Category: Columns

The Australian Trucking Industry Association (ATIA) used its favourite rhetorical trick to sing the praises of a compliant Rudd government. “This is inline with our submission to the 2008/09 budget that the Government should spend more on road maintenance, which would generate an immediate boost to the economy. It would also deliver lasting benefits for everyone who uses the roads, because … Australia’s existing roads are just plain worn out.”

At the time, the ATA was pushing the case for road maintenance as opposed to building new roads but the key rhetoric is in place. Everyone and the beast that must be fed, the economy, benefit from spending on roads. The cost of building roads is therefore a community cost rather than a running cost of transport companies that use them. The ATA submission to the productivity Commission Inquiry into Rail and Road Freight in April 2006 stated, “full cost pricing [of freight transport] could result in a 12% freight increase and a $9bn loss in demand.”

So, by the trucking industry’s own figures, road transport is being subsidised by the tax payers to the tune of billions of dollars each year and would not be competitive without those subsidies.

Why spend billions on roads, when everyone, including the oil companies, calculate that the oil will run out in less than forty years? Why spend billions on interstate highways for freight transport when everyone, including the trucking companies, recognise that it is only through government subsidies that road transport can compete with rail?

The reason, of course, is that trucking companies are big contributors to the government coffers and that a handful of major transport groups own both the road and the rail networks. They are simply directing governments to spend the money where it earns them the biggest profit.

What we need here in the Tweed, is a sensible approach to improving the existing road structure that increases the capacity for rail transport in the future. This accepts that a tottering NSW government cannot bite the bullet and build a rail way instead of a new road. Nevertheless, it is madness for them not to allow for a rail link beside the motorway as they move mountains in their short-sighted worship of the internal combustion engine. Queensland did it at Tugun. We must do it here.

Put the pressure on Geoff Provost and Justine Elliot now to insist that the Auslink funding that comes jointly from the Federal and State government for the Sexton Hill bypass is tied to a provision for a rail tunnel. Otherwise those frogs will get the jump on us.

Hear Giovanni Ebono on Bay FM 99.9FM today between 9:00am and 11:00am

This account of Steve Posselt’s journey down the Murray Darling river system paints a terrifying picture of the impact of our land management on our rivers. Posselt concludes that we have reduced our river systems to drains and killed the landscape in the bargain. He observes that the natural landscape works like a sponge, absorbing and holding water in good years that is released gradually, keeping the landscape alive during drought years. With the natural sponges drained, mined and exposed, the land is now vulnerable to drought.

On The Generator, we recently interviewed a farmer who had invested in extra fencing to create many small paddocks so he can move his stock out of a paddock before the grass gets eaten right down. His logic is that water and sunlight are free resources that he needs to maximise. If the grass is eaten right down, then valuable sunlight is being wasted. As a result of this ‘Cell pasture management’ he has now has lush pasture that soaks up rainfall and delivers it deep into the soil. He measured that he now has about 700 tonnes of root matter per hectare. This compares to his neighbour’s paddocks that have 15! Same species of grasses, same species of sheep, a slightly lower stocking rate and so slightly lower profits in good years, but more than forty times the water, carbon and soil microbes. After rain, his neighbour’s topsoil washes away, exposing dry subsoil.

I pondered Posselt’s drains and Marsh’s grasses last week as I walked by the river. Landcare is regenerating the riparian forest along a two hundred metre stretch of the river bank. This blocks the council mowers from a narrow sliver of the river bank where the town parks meet the mangroves. Where council mowers no longer go, the grasses have grown a metre high and the ground underfoot is boggy and spongy. Three months before, it was all one broad sweep of lawn. Simply letting the grass grow has reduced evaporation and the runoff of water to the point that a well kept lawn has become a bog.

The natural environment is a sponge that holds water and releases it slowly. Nah duhr! How is it that we can absorb a statement like that intellectually but not see what it means until we are actually standing in it?

Every time we expend precious energy on mowing grass, we increase evaporation and run off. As well, we produce methane from the rotting grass. Every time we unblock a meandering stream to make it flow faster, we rob the surrounding landscape of the opportunity to soak up more water.

Lawn is great for sporting grounds and picnic areas, but unless you need to spread the picnic tartan or toss the bocce balls, you should let the grass grow longer. In fact, you should plant out the lawn with food trees and ground covers and build a living landscape that you can eat.

Rediscover your natural sponge. It may well feed and water you in the hard times ahead.

Giovanni is the founder of The Generator, on air Bay FM 99.9 this morning 9:00am – 11:00

We may no longer want our sports heroes to die, but we do like our sport to push the boundaries. A bit of biffo adds depth to the football, tennis stars swear at umpires instead.

The World Championship car rally pushes the boundaries of political correctness. It is appropriately dangerous, competitive and spectacular, but has raised the ire of those who care for the small, furry members of our community. More significantly, perhaps, it has failed to set local business on fire because it promises very little in the way of financial returns.

The Repco Rally was rejected by the Western Australian government after seventeen years because it returned only $1.60 to the economy for every dollar invested. By comparison, the Cottesloe Surf Carnival returns around $14 for every dollar invested.

Despite the best efforts of PR flacks to spin the story otherwise, the rally is inappropriate because it is expensive to mount, damaging to the natural landscape on which our tourist economy depends, a relic of the era of excessive consumption of cheap oil, and will return very little to the local economy.

The global collapse of the financing for Formula One racing is proof that these are not isolated rumblings of tree-hugging, anti-car nuts. The sports sponsors’ love affair with speed is over. Even car manufacturers are pulling out. Corporates building profile in the post-carbon world that will endure this and future recessions do not want to be associated with an orgy of oil-burning hot rods, they want to support sustainable, green events that establish their credentials as corporate citizens. Today’s high octane addicts will shortly become the steam-train enthusiasts of the future. In a word, relics.

I also wish to clarify something. I did not say that rally drivers, or rally organisers are murderous in their intent. What I did say is that the sport is a relic of a bygone era and has very few positives and a large number of negatives.

It might have been more appropriate to compare the Repco Rally to the Viking summer solstice festivals where thousands of suburban louts guzzle vodka and throw rocks at each other. The combination of danger, excitement, tradition and attraction to tourists have a certain similarity. Not too many people die, most people have a good time, and the local economy benefits from the sales of vodka and beds for those civilised enough to sleep during the three or four longest days of the far northern year. In those festivals, though, it is mainly the louts who hurt one another.

Those concerned about the impact of the Repco Rally are worried about the impact on local koala and other furry bush mammals, rather than the drivers themselves.

Most importantly, the Repco Rally comes to our doorstep after seventeen years in Western Australia because the government calculated that it was only returning $1.60 to the economy for every dollar invested. By comparison, the Cottesloe Surf Carnival returns around $14 for every dollar invested. Of course, it does not involve the adrenalin rush of danger that driving at 200kph through the bush does, or that rolling rocks into crowded valleys of drunken revellers does, either.

So, I accept the charge of hyperbole. I withdraw the comparisons to bullfighting, dwarf throwing and whale slaughtering. The Repco Rally is inappropriate simply because it is expensive to mount, damaging to the natural landscape on which we wish to base our tourist economy, a relic of the fifty years of excessive consumption of cheap oil, and will return very little to the local economy.

The global collapse of the financing for Formula One racing is proof that these are not isolated rumblings of a tree-hugging, anti-car nut. The sports sponsors’ love affair with speed is over. Corporates wanting to build profile for the post-carbon world that we have to build to survive this recession and the challenges of the twenty first century do not want to be associated with an orgy of oil-burning hot rods, they want to support sustainable, green events that establish their credentials as corporate citizens.

To those of you that love the smell of high-octane fuel in the morning, I’m sorry. You have had your fifty years in the sun, but evolution has moved on. Like the remaining custodians of traditional cultures wiped out by three centuries of European colonialism, you are the living relics of an era that is disappearing. At least you have the resources to document the culture of the internal combustion engine and the media connections to ensure that those documents are publicly aired. You have living ancestors who can describe a life without the thrill of the throbbing engine. You have a way back. If only the Inuit, Ainu and Arrente were so lucky.

Giovanni Ebono will be on Bay FM 99.9 between 9:00 and 11:00 this morning.

The surrounding of Parliament House was dignified and moving, the media coverage non-existent. It made the ten and eleven o’clock news on ABC Radio but had disappeared for ever by midday. Fair enough, every newsroom makes its own call about what is hot, but the chit chat after the news on the Country Hour gave me substantial food for thought.

The weather was the news that morning. The heat wave continued across southern Australia. Fires had burned out of control across eastern Victoria for five days and 22 people had died of heat related illnesses. Farmers in Victoria reported that apricots, blueberries and tomatoes had stewed on the plant and were being ploughed into the ground or sold as pig feed.

After the news a meteorologist noted that individual temperatures were breaking century old records and the number of days above forty degrees was breaking all-time records in many areas. He also noted that the second hottest year was 2007 and that seven of the ten hottest years on record have been in the last decade.

The country hour presenter commented that it could be seen as evidence of climate change and the meteorologist said, “Well we don’t know that for sure.” The discussion of climate change stopped dead at that point and the conversation moved on to the impact of drought on farmers.

Since when did discussing most compelling examples of climate chaos that you could hope to see become taboo? I have been the first to point out that the climate is not the weather, and a single weather event cannot tell us much at all about the climate. Trends in the weather, though, tell us a great deal about the climate. Seven of the hottest years on record in the last decade tell us that the climate is warming significantly.

There is one reason for trying to keep the lid on this. To stabilise the climate we have to stop exporting coal and the government’s carbon scheme pays the coal miners billions of dollars to reduce their pollution. Worse, they will get billions more if they have to reduce it further. Polluters get paid billions and farmers get a pittance.

That’s why a thousand mums and dads were in Canberra last week and that’s why we will keep going back in larger and larger numbers until someone wakes up that air and water is more important than money and our children are going to starve if we do not take action now.

The only hope on the horizon is that the black man in the White House seems to get it, and earwax Kev will probably copy everything Obama does. If he doesn’t, we might as well start looking for a hill where we can relocate Tweed Heads and some way to stop the millions of starving Aussies from the city coming to pinch our food. Because that’s what will happen if we don’t get this right.

It was ever thus. Over excited young men letting off steam in a collective frenzy have characterised all civilisations at one time or another, and their enthusiasm is regularly harnessed by social engineers who want someone to do their dirty work. The mood of the mob is an indicator to the nature of society.

Roman youth interrupted and denigrated the holy women’s ritual of worshipping the Bona Dea, bringing calamity on the republic that led to revolution and the imperial stranglehold on Roman politics. Parisian mobs in the eighteenth century toppled the government after sharpening their cudgels on the cats of the bourgeoise a few decades earlier. The mobs of frustrated German shock troops with nothing to do after the First World War were crafted into the SS-Totenkopfverbande (Death’s Head Organisation) which did the dirtiest work of the dark years of the Third Reich.

The banners under which these mobs march is an indicator of political intent. Young French apprentices loathed the cats which represented the comfort and luxury of their masters. The French revolution put the masters themselves to the guillotine. The SS troops marched for a mechanical purity that did not recognise shades of grey or honour cultural nuance. They pillaged the great works of art across Europe that carried the official stamp of greatness. At the same time they destroyed the art and artists in their midst.

With that background in mind, it is disturbing that the Australian flag has been dramatically identified with mob violence against minorities a number of times in recent years. Patriotism has been described as the last refuge of scoundrels. Last week indicates that also it inflames the worst passions of cowardly bullies.

What national identity are we building?

Of course, unpleasant mob violence is not only done under the flag. A dance at the Repentance Creek Hall near Lismore on Saturday night was violently destroyed by a large group of drug crazed youth who smashed cars, beat dancers and then beat a hasty retreat in the face of peaceful chanting by the locals who refused to fight back.

In the search for an approach that might steer this energy to more productive pursuits two things stand out. Firstly, everyone agrees that methamphetamines, like ice, play a significant role. Our management of drugs though has spanned the spectrum from intelligent harm minimisation strategies to the disastrous zero tolerance. Criminalising recreational drugs simply drives them underground making them stronger and more profitable as a result.

More subtly, though, the total lack of integration between age groups means that youth are left to their own devices. The lack of imagination they show in entertaining themselves screams out for those of us who are a little older to get involved and organise activities that steer the mob away from its worst excesses. The challenge is that we have already developed a culture of alienation and segregation. Experience has taught me that it is tedious and difficult to engage bored mobs with a head full of grog and a lust for action in their eye. We have to do whatever it takes, though, to turn this ship around.