Category: Columns

As someone who claimed that lifting a beer glass is good exercise, who thought of whiskey as a tool for increasing concentration and who defined social lubricants as two or three shots before you answer the door to your dinner guests, I had to rediscover human society.

I found that I was a basically nervous person with very few listening skills and not particularly good table manners. I had sailed through life in a haze of grog fueled shenanigans, preceded by my reputation and protected by a sharp and somewhat bitter tongue.

Now, it sounds like any drunk from the hundreds we all know and wish we could love, then, it was a shocking and unhappy realisation. So shocking, it drove me to drink a number of times, until one of my daughters refused to go to a restaurant with me unless I left the wine behind.

As I slowly relearned the art of human intercourse I began to realise how deeply rooted alcohol is in our culture. Bob Hawke with his yard glass drinking record and his off the cuff support for hungover workers after the America’s Cup is an iconic symbol of the drinking Aussie. The distance between the local automatic teller machine and the nearest bottle shop is a simpler measure of the problem.

I’m not invoking a conspiracy theory. I’m simply pointing out that because we grow up in a culture that engages in excessive drinking as a matter of course, our view of what is normal is somewhat tainted.

Last week’s drink driving figures for the Tweed Byron Coast in NSW and the Gold Coast in Queensland simply reflect that when we are on holiday and have a little more free time, we hit the turps a little harder.

As a resident of Mullumbimby, you might expect me to promote a good mull as part of the solution, but pot insulates us from the real world as effectively as the booze. Besides, the famous Mullumbimby Madness strain of cannibis sativa is no more, wiped out by a police-helicopter invoked wave of hydroponic weed and more chemical highs.

Unfortunately, the answer is really, really daggy. We need to spend more time being perfectly ordinary, gossiping about everyday things and supporting each other through the drudgery of everyday life. Every autobiography of every recovered addict tells the same story. It takes years to realise that it is not about chasing the high or escaping the low, it is about embracing the average.

We have to learn this lesson across all areas of consumption, but the grog is not a bad place to start. Your family will appreciate it.

Their neighbours, fellow descendants of those same pioneers, return to the farming methods that grandpa used, sell their produce at local markets like grandpa did and rehabilitate the creek-beds and marginal land best protected by native vegetation. They adopt integrated pest management to harness nature instead of fighting it.

A lot of Greens supporters are true conservatives who believe that the best way forward is not globalisation, free trade and foreign ownership but solid communities supporting each other exactly as our pioneer great grandparents did.

Farming communities and the Nationals Party are split between those who still believe that the latest fertilizers, pesticides and genetically modified seed will help us beat the elements and subdue nature and those who recognise that fighting nature is a losing battle that could cost us everything.

Left completely out of this robust and meaningful debate are the economic rationalists who wish we could pump more money into the economy and sustain the miracle of post war economic growth that has made us the luckiest of generations.

That twentieth century fantasy is behind us now. It’s time to get real about how we go forward. Last century’s political divides are increasingly irrelevant.

Fifty percent of the Byron Shire voted One for Jan Barham. Katie Milne got the highest primary vote ever for a candidate in the Tweed Shire. The only Greens candidate in Ballina got the highest vote in his ward. This means something. It means that voters have recognised what the Greens have been saying for fifteen years. It is time to reorganise our relationship with the world. It is time to change the way we think about politics.

The anonymous author of A Woman in Berlin watches the Allied armies marching on her home town in 1945 and observes that many women welcome the Russians because of the simplicity of their flag. Simply grab some red cloth, or a bed sheet and dye it red somehow, and you were on the team. By comparison, siding with the Americans or British required a day of cutting and stitching. Consequently the Russian quarter was ablaze with flags when Hitler finally used his revolver.

As a party named after a colour, the Greens offer a primal political experience: Line up behind the colours or not.

When I commended the Greens for being the only party to stand in Tweed earlier in this election cycle a number of you wrote to say they that political parties should not operate in local government.

I disagree.

It is true that good governance comes in all political flavours. It is also true that ideology is often the enemy of wisdom. Nevertheless, good natured team rivalry is healthy for the political debate and allows the deep issues that might otherwise be buried to get a public airing.

In my book, the real problem has been the lack of guts shown by our ageing political parties. Since the split between the Catholic and Communist wings of the labour movement in the nineteen fifties, Australian politics has not stood for anything.

Locally, we have seen representatives of last century’s parties lining up behind vested business interests to divide up the community pie. Little wonder that political parties are on the nose. The problem is that the idea of politics has been corrupted. Politics itself is not the problem, just the lack of vigour that has been applied to the practice of it.

Everywhere that the Greens have had a hint of political influence, the Labor and Liberal parties have joined forces to vote them down. It happened in Tasmanian state politics, it happened in the Federal seat of Melbourne. It has happened in the Byron Shire. The ALP gave its preferences to conservative independent Ross Tucker, rather than see the Greens consolidate their slim hold on elected office.

This is because The Greens actually stand for a future that is different from the past. The Greens are a political party that does not accept donations, that makes policy by consensus, that guides its candidates by principle rather than a party whip.

Saturday’s result in Tweed Heads was predictable, but the result across the state tells the bigger story. The Greens are a rising force in Australian politics and are building from the grass roots up.

We do not need less politics at a local level, we need some real politics for a change.

Giovanni is on air on Bay FM 99.9 this morning between 9 and 11.

So skewed is global banana trade that it was one of the primary reasons for the collapse of the Doha Round of world trade talks in Geneva last month. ‘Bananas Split World Trade Talks’ quipped Reuters, spawning a spate of icecream flavoured headlines around the world.

International groups like Banana Link have mounted campaigns to ensure fair trade in bananas. These programs are primarily aimed at giving indigenous Ecuadoreans a fair deal, but also help growers in countries like Australia compete on a level playing field.

Australia is a minor player in the banana games. Around one quarter of a million tonnes are grown here every year, almost all of them in Queensland. Australian growers are worried about disappearing under an avalanche of imports from tropical neighbors like the Phillipines.

Less careful producers in countries without strong regulatory frameworks can produce bananas more cheaply because workers are not paid properly and the environment is not protected. Worse, for the future of our industry these imports are potentially dangerous. A tropical fruit, the banana is prone to a number of infectious diseases, primarily fungii, that could rapidly spread throughout the Australian industry.

The eighth banana industry congress will be held at Jupiter’s Casino next June under the banner, Fresh Directions. Among other things, it will look at ways to ensure the Australian banana industry remains vibrant, robust and sustainable.

Among the efforts to guarantee a long-term future for local banana grower is the rapidly expanding organic farming movement. The Tweed River Organic Producers Organisation, TROPO, held its annual general meeting in Mullumbimby last week and a noted significant increase in sales of organic produce, not only through local farmers markets but on the peripheries of the region in the Gold Coast proper and major centres to the south.

Coffs Habour based Geckhos Banana’s is a marketing collective that represents growers who attempt to minimise the use of dangerous chemicals on the plantation. Geckhos website notes that the company has no plans to be organic, but simply wants to use “the bare minimum of chemicals to grow our fruit, while still giving the consumer a tasty, and nutritious banana.” Growers have to sign a legal contract that leaves them open to prosecution if they break the rules.

Because of the cooler weather, NSW bananas grow less rapidly, but have a stronger sweeter taste. There is a significant opportunity for local growers to capitalise on this difference and promote the extra quality that these conditions provide.

Any sustainable farming approach uses integrated pest management, minimum tilling and maximum use of natural fertilisers to create a healthy environment that results in good crops and better soil health, ensuring a long term future for the farm. Many banana plantations are short term enterprises that rely on repeated inputs of nutrients from external sources to maintain a rapidly depleted soil.

To remain top banana, and ensure an ongoing connection with the festival that bears its name, Tweed’s banana growers need to consider natural approaches to farming.

Residents of Chindera, just to the north, face a massive residential development that should legally have bitten the dust years ago, and wonder at the wisdom of opposing a development that will preserve the land for future generations in a way that simply refusing any development at all cannot achieve.

Planners attempting to create a network of sustainable villages are far more concerned about the sprawling suburban developments around Lismore and Byron Bay, than they are by the use of land for temporary megafestivals.

By his own account, these considerations were among those that led independent councillor Peter Westheimer to cast the vote that will allow the trial festival go ahead.

There is no doubt that the presence of humans, at any density, is detrimental to the well being of the natural environment. The challenge, though, is to minimise our impact and learn to live in harmony rather than at odds with the environment.

From that point of view, a suburban development, while potentially less noisy than a music festival, has a far greater destructive impact. Suburbs rely on vast amounts of energy-intensive transportation to survive. Water, energy and food are transported in from elsewhere, waste is transported out for treatment and the absence of industry and commerce mean that suburban dwellers don’t work, shop, study or entertain themselves where they live.

The provision for parking of thousands of cars at the new Splendour site is its great weakness. Were the nearby towns of Billinudgel and Mooball to be used as transport hubs and a light rail built to the festival site instead of the car park, we would not only have a more environmentally friendly festival, we would begin constructing the commercial basis for the return of the train line, a major environmental boon for all of us.

Those who oppose any development at all, confuse their own preference for the status quo with real concern for the environment. Yes, people are the problem, but it is not just other people.

Oil is the miracle that drove the twentieth century. It enabled an agricultural revolution that has doubled farm productivity since the Second World War. Incredible plastics have delivered cheap appliances, packaging, toys, furniture, shoes and synthetic fabrics. Cheap energy has enabled the globalisation of trade. All that is behind us.

Oil is not the only resource that has peaked. Australia, the United States, China and India now use fresh water faster than the supplies are replenished. Aquifers are falling, rivers are drying up, lakes are shrinking. New dams straddle dry rivers. We face peak fish and peak food.

The constant growth and permanent innovation that we have taken for granted will not continue.

Businesses that depend on endless expansion will fail. Financial institutions are already in crisis.

This will permanently alter the political landscape.

A century ago, labour movements challenged the entrenched power of capital and social democracy movements were born. Over the last fifty years, political thinking has converged around a supposedly benign economic rationalism that keeps us all comfortable, as long as governments do not interfere too much with the market.

That belief system has reached its use-by-date. The labour constrained economy is giving way to a resource constrained economy. We have reached the limits of a finite planet.

This is not some high faluting theory to be discussed over red wine after dinner. This is the practical reality for every school council, every family and every local, regional and federal government.

If you meet a political candidate who believes that housing estates designed around motor cars can solve the housing crisis, that new roads will improve traffic congestion or that regulation can bring down petrol prices, you have come face to face with a dinosaur facing extinction. Anyone who suggests that climate change can be solved by corporate investment in new technology or that growing algae or using sunlight to convert water into hydrogen will solve the fuel crisis, is dreaming and has not woken up.

To be sure, new sources of energy will emerge to power the society of the future, but they will never be as cheap as oil. Certainly we will learn to harness local sources of energy and water, process our waste and grow our food locally, but that will require new attitudes to work and consumption.

We will have to reduce our expectations, learn to fix things instead of throwing them away and clean up after ourselves.

The people implementing these practical solutions now are the leaders of the future. Find and follow them.