Mr. Gerhardt Pearson (Balkanu Cape York Development Corporation CEO), Professsor Tim Flannery (2007 Australian of the Year) and Ms. Tania Major (2007 Young Australian of the Year) introduced the Cape York Conservation Agenda at a public seminar yesterday, at the Shangri La Hotel in Cairns.
The Cape York Heads of Agreement, signed off on the fifth day of February 1996 between the Cape York Land Council (CYLC) and the Peninsula Regional Council of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) (representing traditional Aboriginal owners on Cape York Peninsula), the Cattlemen’s Union of Australia Inc (CU) (representing pastoralists on Cape York Peninsula), and the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and The Wilderness Society (TWS) (representing environmental interests in land use on Cape York Peninsula), was of central importance.
As I understood the essence of the seminar, it was not so much that the negotiated resolution of historic conflict was being celebrated, but rather that the agreement had been effectively abandoned, leaving Cape York as the only region in Australia without an appropriate NRM Board.
I thought it was a shameful indictment on Australia (and particularly its self-proclaimed conservation sector) that indigenous representation of Cape York needed to introduce a conservation agenda at all. Indeed, the division of representative interest in the agreement reeks of racial arrogance. The ACF and TWS are merely representative of the popularist environmental lobby. Their environmental bona fides, compared with Cape York’s indigenous record, is hysterical. And yet, the division of representative interest is inscribed within the agreement.
A traditional owner took the opportunity to announce that his people’s consent for the declaration of substantial increases in National Parks was taken under duress, by processing requirements that rendered Native Title contingent upon the relinquishment of vast tracts of tribal lands to the state (with the open arms of the conservation sector).
Professor Flannery described Australia’s indigenous people as ‘professors of fire’ and encouraged them to pursue scientific knowhow, particularly in dealing with a landscape overrun with feral weeds and animals. He encouraged the economic potential of carbon sequestration and expressed a hope for indigenous Ph.D’s.
The very impressive Young Australian of the Year, Tania Major, spoke eloquently about the linkages between recovering from a generation of welfare bondage and entry to the real economy, in terms of cultural obligation and the necessary removal of perverse regulatory obstructions.
Gerhardt Pearson led the audience along a challenging pathway of historical wrongdoing and contemporary betrayal and yet he was still able to enunciate the generosity of a people who recognise the need for mutually respectful cooperation and co-existence.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Neil,
Glad to see Tim Flannery mentioned the “Professors of Fire”. I watch, and enjoy, Kathie Freeman’s SBS TV program “Going Bush”. Last week she was near Weipa, and went out burning with such a professor. Pity some of our white faced, urban professors, with their culturally warped opposition to fire, don’t do likewise. I wish Aboriginal people would speak up more on the subject. There is a leadership vacancy.
Davey Gam Esq.,
You must remember that leadership in Australia’s democracy is largely contingent upon numbers. The percentage population of ASTI residents was measured at 2.1% in the 2001 census. Within their homelands, there is no shortage of custodial wisdom in respect to fire, but it is paid scant respect by those with executive authority in non-ATSI spheres of influence.
It that sense, the leadership vacancy belongs not to Aboriginal people.
I take your point Neil, but sometimes a minority can lead a majority, by force of truth.
Davey, in that respect I remain eternally optimistic.
Leadership implies the Fuehrer Priciple, or the leader, who practicies leadership.
My late brother, Michael Hissink, (a very dark shade of green) quietly removed his car-sticker “Leadership Matters” when The Coalition won with a landslide in 1996 became obvious to easrly on in the night.
I was with family in Canberra at the time and noted this obsession of leadership among the lefties.
There is another agenda at play with the ever increasing areas of Australia devoted to national parks and other similar excisions from VCL.
Louis,
Believing in the quality of leadership has nothing to do with left or right wing politics. I saw active military service in the 1950s, and believe me, there is such a thing as leadership, but not always from the appointed leaders. Nor has it anything to do with career ladder climbing – quite the opposite. And wasn’t Der Fuehrer rather far to the right?
Davey
Dependes on what you think is left and what is right in politics…
If you accept that “left” implies collectivism and “right” implies free market, then the NAZI party was a “left” party.
If you accept that “left” implies liberalism and “right” implies conservatism, then the NAZI party was a “right” party.
You can argue that once a strong leader dominates the polity then it’s neither left nor right as the above definitions become meaningless in a totalitarian dictatorship.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Nolan-chart.svg
In truth, left and right as used today are perjorative terms – which in reality mean nothing.
If you have time, here’s a good piece that you may enjoy. There’s some good stuff on “left and right”.
http://www.mises.org/story/2099
cheers
Arnost
Arnost: We should be very careful before applying tags like left and right.
Before your post I was tempted to analyse both the ACF and TWS as an outsider with a little knowledge of their origins then contrast them with say the IPA.
Your links to Rothbard and Noland Chart had me recalling a time when I found solutions to every problem known to man via a series of images based on 3D argand diagrams such as we students used at the Swinburn Institute of Technology for math and physics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_number
This was after a long period of intense group brainstorming over the failure of mainstream Australian political parties to deal effectively with social problems like structural poverty in the Henderson reports. It took me nearly as long to realise it was only a personal restructure (overload) and no one else was ever going to understand it.
But we are unfortunately so limited by our development based solely on constructs in a language however we are very much what we want to be as the old grey mater matures.
Some of us set out to build a new party then rooted in the middle ground. I had access to unions but later worked as a freelance in the heart of major industry. Several in the field of conservation set out to directly influence people like the late Don Chipp. Many of us joined the ACF for a time to help root out tokenism. Parties came and went. Out of one lot of ashes rose the TWS.
I remain sometimes bewildered in the middle with a soft spot for enterprise at the grass roots, self made men, mills and mines.
Thanks both Arnost and Gavin,
Yes, I agree the labels ‘left’ and ‘right’ are a bit dodgy. I have suggested before that political views should be regarded as arranged around the circumference of a circle, with moderates at one side, and extremists of both ‘left’ and ‘right’ very close to each other on the far side. You may remember that some 1930s recruits to the brownshirts were called ‘beefsteaks’, because they made the short hop from communism to nazism i.e. brown outside, but red inside. I was amused to see a politician in parliament use my circular model to attack Bob Brown and Kerry Nettles. Are they green on the outside, and some other colour inside?
It’s surprising who reads this blog, although some may have wandered off after all that blather about the climate. We are getting lovely rain over here in south-west WA. The Indian Ocean Dipole must be in our favour now, after drenching east Africa last year. It’s all about cycles and circles, yin and yang. I hope our climate change gauleiters don’t read this, or we’ll get another Nuremburg rally or two, with drums, flags and torches. Their ‘patience is exhausted’ – so is mine.
P.S. Often the word ‘leadership’ is used when ‘big head’ would be more appropriate. It might be fun if journalists reported that the Big Head of Ruritania met the Big Head of Erehwon for important discussions. Are you there Flacko?
The old right -vs- left has moved on from the days of the froggy revolution. Nowadays the right is for individual rights whereas the left is for the the rights of the collective. Back in the days of the revolution the right was the nobility and the left was for the ordinary man.
somwhere along the line the ball was dropped.
Fascism was always for state owned industry as was communism and both had scant regard for the human as an individual so they both belong to the left.
Only the right, as we know it today, allows for the entrepeneurial spirit of man to prosper, the left seek conformity to a collective standard.
But the right are a bunch of tax-dodging dummies so thank heavens for the intellect of the left. And thank the left for reflection of the right’s excess.
And really thank heavens for the common sense and common decency of the middle of the road and people who don’t even know what the terms mean.
And those little unseen people who every day make a better world.
“…thank heavens for the intellect of the left.”
Why stop with the heavens, when your confederacy could drop to its collective knees and grovel before the infinite glory of a left-leaning Godhead, for so benevolently attributing such gullibility.
Leadership, in the traditional care for country, is maintained through intergenerational respect.
Executive power, as interpreted through our Constitutional monarchy, is responsive to the sensibilities and metropolitan dictates of the body politic over a three or four year term.
As an expression of conservation intent, it has established and resourced government land management agencies whose broad regard in the community has won the alternate identity of Sparks and Wildfire Services.
“…thank heavens for the intellect of the left.”
Most of them are without much faith at all hence the constant need to take full control of this life and if things dont go their way, just alter the facts.
Thanking the heavens would be sedition to the secular left.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article1719879.ece
Whereas the right declare a regional destabilising war based on no evidence but with God on their side. Yea sure.
What happened to Neil’s good post ?
I notice now the Qld government is forcing the Traditional Owners to include some 5 to 6 rivers in their “Wild Rivers ” project while denying them certain commercial development rights .
The Pearsons are concerned about the future economic and social wellbeing of their people and are not impressed .
I think it is crazy the government has barged into land with scientific crap and no regard for the people who know the land. I had no idea the wild rivers project was so ignorant!
” I wish Aboriginal people would speak up more on the subject. There is a leadership vacancy.”
It is ironic that on the one hand this blog has taken a stance against a Barmah National Park and by proximity, Indigenous joint managment (which includes a use of fire), whilst at the same time saying there is a “leadership vacancy”.
Rest assured, in Barmah, there is no leadership vacancy when it comes to how they think the forest should be managed, only a vacancy in ears willing to listen.
And for the record, I think TWS are painful.
Several students are working on a project involving rainforest biome presentations. They would appreciate being able to use the pictures from your blog. Please advise if this is an acceptable use for you. There will be no commercial value in these assignments.
Thank you.
Ariel Owen
Foothill Middle School
Science Department Chair
Several students are working on a project involving rainforest biome presentations. They would appreciate being able to use the pictures from your blog. Please advise if this is an acceptable use for you. There will be no commercial value in these assignments.
Thank you.
Ariel Owen
Foothill Middle School
Science Department Chair