indedeed carbon copies of European patriarchal systems of bureacracy and non governemt.
The real government is the relationships between mens business, womens business, elders business and educationg the young business (initiation).
Your appeal to see the injustices of these white man type committees as a means of dismissing the real structures amongst aboriginal women, men and elders is just an example of you being stuck in a colonial box.
Oct 21st, 2006
Deborah
“…beyond feminist peer reinforcement”
Actually, i would say women against sexual violence peer reinforcement. There’s probably women of all races and colours and sexual persuasions that attend. Even men support it. What is so wrong with it?
In perspective, it’s one night of the year.There’s loads of peer reinforcement for men at the local pubs every night (actually, although I would totally support RTN, I’ve not been to one myself)
Oct 21st, 2006
John Tracey
And Deborah, you said
“And if her own extended family are threatened and fearful of reprisal? ”
this is fair comment though I think you are underestimating the capacity of Aboriginal people to stick up for their own family members.
However this must be weighed up with the same question of going to the police for a D.V. order or even a prosecution as is the feminist model.
Can Aboriginal people have faith in the police to deliver justice in Aboriginal homes. Evidence suggests not. A gaping hole in the feminist strategy.
Oct 21st, 2006
John Tracey
Deborah,
I have no moral objection to reclaim the night any more than I do the Brethren worship services. But when they brainwash their adherents through vilification, ostracism and self rewarding group experiences to impose their warped view of the world onto others especially social programs eg brethren and elections or Hillsong through welfare programs, then there is indeed a problem to challenge.
And I might say one night of the year of peer reinforcement is no more a strategy for defence against sexual violence than ANZAC day is a strategy to defend Australia against aggressors.
What good, if any, does reclaim the night do to reduce incidence of violence? A simple question still with no answer, which I hope may convince you that you have been brainwashed into an illusion that it is not significant to anyone other than the participants and certainly of no significance to the perpetrators of violence who are the only people with the power to stop it..
Oct 21st, 2006
John Tracey
And the peer reinforcement of men in the local pub is where I suggest a realistic program of education should begin – by men, for men in the pub and the shed.
Oct 21st, 2006
John Tracey
men should go and get blotto with their mates rather than bash their wives. walk out the door and do it without guilt.
Oct 21st, 2006
Graham Bell
The Feral Abacus [post 113]:
I don’t care if you think the word “innovation” has become a bureaucratic buzz-word. What syhonym do you suggest for the spirit of give-it-a-go and try-something-new-to-see-if-it-works?
Oct 21st, 2006
Deborah
“What good, if any, does reclaim the night do to reduce incidence of violence? A simple question still with no answer”
Public education and raising of community awareness.
How do you know that a man hasn’t been affected enough to avoid sexual violence by some of the education, or through a wife or girlfriend’s support of the campaign. Has it even been researched? Until that happens then you or I have no idea.
“Can Aboriginal people have faith in the police to deliver justice in Aboriginal homes. Evidence suggests not. A gaping hole in the feminist strategy.”
No, as I said before, the Legal Aid system is biased toward Aboriginal men. The police are also biased against Aboriginal women in the same way as the police manage DV in the wider community – women are not safe and protected. I don’t really think that feminists have any faith in police to manage either.
Overall, I think that there is much racism ans male superiority present in the police force anyway. How many police resort to DV tactics in their own relationships?
I really must go to work, thanks for the debate.
Oct 21st, 2006
John Tracey
nuclear family architecture, even for Europeans, places men and women and children into each others face all the time.
Architecture based on extended families (see above reference to submission to stolen wages enquiry) allows for such things as womens space and mens space and childrens space to be permanent fixtures in family architecture, as an ongoing preventative strategy rather than a crisis intervention strategy.
If the feminists were serious about domestic violence they would be lobbying their feminist mates in the bureacracy and government to push for a so called whole of government approach to domestic violence including changing the nature of public housing architecture in Aboriginal communities as well as new housing developments for the mainstream housing market.
Instead domestic violence is reduced to a tokenistic niche with similarly tokenist funding programs.
Most of the senior beurecrats in Queensland housing, communities etc. departments are women – former social workers promoted through seniority to one notch beyond their competence. Same thing the prisons department that governs a 90% mens prison population.
Are these women just pawns in Beatties patriarchy, including Anna Bligh? or are they capable of expanding their territory beyond affluent feminist materialist paradigms?
Their willingness to challenge the now 30 year old stale and irrelevent feminist paradigm is the test of whehter they have just included a womens department in the patriarchy or if, now they are in power, can actually make a difference.
Oct 21st, 2006
John Tracey
Deborah,
I think society is allready aware that domestic violence exists. How much longer should a public awareness campaign continue before any aware people can begin to develop solutions?
Oct 21st, 2006
Deborah
Let me go to work!
As long as it takes. Some of your arguments sound more woman hating and misogynistic than just feminist hating.
>i>”Are these women just pawns in Beatties patriarchy, including Anna Bligh?”
Yes, her especially, and I also single out Judy Spence for particular insipidness.
Oct 21st, 2006
Rob
My view on an earler question related to the original thread ie. not all farmers getting aid in SA only northern.
I have worked with some of their economic figures and in a 5 year cycle (on average) -speaking broadly! – many of the grain farmers experience 3 years in which they make money – one of which is incredibly profitable and lose in 2. That is farming! They don’t volunteer for extra taxes/ to help out manufacturers facing competition to China in good years so those that don’t make provision to hedge for the bad should sink. Their farms have productive capacity and someone else will take them over – as they have (40% less farmers over the last decade or so and corresponding increase in farm sizes) so society doesn’t lose but in fact gains as productivity increases through better management. The marginal areas out north have a harsher cycle and the risk is farming would be abandoned. However when there is a good season the onflow benefits from primary production and the resultant multiplier to the economy justify government help to keep them afloat in poor years. The town support communities and service providers also stay instead of moving to the cities.
Oct 21st, 2006
John Tracey
See you after work Deborah. thanx also for the debate.
any way
I am not agriculturally xenphobic as some “deep ecologists” are who insist on a purity of native species to maintain the integrity of eco systems, (though they do do some good things)
Innovation is also the supply to the local market of asian herbs fruit and vegetables as a result of the mass Vietnamese migration. Non Asian background Ozzie markets have taken up these products also.
25 years ago a few hippy freaks started experimenting with wierd asian fruits they picked up on their drug crazed sojourns into S.E. Asia – like lychees which are now an established Australian industry.
We have a lot to learn from traditional African and Asian agricultural techniques also, as lanscapes more closely resembling our own to an English country garden. Especially in the developments of “appropriate technology” which has developed significantly in third world agriculture but us rich folks dont see the need for it (yet).
The ways that migrant families, in particular refugees have used the extended family as an economic base to collectively develop with all the family behind the fish and chip shop counter or in the backyard garden, for example, is a model of micro economic development far superier to business development models and training by present government departments – and directly relevent to mainstream poverty as an alternative to welfare. And appropriate for diversification of the family farm..
Oct 21st, 2006
Ken
Deborah #114 – I couldn’t believ it – spinning for Brough.
HT in all that high level thinking maybe the point of some people being physically able, closer to their primal bilogical roots has something to do with it. Just anothr but differnet ideolgical (cultural) box.
Education and the acquisitionof resource sby measn other than strenght has always, in my simple view, played a far greater role in limiting physical violnce than anythign else.
Oct 23rd, 2006
steve at the pub
Most obvious from this thread is that almost all the commenters have a complete & total ignorance of agriculture & all matters relating to it.
Almost scary.
Oct 23rd, 2006
Josh
Free trade agreements and opening the doors of the global economy are the way of the future (not just an opinion but a foresight into the future to where the global economy is heading towards). If we can import basic agricultural necessity products for cheaper than we can grow them (cheaper in both an economic and environmentally sustainable sense), then we are faced with some problems to which there are a number of alternative solutions.
JT, do you know what would happen if we stopped the culture of sugar, beef, lamb ect. within our shores while relying on self-sufficiency of agricultural products [i.e. no imports or high import tax on food stuffs]?? the price of steak and rack of lamb would go through the roof, and no doubt the next blog we would all be commenting on is what the fed gov is going to do to make food cheaper for us. Relying on native products sounds nice on paper but the demand for non-native products is to high to ignore and much research must be conducted before commercial farming of native products can viably overtake current market supply and demand for non-native food products.
Also, stopping free trade to help our farmers out is also a simple and single minded opinion. The effects of limiting free trade on the economy as a whole will be seen with an increase in cost of other high demand imported products.
Oct 23rd, 2006
Josh
You said it well Grahem with innovation being a key to increasing cashflow in the bush, I believe we as a nation are innovative in nature and there are many many goods & services waiting to be developed from within our country and from within Aussie minds. Banks and VC firms have given a number of new ventures opportunity to establish themselves, though problems persist with the sustainable establishment of the enterprises themselves. This has thus created an element of risk assocatied with investment opportunities in new venture rural industries.
A great example is of coral reef fin fish (coral trout and barramundi cod in particular). Millions has been poured into these potentially lucrative aquacultural products only to see the science behind the theory still in infancy stages. Like Andrew has said, things like greater access to broadband fassicilites ect is what is needed, greater financial and new venture training for these innovative new ideas for farmers to understand the world beyond the farm and how he and she can continue to do what they love. A farmer can tell you no problem that he/she can grow a product, whether they can viably, sustainable, profitably and realibly sell their product or not is another story.
Oct 23rd, 2006
John Tracey
Josh,
any unplanned rapid change will cause the problems you identify. A good example is the free trade process itself which has been embraced without fully assessing its impact on our agricultural sector as well as the levels of affluence that we have become used to. Not only do we join the global economy by buying cheaper food, we also now compete with the low wage levels of other countries and our own economy suffers, either through the roll back of pay and conditions such as the IR laws or through losing industry to overseas such as the Indian call centre workers.
Labour intensive agriculture that provides self sufficiency and employment may not be able to compete with the profits agribusiness and high mechanisation with low paid workers in overseas factories processing and transporting the food. However in a holistic understanding of the economy includinig social considerations not just profit margins for shareholders, local labour intensive agriculture (and other industry) is better.
Also the profits of international agribusiness (and mining) leaves our economy and is not recirculated.
Industrial innovation rarely happens quickly. This is why ongoing research and development support is essential. There are no immediate profits to be made in innovation so the companies stick to the tried and tested economic formulas even if it destroys the land and works against social agendas such as rural revival.
the example of macadamia nuts as well as the international popularity of Australian eucalypt timber for construction are examples of how we can engage in the global economy as a producer and not a consumer market. This needs to be expanded too, not just developing self sufficient economies.
Oct 23rd, 2006
Josh
John,
“Not only do we join the global economy by buying cheaper food, we also now compete with …” Our own economy also GAINS immensely. You may be aware of the boom across China right now, thank god we have steel mines in Australia, which create jobs and local industry in rural communities.
Of course we compete, we are both suppliers and consumers, its not a one sided argument JT. Free Trade can reduce the cost of many useful and necessary goods and products while also increasing efficiency in the goods and products we currently export. What do you think would happen to other Australian industries who are currently competing with global players in their specified field find out that the gov has put a stop to exporting certain agricultural products to help the agriculture industry out??? This is a social consideration which must be taken into account, to help one industry but not another will just cause further problems, but to help all industries by emulating the same response strategy (self sufficiency) will be suicide for the entire economy as a whole. No countries take to one sided trading nicely.
Free trade deals are never fully embraced without looking at the opposing spectrum. If you believe social considerations play no part in the decision then you are very naive. To be a small country in a world that will eventually will be interlinked through free trade could have devastating effects both economically and socially.
Your second paragraph is a huge assumption and personal opinion also. Creating jobs is necessary, but expending training, tax payer and borrowed capital into ventures which are not self-sufficient nor competitive is ridiculous.
“Also the profits of international agribusiness (and mining) leaves our economy and is not recirculated.” BHP Billiton is the largest resource company in the world….. and its an Australian company, meaning money back in the hands of its Australian (yes, and international) shareholders.
Oct 23rd, 2006
John Tracey
Josh
BHP Billiton is no longer an Australian company and profits go to shareholders around the world.
Much of our contribution to the global economy is extractive industries, owned by multinational companies. it is royalties and minimal taxes that are recirculated, not profits.
There is no guarantee that the massive Chinese expansion will last, even China admits the boom is not necessarily sustainable. If for ecological reasons or escalating inflation the Chinese economy blows out we are stuffed.
But what is the powerhouse of the new Chinese economy? It is self sufficient.
Oct 23rd, 2006
Josh
Your kidding if you believe that last line about china… Majortity of the money being made in China is by multi-nationals, i.e. companies not owned by Chinese firms. Many large Chinese owned companies are struggling to make the profit that the foriegn firms are reeling in. China relies heavily on international capital and exports, nothing of which is self-sufficient.
Whether China’s boom will last is another argument, what’s for sure is that the gloabl marketplace will never be the same and that large multi-nationals are now turning from once World economic leaders like the USA & Japan to developing economies. This means we wont see the last of booms for australia’s export industry.
Your right about BHP, in that it isnt fully owned within Australian , but 60% is, the other 40% is owned by the British based BHP Billiton Plc
Oct 23rd, 2006
John Tracey
Josh,
the majority of the new money in China is indeed being made by multinationals in an essentially speculative economy based on the opening up of trade relationships.
However basics such as feeding itself is the base economy on which this speculation can grow.
The Australian economy is based on speculation and multinatinal trading alone. We need foreign trade to simply eat, which many multinationals profit from. This makes us vulnerable to the global economy as opposed to cashing in on it like China.
OZ Current account balance (US$m):
2001, -7,860
2002,-16,287
2003, -29,484
2004, -39,789 2005,
2005 -42,304
2006, -41,397
http://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/fs/aust.pdf
the trade deficit is rapidly growing
“China’s foreign trade growth rate is expected to slow down next year. The trade surplus will reach US$15 billion next year. That compares with this year’s surplus, which is expected to be around US$25.53 billion — almost the same as 2003.”
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-12/26/content_403378.htm
Oct 23rd, 2006
Graham Bell
Josh [post 143]:
Didn’t you know that “venture capital” is both a swear-word and an oxymoron here in The Clever Country? :-)
It was not just gaps in science that hindered development of specific potentially very profitable fish industries; apparently screwing the Australian marketers didn’t help either.
Josh. On China [post 147]. True. There are Chinese firms that are rather unprofitable ….. but they make a swag of money nonetheless. Poor old Lao Wai, taken to the cleaners again by those inscrutiable orientals … :-)
Oct 23rd, 2006
Josh
Graham:
On your side with VC, had a giggle too, I should’ve said bus. “angels”
As for the marine aquaculture industry, I still know of a few investors keen develop a potentially lucrative and profitable industry, if only survival rate for hatchlings and appropraite food sources for larvea could be discovered (or so im told by my research buddys at JCU Townsvillle).
Hadn’t checked out the Bartlett blog in a while and my fingers were itching when I read JT’s comments on self-sufficieny to better an economy. And my comments about Chinese firms and hindered comparible profits had no implication that they werent making money, only that in no way is China a self-sufficent super-power. China has a TRADE SURPLUS because it TRADES.
Oct 23rd, 2006
John Tracey
wrong Josh.
China has a trade surplus because it exports more than it imports. unlike Oz. not simply because it trades.
manufactured goods from China leave a lot more money in the chinese economy than extraction industries leave in Oz. The value adding of manufacturing is where the profit is for extractive industries, which does not happen here as our natural resources are shipped overseas.
However the poverty of many Chinese people is a growing problem of their global trading which may not be reflected in balance of trade figures, same as OZ.
Oct 23rd, 2006
John Tracey
but our manufacturing industries are stuffed as companies seek cheaper labour elsewhere through global trade, minimising our opportunities for value adding within our local economy.
Oct 23rd, 2006
Josh
JT, value adding occurs across every industry, not just manufacturing! As we speak a BHP Billiton (I’ll remind you again that they are a majority owned Australian company) have put forth a proposal to build the largest natural gas terminal off the coast of California, which would supply Australian LPG through Australian shipping, onto an Australian built and owned terminal run by Australian maganement staff with profits returning to Australian shareholders… Hows that for value adding!!
Wow, you talk a lot of nonsence JT.
Oct 23rd, 2006
Josh
Also, “However the poverty of many Chinese people is a growing problem..”
Do you know what has happened to poverty in China over the last 20 years????
This is an extract from the World Poverty Net, an offshute of the World Bank and the International Development Assocaition:
“China alone lifted about 400 million of people out of absolute poverty. GDP per capita increased five times since 1981. The number of extremely poor people fell from over 600 million to slightly more that 200 million, or from 64 percent to 17 percent.
This progress was fueled by economic reforms, openness to markets and competition, focus on private initiative and market mechanisms.
“It is possible with these kinds of policies to achieve good performance on the growth front, and many other countries in the world are applying the same policies,” said François Bourguignon, the World Bank’s Chief Economist. Given the global recovery, we may expect that they will be able to benefit from that favorable evolution.”
http://web.worldbank.org/
Oct 23rd, 2006
Josh
Sorry, full link:
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/0,,contentMDK:20195240~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:336992,00.html
Oct 23rd, 2006
John Tracey
Hi Josh
BHP and Malbu, I saw the news too. This whole project, as was the focus of the news story, is an ecological disaster. Ecological disasters are not good for the economy. Just ask a PNG economist about BHP’s Ok Tedi project.
The OkTedi mine, like so many mines in Australia, apart from its environmental disaster, rips the wealth out of the earth and sends it somewhere else in exchange for tax revenue, minimised by essential plant infrastructure such as roads being written off for tax because the public can use them too.
This tax burden is a small part of the overheads of turning the primary mineral into processed material such as steel, then on to roofs, fridges and cars.
The mineral may be processed in Australia but in a plant owned by multinationals, wealth just flows throw, as opposed to flow on, except for a minimum of jobs in high tech plants..
Then the steel is transported to factories overseas, where the steel is turned into fridges and and cars which are then sold for big money to Australians, the profit from which, except for tax, goes back to overseas industrialists.
Now, of the 40% of “Australians” that may own BHP, as just one of the multinationals in this game, after they have paid their massive salleries and perks to their internatinal board of directors, the wealth from the extraction and initial processing of minerals and the not insignificant local steel market can only flow on through this elite group many of whom will invest their profit in other multinational companies or leave it in the bank accruing interest. Some will however invest locally – I concede that. However the potential flow on from the crumbs of the steel industry being channelled through a bunch of share traders seems to me an inferior mode than developing wholly, or at least majority shareholder control in Australian mining and forestry companies, manufacturing plants. wholesale and retail outlets.
The profit stays in Australia and the tax base is broadened.
Oct 24th, 2006
John Tracey
Josh cont.
in terms of china and the growth of jobs, is it not in factories that these jobs are being created? I would not believe state propaganda that poverty is being aleviated but I don’t know enough to challenge it except refering to T.V. documentaries about rural communities left behind by capitalism.
But China is growing as a manufacturer, this is why it needs all this energy and raw materials. The flow on from manufacturing is distributed through wages supporting a self sufficient economy.
All Australia does is assume a superiority that demands great affluence and gets it as quickly as we can by digging up the back yard and selling it cheap to neighbors.
Even when we rode on the sheep’s back it was the same dynamic. An over dependence on rural industries as export producers rather than suppliers of local industry and markets.
this made us vulnerable to the great depression as it does today to the destruction of rural Australia and the transporting of urban jobs overseas.
Another key element to the rise of the chinese middle class as a significant local market is the one child policy, but that is another story. We allready have a well developed and affluent market.
Oct 24th, 2006
Rob
JT do an economics course in international trade. Also ideologically one cannot say “let’s give the developing countries a chance with access to trade and then get all xenophobic when we decide to buy their goods”. You compete on your strengths. The most profitable strength is management skills and innovation. That is why Australian agriculture is still strong (to return to the original thread). They are some of the best innovators and adopters of precision farming technology with those that aren’t not surviving. Every ag. aid decision should be made in the context of the big picture of environmental and economic sustainability which includes the question: Is this the best farmer/farming system that is available?
Oct 24th, 2006
Josh
Here we go again JT: BHP’s proposed Gas terminal is an “Ecological Disaster”…
No, it is not. The Exxon Valdez spill was an Ecological Disaster, the early irrigation attempts on the Aral Sea was an ecological disaster, and this proposal… is certainly not an ecological disaster. Stop throwing fact aside and rambling on with biased opinion, its getting old very quickly.
Also, can I suggest a few macro economic & intrenational economics books for you to read (start with Gans et al, “Principles of Economics”, its an easy read for Economics 101), as you seem to know very little on the subject at hand. Dont “assume” when it comes to the flow of capital through a society, learn how it works then share your comments.
Basic fact: Over 50% of Australian adults invest in shares. Of these shares aquired, many are diversifying into the international sharemarket. By investing in these markets, money flows from foriegn shores into Australian’s pockets. The more money within a socieoty the greater amount of capital banks and financial institutions can then more easily lend to others to invest in new ventures to grow our economy as a whole.
Let me know what you think of the book
Oct 24th, 2006
ken
John, I do think it rather odd that on one hand we laud the Nobel Prize winning bank lending samll sums to enable people to improve their lot and climb out of poverty by the very process called the free makret (however small) and then on the other take the opposite view whne the same principels apply in China on a larger scale and say that contribute to their growing poverty.
Seems like capitlasim is only good capitlaism when it involves tiny cottage indusrty only.
Oct 24th, 2006
John Tracey
Firstly, there is good trade and bad trade. If you lose out it is bad.
The first “green revolution” (Rockefeller foundation now has a model of a “second green revolution” based on GM and patented crops ) that was supposed to save the third world by integrating it into western economies was a dismal failure that resulted in famines and millions dying. This is bad.
Rob, if our farmers are so good then why are rural communities stuffed? If innovation serves agribusiness at the expense of the family farm then that innovation cuts people out of the prosperity rather than increases it and is therefore bad.
An ideological position on free trade, either for or against, is not rational. Our commitment to free trade has been ideological without proper consideration to its effect on the local economy, in particular farmers.
Ironically, free trade is an ideological imposition by the government to conform it foreign policy dictates, not fine tuning the local economy.
I cannot condense a position into a blog size bite but I will put something soon on my site on energy companies and their role in dominating local economies through free trade including our own. Bechtel, the CIA’s engineering company presently dominates the Queensland economy and has its world headquarters in Brisbane but most people have not even heard of it. It is behind all the water and gas line projects, it financed, built and sold off (Exon style) the millmerrin power station and has dictated foreign policy towards East Timor and the sunrise oil and gas field. it will build any nuclear processing or waste disposal plants in Australia. it is behind “green innovation” at Phosphate hill in Qld. – one of the most toxic developments in Australia, that sends profit straight off shore.. Bechtel was the first company into Iraq after shock and awe. This is global manipulation and domination, not “free” trade.
Oct 24th, 2006
John Tracey
The DFAT figure of Oz foreign debt (my post 148) seems wrong.
An article in ABC today puts the debt at $500 billion dollars which sounds better than the 41 million dolars mentioned in the DFAT figures.
looking at the DFAT link again the $41 million is how much worse the foreign debt got in a 2006.
However the accounting is done, wealth is flowing out of Australia instead of recirculating.
Oct 24th, 2006
John Tracey
Global trade and Queensland energy.
The economic impact of Bechtel’s involvement in the share market. The Kogan Creek and Milmerran power stations, apart from causing havoc in stock prices, were the two coal fired plants that Beattie rejected Kyoto limits over.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/06/1057430077705.html
“The start-up late last year (2002) of the $1.5 billion Millmerran power station near Toowoomba, controlled by Shell and Bechtel, pushed wholesale electricity prices for much of this year down by about a third, to below $20 Mw/h, making it difficult for all but the lowest cost generators to cover their costs, let alone make a profit.
As a result, the original owners of Loy Yang decided to quit, walking away with a thumping $1.4 billion loss.
Among the losers are two arms of Macquarie Bank – Horizon Energy, which lost 90 per cent of its money, or close to $300 million, and the Macquarie Bank-managed High Yield Infrastructure Debt Trust, a private fund for institutional investors and high net worth individuals. This fund is nursing heavy losses on its holding of $50 million of Loy Yang notes. It is doubtful whether these investors, which include some of Australia’s richest families such as the Pratt and Arnott families, will get all of their money back”
Oct 24th, 2006
John Tracey
Remember the collapse of ENRON? a share deal similar to milmerran. Surprise surprise, Bechtel was a partner in ENRON too.
Oct 24th, 2006
John Tracey
Bechtel’s past projests in Australia. (the Darwin plant includes a deep see port where Malibu gas will be sent from)
Darwin LNG: Bechtel is completing the Darwin liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in the Northern Territory for ConocoPhillips. Only the second LNG plant to be built in Australia, the facility introduced a new manufacturing technology to the country.
Comalco Alumina Refinery: In 2004, Bechtel completed construction of the first phase of the Comalco Alumina Refinery in Queensland. Built for a subsidiary of Rio Tinto, the largest mining company in the world, the alumina refinery is among the first world-class alumina refineries to be built in Australia.
Pasminco Century Mine: In 1998, Bechtel completed design and construction of one of only a few zinc processing facilities in the world, at Pasminco Century Mine in the northwest Queensland outback. The mine is responsible for 30 percent of Australia’s annual zinc production.
Millmerran Power Station: In 2000, Bechtel completed design and construction of the Millmerran Power Station in Queensland for Millmerran Power Partners. One of the first privately developed power stations in Australia, Millmerran “marks the start of a move to privatization of power generation in Australia,” says Saint.
Olympic Dam Mining and Processing Plant: In 1997, Bechtel completed the expansion of a uranium, copper, and gold mining and processing facility in South Australia for Western Mining Corporation. One of the biggest underground uranium mines in the world, Olympic Dam also represents one of the largest single capital investments in Australia.
Portland Aluminum Smelter: Built in 1986 for Alcoa of Australia, the Portland aluminum smelter in Victoria is the largest aluminum smelter in the southern hemisphere. Placed in a park-like setting, the facility is a major tourist attraction as well as a big contributor to Australia’s economy.
Oct 24th, 2006
John Tracey
US govt connections to Bechtel
and George Shultz, the US Secretary of State in the 1980’s who was a former President of Bechtel, and now Chairman; and Caspar Weinberger, a former Secretary of Defence in the U.S. Government was a chief counsel to to the corporation. And like John McCone, the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and a former Bechtel partner who delivered government support for privatizing the nuclear industry.”
http://www.sea-us.org.au/roxby/bechteltalk.html
How can anyone claim that Bechtel’s use of “free trade” in Australia has anything to do with “free”?
What benefit to Austrtalia is from this mu,tinational’s involvement in our economy and domination of the energy industry?
Oct 24th, 2006
John Tracey
How do they get away with it?
here is one of the services Bechtel offer to their clients – bribes and propaganda spin
http://www.bechtel.com/relations.htm
“Increasingly, people worldwide are expressing fear that land development and construction projects will unduly disrupt their lives and pose dangers to their health. The public’s concern about the environment, the economy, and the general welfare of their communities has led to protests, negative media coverage, and lawsuits. Too often, the results are the same: extended project schedules and significant cost overruns. Occasionally, the voice of the public stops the project cold.
At Bechtel, we know that people denied the opportunity to work with a project will often work against it. That’s why Bechtel established a formal policy to foster working relationships with elected officials, government agencies, the business community, labor organizations, environmental and community interest groups, property owners, and the media. Since then, we’ve been involved in community relations activities on projects of all sizes and scopes throughout the world—from the cleanup of hazardous waste to the design and construction of airports, highways, power plants, and petrochemical facilities”.
Oct 24th, 2006
Rob
John: The inefficient family farmer goes out of business if he/she doesn’t move with the times. I work in agribusiness and early adopters of innovation get excellent returns that become the new benchmark for survival. You ask where do the jobs go – well to people like myself who are specialists at improving efficiency in often one aspect, which as an example, our company does worldwide. The innovation invented here in Aus not only increases productivity here but is a source of foreign revenue. We all win until competition comes in, but that drives winners to even greater heights and so on. That is the way of our world and I like it like that. The ‘noble’ savage concept is all myopic mistruth. The guy who invented the longer spear etc. did over the one who was too slow and controlled resources etc. In times of scarcity conflict resulted. Our world within certain communities in Aus is a lot more co-operative now than it has ever been. The challenge is to sort out the exploitation at the fringes and internationally. And that is best not done by trashing all the infrastructure first! That is why I am a Democrat!
Oct 24th, 2006
John Tracey
Rob,
innovaton is essential for the farm sector to survive, but only if the innovation is designed for the Oz farm sector.
A brilliant Ozzie invention is useless if it is patented overseas, which many are because of neglect of R&D budgets.
New technology such as genetically modified crops ensure ongoing profitability for the multinational suppliers, but only ongoing dependence by local farmers making them vulnerable to being forced out of business in bad times rather than diversifying or changing production focus altogether towards something more sustainable (and self sufficient e.g. producing seed from crops).
Oct 24th, 2006
Rob
John, there are loads of Aus patented inventions. Our company holds 6. The government has huge amounts of money available to support R’nD work that will lead to commercial products. Either they will match dollar for dollar or even fund everything. They even have commercialisation and marketing grants. As an example a recent CSIRO commercialisation innovation to watch is Phoslock (nothing to do with us). They utilised the (negative) phosphate fixation (holding to make unavailable which is a headache for nutritionists) characteristics of certain clay minerals activated by a compound to come up with aproduct to reduce euthropohication in dams and rivers. The clay is sprayed over the water and the excess phosphorus gets locked onto the clay and then settles to the bottom. Hey presto. Cheap and eco-friendly! Simple, effective and Australian! There are loads of examples. I travel overseas loads for work and meet many interesting people promoting Aus innovation. Aus scientists rock!
Oct 24th, 2006
Rob
Another point on your post John. GM is not all bad……. There is a load of GM cotton out there which uses less chemicals than determinant and indeterminant varieties. That is a good thing….. And yes we have to have cotton and no nylon has issues and no hemp is not somehow magically the solution to everything. Kangaroos would be endangered if we all had to wear their skins .. what other arguments can I anticipate?
Oct 24th, 2006
John Tracey
Rob, let me know when you invent cotton that uses less water.
hemp was repressed to support the cotton industry. Why do you dismiss it as unviable now the cotton industry has become inappropriate in drought ecology?
and once we have cottton or hemp, do we export it to 3rd world sweat shops or do we stimulate the Australian textile and fasion industry?
Oct 24th, 2006
Rob
This is a game I know as much as anyone in. Australian cotton farmers are on average the most careful users of water in irrigated field crops in the world. They have to be. Every hectare not planetd because of too little water is a massive opportunity cost. By the way GM cotton seems to root shallower, haven’t seen the latest water consumption figures – research is ongoing. This is an amazing country with loads of innovators and researchers doing sterling work. Sadly some academics who are paid from the public purse to be innovators are behind the ball game and stuck in dated paradigms.
On making clothes/textiles in Aus. Dedicate your life if you like to stimulating locally made fashion but you have a challenge. The government shouldn’t waste its energy on a losing game. Cheap essential goods provided the balance of trade remains viable are of overall benefit top everyone. Let’s rather spend our money inventing things. ‘Sweat’ shops are a transitionary phase towards a labour movement towards better working conditions towards the rise of the middle class. They are better than extreme poverty… AGAIN LEADERS HAVE TO BE REALISTS THEY CAN”T AFFORD TO JUST RANT AND CRITICISE. Too few goods to staisfy everyone until productivity increases…..
Oct 24th, 2006
John Tracey
Rob, you said “The government shouldn’t waste its energy on a losing game.”
What is your attitude to the drought relief funding just offered to farmers?.
I agree about wasting energy (and money) which is why this relief money, and more, should be spent on developing industries appropriate to the Australian landscape rather than propping up european and unecological modes that are not only failing in the drought but destroying the lands fertility in the process.
Could the massive amounts of water used in cotton production be more profitably used on industries that do not require so much water?
I reckon destroying the land is a losing game.
Oct 24th, 2006
Rob
Water policy has been moving that way for 5-6 years John. Benchmarking trials have been conducted to establish the best benefit per megalitre ie. $/Ml revenue. Volumetric allocations are then based on these figures. Water law is changing. Remember changes have to be done fairly with sufficient notice for the ‘invisible hand’ of economic activity to adjust without massive upheavals. Government spending can be positive for the economy provided it is not inflationary or leads to a propensity to import through loss of the multiplier. Bailing out farmers is money that will generally stay in the rural areas and the country. There are still funds for innovation. There is a greater lack of innovators (we have many but need more!).
Oct 24th, 2006
Andrew Bartlett
I think a realted question is not so much ’should cotton be closed down’, but ’should cotton be allowed to expand’, given climate change and current water shortages.
If water was priced at full value, with the externalities of environmental impact priced in, would cotton still be economically viable?
This is a live question, as there are certainly pushes to increase the prie of water (which is inevitable and desirable in my view). But there are also pushed to expand cotton, particularly in the north along the lines of the Bill Heffernan plan of moving farmers up the ‘wet’ north – which runs the risk of seriously buggering up the ecology of the north of the continent, having done a good job of buggering up a lot of the south.
I don’t think farming is a ‘losing game’, but surely if some farmers are being driven to the brink of suicide (and over it), there must be parts of it that should be let go, rather than clung onto at all costs. Even raising this question is portrayed by the government as ‘abandoning farmers’, but it is a question which has to be raised – for the sake of regional communities rather than theories of economic efficiency.
Oct 24th, 2006
Rob
Water should have a true price -yes but not only for farmers. Things are moving in this direction. In a time of plenty work like now, struggling farmers to an extent have to be like many city dwellers and consider shifting temporarily to the mines until debts are reduced and favourable conditions allow them to get going again. Many many have already, some will tighten up and survive with or without help and some will make bad choices and sink. Life is hard but so is it for the person who opens a hamburger shop before the big M moves in next store.
Oct 25th, 2006
John Tracey
Anyone see David Suzuki at the national press club on ABC today?
I just want to gloat that he backs up a lot of what I have been saying. It was a bit wierd actually, as if we are telepathic or he had read this thread before he spoke.
He appealed to Australia to look to innovation including research on bush tucker for new appropriate crops and meat. He even talked about Hawaii and macadamia nuts. He ran down cotton and wheat to the max.
We would clash on nuclear power though. He says it is against his better judgement but he doesnt dismiss it absolutely – I do.
I know many people write Suzuki off, and more write me off. But I just wanted to say that I am not an isolated freak, at least Suzuki agrees with me.
Oct 25th, 2006
Karen
Does anyone know how to tell someone how to forget about his life’s work and do something different or move to another district?
Can you tell us all why farmers who supplement their income by taking a job off the farm get no subsidy?
Also, why do some farmer’s have to pay their assistance money back at tax time?
Most importantly, what do you say to the neighbouring farmers when you meet them at the next funeral, for one of the locals who couldn’t take it anymore?
Oct 25th, 2006
Adrianna
Hundreds of thousands of other Australians have had to change to different jobs after a lifetime of work at the one place, sometimes after following in the footsteps of their parents. This is difficult, especially for those whose sense of identity is intertwined with their job and home region. Think family small businesses, manufacturing and factory workers, etc. Often economic reasons force things, but sometimes it’s health reasons, or – for people from other areas – events like war or unrest. Not to mention what Indigenous Australians have been forced to accept.
This is obviously not an ideal situation for any family, but does anyone else who has to take a second job to make ends meet get subsidised?
Some grants come in the form of concessional loans, or require some other slower form of repayment of debts. Some grants and assistance do not require repayment at all.
One displays appropriate sensitivity at funerals and especially around the topic of suicide. However, if things are really that bad, then it is a sign that it’s unlikely to be fully resolved even if its rains. To be kinder in the long-term it may sometimes be better to help people adjust to a different activity, rather than give them just enough to keep scraping along.
Oct 25th, 2006
Rob
I believe people feel a very strong empathy for those who are so desperate that they take their own life. It shouldn’t be used as a form of blackmail though. This is Australia after all, with a huge range of alternative employment options and support services. As mentioned above, drought issues (like any hardship) may contribute but there are a range of factors involved. I would gladly have the government support everyone but also want good health, education, security, roads services ….. without the current account going loopy so as to deny future years’ needs.
Oct 26th, 2006
Karen
Good points Adrianna…but
What would you do though, if your land was useless and you couldn’t find a buyer? The council wont let you subdivide into smaller more saleable hobby-farm sized blocks and if by chance they had a relapse and did, it would be done with a very sizeable fee attached…maybe more than $5000 per block plus application fees?
Do you walk away and start again in another town? Apply for a benefit till you find some sort of work? Wait the obligatory 10 to 12 weeks with no cash or totally go for it at the Salvation Army, go through the means testing and beg for a hamper?? No, you can’t walk away totally…there are rates to be paid…weeds to be sprayed etc. You can’t even spray your own weeds now without attending a course which costs over $300. If you don’t spray for Tussock and St Johns wort it will cost you tens of thousands in fines. You can’t even cut firewood from your own land without permission…
But cheer up …you can sell your prize lambs for a buck a piece at the sale…oh joy!
Water is readily available though, $175 for a load that will stretch to 4 or 5 weeks for a family of 3 if you are frugal and you only have to wait a week.
Suicide is nothing new around here…mostly the locals prefer to stress out for a few years and pop off from heart attacks, the latest was a 39yr old around the corner…went to muster sheep, never came back. Which leads me nicely into the state of the health system…ahhh but I wont go there…it’s too nice a day and anyway John Howard is touring through Gunning and Goulburn, might pop into town :))
Oct 26th, 2006
Anne
Our country have known for a long time that through seasonal changes the rainfall is lessening & lets not forget Global Warming.Just what have the government done regarding our water problem besides hot air,& making promises they don’t keep.Our farmers are the backbone to our country so why is the government supplying water which is a precious commodity to cotton growers when cotton (water guzzler) can be grow in Southern United states where there is ample water for them to do so.Our farmers can diversify into alternative crops which could be sustained using less water.In regard to the suicide rate the despair they must be going through & gone through to push them to this point is un-imaginable.Rob could learn to feel some compassion for his fellow man.
There are so many areas the people of Australia have been let down yet we keep electing parties that huff and puff and are not really interested what the people need. Where do people think their Sunday roast,wheat for their bread etc come from?Once our country was about helping your fellow man, now it seems it’s about helping other countries apart from Oz.
Oct 26th, 2006
Rob
Anne I have loads of compassion, I just believe in sustainable solutions. There is money now and it can be used to help people exit and find other forms of living. If you look at my earlier posts I support financial support beyond even the viable as an overall benefit to the nation. What I cannot support is non-sustainable actions. Bail out a non-sustainable farm for 10 years and lose the opportunity to invest in meaningful enterprises that create hope for many INCLUDING THE FARMER WHO COULD HAVE BEEN ASSISTED TO EXIT. Change is a reality of the world. I’ve had to move 5 times in my life for work – it is a reality I and MILLIONS of others accept.
Oct 26th, 2006
John Tracey
Bush people do not have to bale out of their communities or their land. just some of the agricultural practices currently employed.
As I said a while ago, there is nothing wrong with the bush, just what we choose to do with it.
And Rob, cities are certainly not sustainable. The drought has threatened a few rural industries but it threatens massive metropolii too.
Apparently Brisbane may well run out of water in two years if there is not a significant wet season. It will be buying carted water soon similar to what Karen has spoken of.
If people have to move from the bush because it is unsustainable, and they have to move from the city because it is unsustainable, where will they go?
Oct 26th, 2006
Rob
John and Anne are reading half-contexts and then using them to fly your own kites. The bush is sustainable with the correct technology and economy of scale. On the whole this has involved less farmers, more service providers and more capital. Cities with good management are sustainable and Australian cities are right up at the top of the world list. Don’t forget most use water carelessly, don’t recycle, don’t utilise rainwater tanks (we live exclusively off rainwater tanks). There is a long way to go and the political will will be there when the selfish population lets the decisions be made without voting out the reformer. A mini-crisis could be a good thing for shifting paradigms quickly. Being the ranter is easy, providing real solutions is a lot harder and involves compromise.
Oct 26th, 2006
Karen
So Rob…
You actually get rain?? Wow!It’s been a boring job for me, filling in the rain chart this year. I do worry about the frogs that live in the top of my water tank, it hasn’t filled up for a year or so now.
I’m sorry but “less farmers, more service providers and more capital” just doesn’t make sense?…care to elaborate?
I’ve also found that shifting paradigms doesn’t do much about putting food on the table.
Oct 26th, 2006
Karen
John tracey…some of your comments have given me the best belly laugh…thanks.
Incidently, kangaroos, wombats and other native animals are NOT drought adaptable. When there is no water they go looking for it…anywhere. Around here, they come to the roads and we try not to hit them with our cars. Travel on some of the Canberra roads and you will see dead kangaroos every few metres. Every animal needs water.
By the way kangaroo meat isn’t a big hit for human consumption because it tastes like crap, so does emu (even when it’s made into sausages and laced with chilli). I believe the oldies used to eat wombats in desperate times. Also, a bit off topic, apparently when tobacco was in short supply here many years ago people smoked dried cow manure. Howzat for innovation :))
Oct 26th, 2006
Rob
I’m sorry but “less farmers, more service providers and more capital” just doesn’t make sense?…care to elaborate?
Yup. As technology develops, leading farmers make use of capital goods to increase the efficiency of their farming operations. Examples are combines and other harvesters; GPS-linked variated rate fertiliser applicators; specialist crop advisors; semen banks; vets; aerial spraying ….
The farmer maintains a svery strong all-rounder role but with an increasing general management role, using an increasing number of contractors who even move around the country to ensure maximum utilisation of their skills and equipment. Many farmers contract off-farm to supplement income and get the payback needed on equipment investments. For many it becomes their main source of income.
Down-streaming is considered more and more to increase/maintain margins (value-adding on-farm or in co-operatives) eg. being one’s own butcher and supplying meat direct to consumers (which is how we get ours).
This is no different in principle to industry where capital replaces labour and specialists contract their services.
In both farming or industry survivors either go for the efficiency model which includes economies of scale, or create specialist niche markets, taking more responsibility for marketing towards a particular market segment.
Don’t get me wrong, I have tremendous admiration for farmers. I work with them and the number of balls they have to juggle involves far more complexity than the average city-based manager. But then many city businesses go under too….
Oct 27th, 2006
John Tracey
Karen,
animals in paddocks are stuffed when the dam dries up, that’s what I meant.
kangaroo meat is an aquired taste. Many people try to disguise the taste with strong herbs and spices but I think that wrecks it. I just use salt and garlic in a roast, but am still experimenting, but it doesnt need anything on a barbeque. Often people think they are eating tender beef on a barbeque until they are told.
Most of the problem is its smell when it cooks which often puts people off the meat by association but I find the meat itself tastes very different to the smell. Again I reccomend a barbeque to disperse the smell.
When it is cooked in the ground with cabbage, potatoe and onion the different tastes combine,mixed with the smoke and it is another taste all together. The smell is good then too.
I am no expert, though I have eaten kangaroo cooked by experts and it is better than mine.
I havent had emu meat yet but have used emu oil (real thing, not brand name) to relieve back ache after long periods of driving.
I have no experience of wombat. they’re pretty rare these days.
I have smoked pituri though, a native tobacco that needs a dry arid environment to survive but I cant compare it to cow dung. traditionally pituri is chewed – no lung problems. Foreign influences started smoking here when Macassan pipes became a fad about 600 years ago.
I don’t fancy chewing cow dung though, but hey – i’m sure it is an aquired taste too..
Oct 27th, 2006
Josh
I think you’ve found your marketing pitch for Kangaroo there JT, “Though an aquired taste, try barbequing to disperse the smell, you’ll love it!”
Oct 27th, 2006
Rob
John you have a point. Marginal lands at least should be left to the roos which is totally in line with farm planning theory. The consideration of the substitution of roos/emus for beef/sheep in some areas is valid.
Even more reason to give marginal farmers an exit strategy.
Oct 27th, 2006
Karen
Wombats rare John? LOL
I may start farming them. Of course, keeping them in paddocks would be one hell of a challenge. What to do with them?? Wombat Jerky perhaps? Even the crows wont eat wombat roadkill, it’s so tough :))
Emu is way too rich.
Rob, your strategy sounds good. I’ll discuss it with my neighbours. Raising capital is a huge challenge.
Oct 27th, 2006
Josh
Rob, its valid to the point where there is both a market demand and a resonable/reliable/affordable substitute supply of beef & lamb other than australian farmers. Unfortunatley, kangaroo and emu meat is not currently a substitute for beef and emu products. Advertising and marketing campaigns can only go so far as well, as markets are determined by themselves and market share can be difficult to manipulate, espeically with traditionally consumed food products such as beef and lamb. You take away beef and lamb in place for roos and emus and your left with a huge over supply of roo and emu meat and a huge demand for beef and lamb, which means australian farmers receieve minimal price for their home grown product while we pay top dollar for imported beef and lamb from foriegn farmers. Then we’re back to square one
Oct 27th, 2006
John Tracey
Josh,
have you smelt mullett when it is cooked? as bad as kippers, but like kippers, a good market none the less.
Rob,
It is not just an either/or scenario between “farming” and “marginal” lands. Farming areas with bush corridors and protected patches amongst the paddocks increases fertility and water retention in the paddocks. (as well as bush tucker)
stock and crops that enhance rather than threaten these bush areas makes the land work for us rather than us battling the land to maintain our stock and crops
Karen,
Wombat distribution
http://www.wombania.com/wombats/wombat-distribution-map.htm
I am a Queenslander, they have been just about made extinct here. The map shows Brisbane and the Gold Coast as common wombat territory but I have never seen one here, but I dont get out so much any more though
However I worked for a short time in central Qld about 25 years ago and got caught up in the campaign then (by redneck farmers, the Greenies were slow to catch up) to save the last remaining habitat of the hairy nosed Wombat -the small green dot in Qld. on the map. I was just on the fringes and can claim no credit, it was the vision of a very small group of people at the time whose agenda was to turn the saving of the hairy nose into a tourism assett for the area. They were making money with hairy nosed Tshirts and stubby coolers at the time.
the TAB could develop wombat races, there is money in gambling! Develop wombat stud farms to breed champions from the genetic stock of where they are plentiful.
seriously, this is an option for feral camels if not wombats.
Australian camels cannot compete in international camel races as the arabs have been breeding camels in stud farms for generations as the money is so good. Our genetic stock has stalled through feral inbreeding and needs some stud science to get it going.
no cholesterol in camel meat either. and they cope with drought well too.
I had camel steak in an Alice Springs restaurant.
Oct 27th, 2006
John Tracey
Josh,
If kangaroo and emu (and camel) pushed up the price of lamb and beef, wouldn’t that be good for Aussie lamb and beef producers?
Oct 27th, 2006
John Tracey
And if they can market diet coke which tastes awfull they can market any aquired taste.
Oct 27th, 2006
John Tracey
and vegemite is the sludge and scum by-product of commercial beer brewing. Sounds awful and is an aquired taste (just ask a foreigner)
innovative industry with innovative marketing
“one of the worlds richest known sources of vitamin B” according to the label
also “proudly made in Australia since 1923″ (despite kraft being a multinational with vegimite profits flowing overseas)
Oct 27th, 2006
Josh
“smoked mullet and kippers”: A limited market, nothing compared to beef or lamb.
Your average mullet/kipper customer is different to your average beef/lamb customer, hence comparing product traits and marketing success based on these traits is difficult and unreliable.
Your arguments here have been to stop farming beef and lamb on Australian farms and to switch to roo/emu meat ect, in which case who will supply the existing demand for beef and lamb???
You have two options, either the farmers in Australia who still farm beef and lamb would have to increase output (further damaging the land as you have been arguing) or we would have to source the product elsewhere, as in overseas, in which case further deficiet in budget.
Oct 27th, 2006
Josh
Coke and vegemite: what’s there difference you ask? These products are innovations, not substitutes. There is/was nothing like them when they entered the market
Kangaroo/emu meat ect: They are considered substitutes. Like I said before, a good marketing campaign can only take a product so far, if the product just cant compete with existing substitutes or its just plain bad value for money, then it will never take off and never sell.
Oct 27th, 2006
Rob
Josh I definitely only said SOME AREAS. If sheep and beef are marginal and destructive, native wildlife could be the solution. Huge areas, low management requirements. Ask the people of St George who are doing well culling roos. Also have you read some of the anecdotal accounts from central queensland. Miners working their 7 days on and then shooting roos for 7 days on their off days for the growing European health market in roo meat. You say emu is not tasty – important for marketing it has to taste good! Ostrich is really tasty. Apparently croc is good too and maybe it is time we started cull programmes again. As a rural cynic said, wait till someone gets eaten in Brisbane when the salties get down that far – they are reclaiming territory and it is only a matter of time. Similar to the white pointer – when attacks happen near small towns, conservation laws cannot be queried. When the 2 guys were taken off Adelaide, shooting was okayed and planes and boats were all over.
Oct 27th, 2006
John Tracey
Ah Rob, we seem to have found some agreement at last.
I have been provokative for the sake of discussion but I am really closer to what you say than I am letting on.
Josh, if there was an essence to my position it would be diversification. The method would be gradual change.
I am no native absolutist which is why I have included camel and hemp in my examples.
And I think you are wrong about coke and vegemite. There was plenty of soft drinks and sandwich spreads before these products turned up The market develops.
Also vegemite, plenty of sandwich spreads before it turned up, the innovation was marketing a waste product (like the Hawaiin macadamea nut industry)
try telling an English person that the kipper market is different to the lamb and beef market.
Oct 27th, 2006
John Tracey
or tripe, or black pudding. Just the left over blood and guts from the abbatoir, the organs that process excrement – yuk. High in vitamins – much more than steak.
Oct 27th, 2006
Josh
John, we are not talking about Englishmen here, we’re talking about Aussies. The oranges are apples in this case.
Disagree with the coke and vegemite marketing position though, as yes they are considered a softdrink and sandwhich spread when they came out, but the Brands coke and Vegemite are now labelled within their own market, hence you here people say “would you like coke” and not “would you like a cola flavoured softdrink”.
iPods are considered an IT product, yet they have created for themselves a unique position and entity in their market.
Rob, I realise Im generalising, but I dont forsee a wide spread take to croc, emu and roo meat here in Aus. Export is a great option, markets can be created and if its viable lets get some money flowing in that direction.
I honestly know very little about farming practices and technology, though I understand the impact and market implications of the producst they produce. Beef and Lamd are highly desired in Australia. Currently, we rely on Aussie farmers for to bring these products to market. What happens when energy (in the form of capital and workforce power) get diverted from producing these products??? Prices rise, people get annoyed, and more web blogs like this are hit with avid writers trying to do something about it.
In solving one problem lets not create another
Oct 27th, 2006
Rob
Export only market. Then when it becomes fashionable in Europe, the Aussies will copy!
Karen: another thought for small farmers to gain economies of scale is co-operative farming where equipment is shared (often through starting a company owned by all and the equipment is leased from the company plus to outsiders which offsets some of the maintenance costs). Advantages: better borrowing terms, better prices (bulk), better markets (more relaible supply), shared service providers etc. Farmers strength is their independence but non co-operation is often their undoing.
Oct 27th, 2006
John Tracey
More innovation – macadamias again
http://www.ergon.com.au/environment/macadamia_power.asp?nf=true&platform=/
makadamia shells are hard to get rid of because they take so long to break down. A problem has been turned into an assett where macadamia farmers sell their waste to an electricity company.
I don’t know the green house implications but as it is fast turn around renewable fuel that does not dig up old carbon from the ground but just speeds up the process of carbon emission through slow composting. I suspect it is pretty good on CO2 business too.
Oct 27th, 2006
John Tracey
And to all the agricultural conservatives. Did you see the news tonight?
Wheat, barley and canola have all hit their lowest production in a decade.
If we do not innovate and diversify and build new markets for different products then there is no hope for rural communities and the national GDP as well.
Oct 27th, 2006
nasking
>>And to all the agricultural conservatives.Did you see the news tonight? Wheat, barley and canola have all hit their lowest production in a decade.
Indeed…& from the reports I’ve been reading there have been massive crop failures across the World…some say we are on the verge of Global famine.
Interesting reading the comments on China. I’ve always believed the Chinese economic miracle is going to hit a large bump soon…the Olympics, Space Programme, Tibetan railroad incursions, rampant military build up & purge of top execs are indicators that the political economic strategists there are preparing for a pro-unification, mucho Nationalism ‘get prepared to defend our energy resources’ shift. They are aware that droughts are becoming a common factor…that’s why they built a huge dam & have closed down much unviable farming areas…furthermore they’re going nuclear energy full bore, amongst other things…looking to self-preservation/self-sufficiency I reckon…but it’s worrying that we have so much of the uranium they need.
The Chinese manufacturing industry is already being forced to look beyond its borders for cheap labour. Unions are making inroads. Worker demands are increasing…as are those of the peasantry/rural sector. This will call for drastic reforms, including more efficient Health, Social Security, Transport & Education systems. Anticipate heavy expenditures in these areas…& health & safety acts etc. to go w/ it.
Imagine what that will do to the present Chinese mining & manufacturing industry. The price of goods coming out of China. And in turn Australia’s relationship w/ China….???
Oct 28th, 2006
Josh
I believe its well beyond the stage of calling it a “miracle”. Just out of curiousity, how do feel about the states, japan and the german economy? Here we see countries that spend huge amounts on:
“Health, Social Security, Transport & Education systems. Anticipate heavy expenditures in these areas…& health & safety acts etc.”
Yet they remain superpowers none the less.
It comes down to capital, trade and workforce. China’s receiving the capital now, trades with the world and when the next generation of Chinese comes through with more university graduates than citizens in this country, then we’ll know about it.
China is just a piece in the future economic trading map. There are many more “developing China’s” in the world, and we are only just in the beginning of this globally linked world
Oct 28th, 2006
nasking
>>Yet they remain superpowers none the less.
that’s right…but they also had recessions…& they developed during periods w/ less urgent demands…certainly military expenditure & ‘cold war’ type investments are not abnormal for developing Nations…nor the requirements to construct aspects of a functioning social democracy (as mentioned above)…but the scale of the energy demands (considering possible peak oil scenarios)…the demands to deal w/ Climate Change & provide ‘cleaner energy’, the projects to deal w/ & prevent potential large scale natural disasters emanating from said climate transformation…& expenditure on space related activities to counter US & allies moves…seems like quite a burden to me.
>>China is just a piece in the future economic trading map. There are many more “developing China’s” in the world, and we are only just in the beginning of this globally linked world
Now there I agree w/ you…
Oct 28th, 2006
Lance Whyte
I Say,
Let’s grow lots of cotton and rice. Let’s grow lots of grapes for alcohol. And let’s make sure the multi-nationals are well catered for. Then you can all come on down to Lake Mokoan and kneel in the mud next to me. Because not too many of the current business exploits will save very many farmers, the life blood of the country where, in the end, only food counts.
Lance Whyte
Save Lake Mokoan(Vic)
Nov 5th, 2006