Category: Columns

According to Dr Stephen Wroe from the University of New South Wales, these are exploratory nibbles by the great white pointer, which uses its mouth to sense whether a prey is worth eating. Interviewed by The Generator last year, Dr Wroe said the great white has two rows of very sharp teeth and an exploratory nibble usually means a large tear, often down to the bone.

The great white is one of only three breeds that attack people in Australia. It is a cold water animal, more prevalent here during winter, that bites but does not eat people. The bull shark is a warm water dweller that breeds in estuaries where it is difficult to see. The tiger shark is a tropical animal that visits the local surf during summer. Bull sharks and tiger sharks do eat people.

The last fatal shark attacks in Northern NSW took place in 1992 and 1983. Swimmers have a much greater chance of dying in a car accident on the way to the beach, or of drowning than they do of being killed by marine life.

Drowning and car crashes, though, are our fault and seem relatively benign. Being eaten, in contrast, makes us seem small and vulnerable. It challenges our egotistical view that the world is our oyster. That’s why it is so important to hear the victims acknowledging the rights of the shark.

Our fear of predators, and our own predation, mean that we eliminate competition from other animals everywhere we go. It took humanity around 5,000 years to walk from the tip of Alaska to the tip of Chile as we migrated out of Asia. The fossil record reveals that around 2,000 years after humans arrive, large animals such as mammoths, giant bears, bison and anteaters vanish. The populations of mice, rats and indian mynahs, however, flourish.

The American fossil record reveals the damage done by stone age humans. Steel age Australians have eliminated thousands of species in two short centuries. If we continue the trend, we will find ourselves in a Blade Runner world where the only animals are animatronic and our only companions are the algae that feed us and the pests that live on our scraps.

In case you think this is fantastic, consider that that latest fad in biofuels is algae. These microscopic plants can absorb carbon dioxide and sunshine to produce fuel or food, faster than land plants.

We do not have to worry about oil depletion, shrinking water supplies and the consequent food shortages, we can simply live on synthetic food and energy with our pet rats, cockroaches and mynahs.

That’s something to look forward to.

Listen to the Generator interviews with Shark experts

Hear about the mechanics of shark bite
Rosy talks to Valerie Taylor

Read shark news on The Generator

NBA Star speaks out for Sharks
Insects on the menu as food costs soar
Longline fishing reintroduced in California
Sydney desal plant’s giant “vacuum cleaner” poses risks to sealife
Aussie sharks particularly sensitive
Sharkwater premiere a sellout success
Garrett saves shark habitat
Deep sea pollution becomes critical

That is reprehensible in an affluent society that claims to believe in a fair go. The average rent on a three bedroom dwelling in the Tweed Shire one year ago was $330 a week, higher than equivalent premises in Sydney. Wages, on the other hand, average just under $700 a week compared to Sydney’s almost $1,200. No rental property remains in a real estate agent window for more than a few days. Most never make it at all.

Despite these facts, local bureaucrats have taken it upon themselves to don inspection torches, clipboards and detailed maps to cleanse the region of illegal tenants. In one case, a woman had moved into the annexe of a caravan she was renting so that she could sublet the bedroom. That is the bedroom in the caravan we are talking about, not a bedroom in the house.

When a rainstorm delivered her a bout of pneumonia and her daughter turned up at welfare seeking food, the situation came to the attention of authorities who declared the caravan illegal and served notice on the rate-paying landlord who lived in a separate house. The landlord has decided it is easier to sell the house to a refugee from the city than it is to deal with tenants, tenancy laws and the inconvenience of dealing with the great unhoused.

The bureaucratic logic is sound: allow landlords like that to suck the lifeblood out of those poor souls desperate to shelter in any tumbledown structure and you encourage a culture of exploitation and unhealthy living arrangements. The logic is also flawed. Throw those people onto the streets and you simple expose them to greater exploitation where they end up losing their health and dignity as well.

With an ongoing economic downturn and increasing flood of refugees from dysfunctional cities the situation will only get worse.

The solution, of course, is simple. We just need to adopt the housing model that has evolved over five millennia on five different continents and modernise it to take advantage of twenty first century science. Build villages where people of all income levels can cluster together to share those resources that the poorest among us cannot afford to own – swimming pools, for example. That way the cost of building and delivery of community services goes down and the amenity and access goes up.

The challenge is finding the political will to cut through the red tape and fight off the vested interests that prevent it happening. Recent state government legislation, for example, strips local councils of the right to establish independent building codes that could regulate to encourage such developments and discriminate against profitable but wasteful development that alienates the environment, the poor and squanders resources.

The irony is that if we don’t, it will happen anyway. It will just happen out of sight, where health inspectors and police do not go and the poor can be exploited terribly and suffer miserably.

If you have a spare room or a garage, put someone in it now. You will increase your income and their quality of life. Even if your new tenant is somewhat irritating, you will be less lonely, more entertained and happier. After all, there is nothing more rewarding than having someone to bitch about.

In November 2007, three out of every twenty people in this area voted for the Greens. About seven voted for the Nationals and nine for Justine Elliot. One topic that featured predominantly in that election was the Kyoto Protocol. That international agreement was an attempt to get developed countries like Australia, to emit less carbon dioxide and lead the way to a cleaner world without global warming.

Less than one year later, in September 2008, we went to the polls to elect a local council. Five out of every twenty people, that’s 7,181 of us, voted Green. Two out of twenty voted Liberal, with the rest lining up behind their favourite independents.

Visualise twenty people from the latest gathering you attended. If you concentrate, you can probably imagine the five of them who might vote Green, the slightly larger number who still support the current government and the same number who would prefer to go back to the days when we had never heard of climate change and could enthusiastically dig up and burn anything we wanted without worrying about getting soot on the neighbour’s washing.

In one year, the Greens at your dinner table have almost doubled. It’s almost a pity things are changing so fast. It hardly gives us time to work out what’s going to happen next.

One thing that’s already on the calendar is that next month, the Federal Parliament resumes in Canberra. On a two party preferred basis, this government won by 671,636 votes. That is 5.4 percent of the almost 13 million voters at last November’s election. One person in any random group of twenty cast a deciding vote. If 335,818 voters across Australia change their vote, the nation would be split right down the middle, fifty fifty, even Stevens.

In the lead up to that federal election, 500,000 people marched in the streets of Melbourne to protest against WorkChoices – an obviously unpopular government policy. Looking at the numbers we have just seen, that is clearly enough to unseat the government.

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Next month, before Federal Parliament resumes, hundreds of thousands of Australians will march to protest this government’s deeply unpopular and pathetic stance on global warming. We each emit more carbon than any other people on the planet and our government has told the world that the best Australians can do is reduce our emissions by five percent.

Look around your twenty friends and identify the dozen or so who think this is outrageous. Talk to them and find out which three or four are prepared to march in the street. Convince one of them to join you in marching on Canberra. When parliament opens on February 3^rd we want it to be perfectly clear that there are more than 335,818 voters who will switch sides on this issue.

It should be easy. After all, there are now one million Greens.

Giovanni is the founder of the Ebono Institute www.ebono.org

Residents of Byron Bay, and many other tourist destinations, have divided feelings toward our visitors. We rely on their largesse, but resent their presence, the outrageous prices they pay for everything from bottled water to healing crystals and the fact that we have one hardware store and seven surf wear shops.

As usual, the fact that we cannot resolve these conflicted feelings means that we have asked the wrong question. It is not a matter of “Do we want them here?” but “How can we encourage them to spend their money in ways that benefit us all?”

The best place to start, is that classic marketing tool – The Unique Selling Proposition. They come here, as we did, seeking surf and sun or an escape from the rat race. Surf and Sun are available on most Australian beaches; if we go down that route we simply engage in a race to the bottom. That is, we compete on price, proximity to airports, availability of alcohol – in short, everything we resent about them coming.

There are three remarkable features of the Northern Rivers that we could well flog to the willing visitor. Our remarkable agriculture, natural beauty and rich cultural tapestry are assets that most tourists leave without tasting. Distasteful as it may be to exhibit ourselves to well-heeled pleasure seekers in an eco-theme park, the danger of not embracing and guiding them is that they will overrun us anyway. The alternative is to flee further afield or post armed guards at the tunnels on the Pacific Motorway to keep the buggers out.

Of course, you could pray for a complete economic depression. Then we could sit around dreaming up ways to encourage the tourists back.

Let’s unpack the lessons of the year a little.

The unravelling of Wall Street has exposed the extent to which speculators pushed up the price of oil, wheat and money itself. One year ago oil raced through one hundred US dollars a barrel, on it’s way to a short term peak of around one hundred and fifty. This price of petrol at the pump hit 1.70 a litre. It is temporarily back down at $US45 reflecting a working price of somewhere between $US50 and $US75. Five years ago it was $25. Just as the speculators falsely pushed the price up, so has the economic collapse falsely pushed it down. At its peak, between half and two thirds of the price was going into the speculators pockets.

Rice, wheat and other grains went through a similar spike this year as a food shortage here and a failed crop there, sent the market into a similar spin. By mid-2008 food agencies could not afford to feed the world’s billion starving people, and the speculators moved in. As a net food exporter, the boom worked to Australia’s advantage, as long as you did not borrow money against a bumper crop. Food is different from energy for another reason, even when times are tough, people do not stop eating.

The impacts of climate change in 2008 were more subtle. Big tides did not scare landowners nearly as much as councils refusing to allow coastal development, insurers refusing to insure coastal land and courts ruling that development approvals on low lying land were illegal. Global disappearance of the arctic ice, the national shame of the losing the Barrier Reef did not worry voters as much as bankers complaining that any attempt to save the world would upset an already unstable economy.

We also found out that the NSW government is criminally insane, has no intention of providing a train, and will sell buses, schools and hospitals down the drain. Despite a few symbolic gestures to start their term, the kev-heads Canberra are little better, paying billions to fossil fuel miners and millions to low income earners by raiding the piggy bank of future generations.

Amidst this heavy pondering and the hard hitting, though, the thing that stands out for me is your company. Your letters, emails and phone calls are an inspiration. It recharges my batteries to know that my writing sparks your thinking. It takes two to tango, it takes a village to raise a child and it takes an audience to make a performance. Your input has made this column a joy.

Thank you for making this a year to remember. Merry Christmas.