BRAIN DEAD ON REEF
THE ability of governments to exhibit breathtaking brain- deadedness is only matched by their ability to pluck money from nowhere – and only for projects that suit them.
The most recent virtue signalling attempts to appease activists are the $ 30 million Palm Island compensation payouts and the $ 500 million slush fund for the Great Barrier Reef.
At least with the Palm Island compo, the recipients have expressed begrudging gratitude and there is hope we can all move on.
But with the reef funding, the very people the Federal Government tried to appease have come out en masse in a display of ungrateful petulance worthy of a spoilt two- year- old.
World Wildlife Fund, Australian Marine Conservation Society, Stop Adani, and the Climate Council ( or ‘ Clowncil’ as one local calls it) all turned up their noses.
They’ve trotted out completely unproven claims of human- caused climate change as the reason for their sulking. They say the $ 500 million is nothing because it doesn’t address Australia’s paltry 1.3 per cent contribution to global emissions, which are causing climate change which caused recent bad coral bleaching.
It has already been shown that the bleaching occurred in two of the most severe El Nino weather patterns on record, and now that La Nina conditions are here, there hasn’t been another bleaching event.
This $ 500 million is a positive but some non- green sectors have also raised an eyebrow because the bulk of it will be used to address water quality issues, which is code for more vilifying costs and restrictions on farmers.
“Brain- deadedness” – a word I picked up from my first editor – comes from politicians’ acting contrary to their own reports.
I’ve written multiple times about the 2015 Managing Water Quality in Great Barrier Reef catchments report by the Queensland Audit Office.
Federal Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg said the $ 500 million will partly be used to kill crown of thorns starfish and address fertiliser run- off which causes COTS outbreaks.
But the 2015 report states there is no proof farm run- off causes this, it’s just a theory – a theory which doesn’t stack up when COTS outbreaks also occur off parts of Western Australia where there is no agriculture.
The report also admits that water quality targets imposed on farmers can’t be achieved, no matter how closely managed they are. Don’t politicians read their own reports? If they did, they’d realise this money could be put to far more practical ends.
North Queensland marine biologist Walter Starck has written extensively on the “reef grievance industry” and the need for scientists to constantly find threats to the reef that, of course, need more funding to address.
On COTS, he writes: “Erratic population booms are inherent to the reproductive strategy of starfish and are well known in various species all over the world. In the recovery process ( after severe weather) the fast- growing branching and plate- like corals tend to overgrow the slower- growing more massive species. The preference of COTS for these faster- growing forms is probably important in the maintenance of coral diversity.”
The other way to look at it is that we’re spending millions to interfere with nature by killing predators of coral, but doing absolutely nothing to remove predators of people – ie crocodiles. Where are the animal activists protesting for COTS protection?
As for farms polluting the reef, marine scientist Professor Peter Ridd says more water flushes the reef from the Pacific every eight hours than what reaches it from land in a year.
But scientists who don’t jump on the gravy train barely get a look- in for government funding and media attention, and will be threatened with losing their jobs.
It should also be noted that the $ 500 million is on top of the feds’ $ 2 billion “Reef 2050” plan. These are huge sums based on questionable science, and which aren’t appreciated by protesters.
This is even more proof that activist groups simply cannot be paid off, because to stop protesting means they have no reason to exist.
It’s time governments adopted a “take it or leave it” attitude to activists rather than doubling down with more money and harebrained vegetation management schemes that penalise farmers, banning plastic bags, and renewable energy crusades that cost us a fortune.