Douglas Shire Council (DSC) has authorised the public release of its Blue Hole Reserve draft Management Plan, which aims to create a reserve for community purposes at a site of global environmental and cultural heritage significance, at the centre of the Daintree Cape Tribulation rainforest.
The underlying objective, it would seem, is to commandeer a designated area for public swimming and other associated recreational activities.
The draft applies to a portion of land known colloquially as the ‘Blue Hole’ incorporating property on a diversity of tenures surrounding a deep pool situated on a bend in Cooper Creek. It is inextricably connected to Cooper Creek Wilderness within the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, which is a pre-existing authorized provider of regulated public access to World Heritage goods and services, including recreational access to Cooper Creek on a user-pays basis.
Interestingly, Queensland’s Parks and Wildlife Service (the State’s principle land manager with over ninety-percent of the area) has opposed the formal sanctioning of such a facility on National Park, because of environmental sensitivities, cultural heritage values and legal liability.
Surely if the Queensland Government wants a venue for unrestricted public swimming in the Daintree Cape Tribulation region, then it should develop one or more, BUT PLEASE on its own lands; National Park in particular, declared for that very purpose and manageable under the provisions of the Nature Conservation Act 1992 and its various regulations.
Cooper Creek Wilderness is a working-model of private-sector management through best-practice ecotourism. It does not have the statutory authority that would allow for management of the public at large. Indeed, having signed a conservation agreement with the Minister for Environment, it is not permitted to allow the public at large to enter its Nature Refuge.
The site is also unsuitable for the proposed use because of its extremely important cultural heritage values to its traditional custodians as a birthing site and spiritual resting place for the unborn, since a time immemorial. As a requirement of the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003, the proponent has a duty of care to take all reasonable and practical measures to ensure their activities do not harm cultural heritage.
The Cultural Heritage Report, prepared by Dr. Nicky Horsfall in November 2005, recommends that,
“The proposed reserve should be made to protect the natural and cultural values; it should not become a recreational reserve.”
The environmental report for the draft, prepared by consultant biologist Dr. Robyn Wilson, states;
Dr Wilson observed during her site inspection that a large tree (Ristantia pachysperma) on the northern bank near the tributary, that was helping to stabilize part of the bank, had collapsed and was filling the northern end of the Blue Hole. Dr Wilson surmises that a fact that may have contributed to its collapse was people climbing this tree to access a rope swing. Access to this tree would have compacted the soil at the base, which was eventually eroded and washed away by floodwater.
This proposal to provide unrestricted pedestrian access for recreation will devastate Cooper Creek Wilderness, which was effectively expropriated of development capability when it was compulsorily inscribed within Australia’s Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, except for the highly regulated provision of public access to World Heritage goods and services on a user-pays basis.
For years Cooper Creek Wilderness has formally requested a seat at the negotiating table to develop a cooperative solution to a complex management issue across multiple tenures, but has hitherto been denied such an invitation. Providing free-entry, unrestricted public access to that which Cooper Creek Wilderness has been compulsorily regulated to provide on a user-pays basis, is unconscionable.
There is a very acceptable solution to this matter that doesn’t involve the destruction of Cooper Creek Wilderness, but it would seem the proponents of this draft are resolutely disinterested.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
OT, but this’ll make a few people happy:
AN Indonesian court has found US mining giant Newmont and one of its executives not guilty of polluting a bay with toxins from a now defunct gold mine.
“The water of Buyat Bay was not contaminated with the tailings from PT Newmont,” the court ruled, referring to Newmont’s Indonesian subsidiary.
“The defendant (executive Richard Ness) is free from the charges of causing pollution and environmental damage,” the court also said.
Both verdicts were greeted with applause inside the court.
“..a few people..”
There is an underlying tone to your comment Nexus, that the majority will be unhappy. You know this majority?
There wasn’t any underlying tone to my comment Rog. I’m glad to see justice done. Grow up.
Thx for letting us know Nexus. Ness can finally (hopefully) put this behind him.
You know, when our company discovered the Ranger Uranium deposits in 1969, the coutryside was so similar all around that the first ground party had trouble finding it except for its radioactivity.
It had been exposed to the surface for at least 10,000 years, we guessed (no reliable measurment method is available) and the area of rather high radioactivity covered some 1000 m x 300 m, depending on where you wanted to put the cutoff.
In Canada a few years later I gave the first paper at an International Geochemical Symposium, where I showed the main suite of measurements used to find ore deposits and how they appeared over the No. 3 ore deposit.
The essence was that there was practically no evidence of this huge complex of uranium mineralisation except for gamma radiation. Water had been flowing over it almost every year for that 10,000 years and disappearing down the Magela Creek system. But we could not find any significant evidence of these huge deposits getting into the creek system, despite local urban myths about fish with 3 eyes etc.
The local trees were slightly elevated in uranium, but only to the extent that you could pick it if you knew the deposits were there. The biology was unaltered at the surface.
I know these things because I was Chief Geochemist for the project from 1973 onwards. We desperately wanted to find new expressions of these deposits so we could use the methods to find more. After some years, with CSIRO, we found subtle differences in lead isotope geochemistry, but that was not a realistic exploration tool.
The whole region was turned into Kakadu National Park and later given World Heritage listing. We were gobsmacked. We all knew that the areas of high cultural and natural values were to the East, but that was in Arnhem Land Aboriginal Reserve and politics did not permit that to be turned into World Heritage.
Some of the mining areas, a tiny fraction, were excised from the Park, but we lost a number of granted mining leases with no compensation. We had gained these leases on the condition that we worked them. But the green laws said we would be presecuted if we did. We asked the High Court to decide if our leases were valid, but the Government under Hawke changed the laws when they looked like losing, to make it impossible for us to win.
Then the Army acquired land to the west of the park for a training area, running over it in tanks and dropping bombs. Only a line on a map separated their area from the World Heritage area.
I am positive to this day that Kakadu was created as an artifice to prevent us finding more uranium mines. In hindsight, we mined for 20 years with no great harm to man nor beast and prevented some 500 million tonnes of CO2 getting into the air because people used uranium instead of burning fossil fuels.
The moral of this story is, World Heritage matters are fraught with politics, indeed controlled by them.
There is a disgraceful cynicism that teaches gullible teachers and pupils that World Heritage is noble and that mines are the enemy of man.
It’s now getting to the stage where a positive way to destroy an area is to make it a national park. It attracts pesky items like people and people destroy the wonder of nature.
Goodness, there are some odd people trying to turn enviromentalism into a recognised Science. It is past time for them to realise that it does not have the basic requisites, and that they might turn their hands to something useful like producing goods for export.
That would take the burden off proving mythical man-made global warming.
I would have thought that Kakadu had some sort of significance to the original inhabitants of the area, despite your claim that the “areas of high cultural and natural values were to the East, but that was in Arnhem Land Aboriginal Reserve and politics did not permit that to be turned into World Heritage”. How does a white fella judge what is of high cultural value when a black fella may be receiving a hand out? Of course then, as now, that is a minor ‘pesky item’ that should not have stood in the way of the Ranger mine, should it?
I wonder how you measure the value of Kakadu now, as a World Heritage site, to the local communities and visitors as compared to “something useful like producing goods for export?”
Common traits of geologists – aversion to national parks and global warming. They definitely skipped the biology classes. Nat Pks and natural heritage very inconvenient to business as usual. Mindset is that a bloody great road and thousands of trampling feet would do most of these natural areas a lot of good. Amusing given the lead post.
World Heritage would seem to be the Commonwealth Government’s treaty-of-choice, for the purpose of enabling its external affairs powers to legislate in respect of the politically important environment. Federal Labour has been most enthusiastic in this matter and perhaps unsurprisingly, Australia has more natural World Heritage properties than any other country in the world.
Incidentally, three-quarters of the World Heritage list comprises cultural heritage sites and in the Wet Tropics, indigenous groups have been working for the property to be re-assessed against cultural heritage criteria as well as the natural heritage.
Nice to have you back, Jen. I was glad to read about the “not guilty” decision in Indonesia.
For Libby,
There was no act of giving tomahawks or beads and trinkets to the locals at Ranger. Instead, they got jobs and training and schoolong and health care, which is what they asked for. They admitted that a lot of culture had been lost and more resided furter east (where cattle stations were less established because of terrain). As more advisors and activists started to arrive on the scene, some from overseas, they harangued the locals into telling various stories about culture, so that the poor abs were one day swayed this way, next day the other, about both having a park and about mining. We recorded a lot of the early material on film with voice and it bears no resemblance to the revisionist views that are around today. History was rewritten and a number of senior academics were in it up to their necks – and knew it.
A lot of the initial studies that led to Kakadu were done by us, including biology. Indeed, our Company over the years had made some thousands of km of new roads or upgrades in Australia. These are how bleeding hearts now get to some World Heritage areas, to compose their theoretical complaints to society in general, with no actual basis from which to build except propaganda.
“There wasn’t any underlying tone to my comment Rog. I’m glad to see justice done. Grow up.”
Well why weren’t YOU happy about it then. You grow up Nexus. Its pretty clear that by your leftist ESP-Powers you’ve pronounced them guilty and were looking down on folks who might take the verdict at its face value.
“I am positive to this day that Kakadu was created as an artifice to prevent us finding more uranium mines.”
You can believe that alright. We are talking about an energy-deprivation-crusade.
“Common traits of geologists – aversion to national parks and global warming. They definitely skipped the biology classes.”
No no. Common trait of dumb leftists. Absolutely no understanding of science whatsoever. You’re the idiot here fella. Justify your statement.
My goodness what a lunatic.
Its just shocking that TJ is still talking this global warming idiocy when we established beyond all doubt that there is no evidence for this trace-gas-hysteria whatsoever.
You were proved wrong TJ.
You couldn’t come up with the evidence. Get that through your thick anti-science anti-business tax-eating head.
We’ve already established this you jerk.
Neal.
Don’t try and get in the way of the kids having a good place to have fun, cool down and have a swim.
What a mean-spirited old bastard you turned out to be hey?
GraemeBird,
The last ‘kids’ I evicted from my property were in their mid-twenties and armed with high power rifles. They had a pig-dog in full armour and as it turned out, a cassowary chick was killed in their wake, on my privately-owned land, completely within the WHA (no prizes for guessing how).
In an earlier instance, 130 plants were killed in the unlawful construction of a walking track – again, on my freehold land!
If only it were merely “kids having a good place to have fun, cool down and have a swim”, my managerial concerns and obligations would be largely allayed, but unfortunately this is not the scenario at all.
As for my supposed mean-spiritness, I suspect I have made my property substantially more available to public entry and enjoyment than the majority of Australian landholders and your innuendo, GraemeBird, echoes of familiarity, when it comes to the great generosity others have in claiming access rights to land that is not theirs. Perhaps you could post your residential address as an expression of your magnanimous generousity for unrestricted recreational enjoyment of the public at large.
Geoff,
The fact you feel the need to refer to the Indigenous people as “abs” tells me a lot about your ‘connection’ with them.
“These are how bleeding hearts now get to some World Heritage areas, to compose their theoretical complaints to society in general, with no actual basis from which to build except propaganda.”
Propaganda has a habit of not being restricted to one side only.
You will get more of your uranium mines in the future, and the waste deposit sites to go with it, and all the while you will be able to convince yourself it will be “with no great harm to man nor beast.”
Don’t change the subject fella.
This is not private freehold we are talking about is it?
The thread is about national park land is it not?
Sorry to hear about this outrageous abuse of your personal property by the way. Seriously. The cops should be spending any amount of money to stop this abuse of your private property.
But thats not the subject we were talking about here. Unless I’ve read this wrong and have to read it again.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Libby don’t be ridiculous. Its not a single road or a rail track or yet even a small settlement that is going to cause grave environmental damage.
Its dividing up the property and fencing it off so that one human property backs onto another and all the critters can’t migrate.
We have got to get our priorities right. We ought not be just marking off huge territories for no commercial exploitation and think that we’ve done our bit.
Instead we want to be extending the total scope of the nature corridors. Extending them to include the hole continent over many decades. Always buying up land on the fringes for this purpose.
But we ought to exploit these world heritage sites commercially if its just a couple of roads here or there and a small town and so forth.
I mean what theory of biology are you people operating under?
I tell you you want to deprive us of energy. Thats what you guys are about. You aren’t about the science. There’s no justification for this approach. Certainly no SCIENTIFIC justification. And the only reason you would do this is if your own well-being was provided on the backs of the taxpayer. On stolen money. But we people who work for a living realise that we want more and more energy all the time.
Lets see some interest in the science here. What’s the biological case for your way of doing things rather then mine?
I call them ‘abs’ because that’s what they accept – once you get to know them, just like they call me ‘whitey’.
I remember being criticised by the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs because I called an employee Sambo. The Minister said, ‘You can’t call him that, it’s degrading. It’s contrary to the Act’. Turing to the subject, the Minister said ‘What name were you Christened with?’ Answer, ‘Sambo. That’s my name. That’s what I want to be called’.
Then Gough joined in the conversation and Sambo (who was aged about 20) complained that he was not getting assistance for all of his 8 children (he had 1, maybe 2). Gough ordered a Dept Head to drop his BBQ and beer and investigate why Sambo was being short changed.
Then Sambo’s wife came along and told me she was ready to go into the bush with me now, but first I had to give her 2 packets of cigarettes. The Canberra folk were shocked (but it was a setup).
When you know your employees and family and treat them just like employees and family, then there’s no problem with taking small liberties like calling them abs. But you would not know that because you have never experienced it.
You might even be one of the people who divide the country along racial lines instead of harmonising, imagining that you are doing good. Again, we see the difference between hands-on experience and the workings of propaganda.
Geoff,
“I call them ‘abs’ because that’s what they accept – once you get to know them, just like they call me ‘whitey’.”
You are writing on a weblog, not addressing employees here. Aboriginals may appear to “accept” being called Abs Geoff, just like they may have appeared to accept being moved off traditional hunting grounds or coming back from fighting wars for this country and not getting any land, recognition or assistance, let alone thanks.
“When you know your employees and family and treat them just like employees and family, then there’s no problem with taking small liberties like calling them abs. But you would not know that because you have never experienced it.
You might even be one of the people who divide the country along racial lines instead of harmonising, imagining that you are doing good. Again, we see the difference between hands-on experience and the workings of propaganda.”
Taking small liberties? I am ‘one of those people’ decended from the Wiradjuri nation Geoff, whose family were used to those small liberties. No one I know accepts readily being called an ‘ab’ in this day and age. It is racist and a reminder of many injustices. You are delusional if you actually think you are harmonising, doing good and not spinning the same tired old propaganda. I hope you get a warm fuzzy feeling.
GraemeBird,
I do not wish to communicate with a person who uses obscene language in a public forum and threatens to murder another human being.
I wonder at why aborigines are supposedly sensitive to the “ab” portion of the word “aborigine” considering its latin roots and generic application globally.
Here we go again Rog. Why do you suppose not too many Japanese would like to be referred to as Japs? You know moving forward with the times is not just about learning how to use the internet or having a GPS in your car.
Being a lowly gaijin I have no idea how the nips feels about japs.
Returning to the thread, the traditional owners of the site proposed for recreational development have advised unambiguously and unwaveringly that the site is scared and no-one should go there without the expressed permission of the traditional owners.
The majority landholder, Cooper Creek Wilderness, has complied with these unambiguous requirements and yet the local and state governments, with a relative sliver of road-reserve access, have relentlessly sought to commandeer the setting as a common swimming hole.
The fact that the site is within the WHA should have at least made its management compatible with the protective requirements of its traditional owners, but this has not been the case for the past fourteen years.
In this instance, I would have to say that actions speak louder than words: The traditional owners might not have been referred to in overtly derogatory terms, but their cultural heritage has been desecrated.
Neil,
What has been the level of opposition and attention to the DSC proposal?
Right. So Libby you have no answer at all.
I tell you you were totally insulting to that other fellow and you leftists have to realise that what goes around comes around.
Now answer the question. Or I’ll just ask it again.
“Returning to the thread, the traditional owners of the site proposed for recreational development have advised unambiguously and unwaveringly that the site is scared and no-one should go there without the expressed permission of the traditional owners.”
Do they own the site or don’t they? Who owns the site? Are we saying its not government land here?
Hi Libby,
Officially, I would say that DRN&W and EPA have been consistently opposed to preventing degradation associated with unrestricted and unauthorised public access through what has been described as ‘the sacrificial principle’; better such damage occurs here rather than upon NP).
In 1998, the BLUE POOL ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT was sent to all agencies with jurisdiction:
“The primary aim of this report is to illustrate that there are major threatening processes degrading the natural World Heritage Values of a small area of outstanding biological significance. This has been done through a direct comparison of quantifiable floristic survey work carried out in 1995 and 1996, with survey work carried out in 1998. In addition it has been clearly demonstrated that there exists little will or cooperation within the various government agencies at all levels to accept responsibility for management of this area. In 1992 one of the major threatening processes identified at a workshop of technical experts on the conservation of rare and threatened species was that: “official ineptitude/inaction can be a threat in itself to the survival of rare and/or threatened species” (Werren 1992).”
There has been strong support for appropriate management from the Wet Tropics Management Authority, the majority landholder (Cooper Creek Wilderness), adjoining landholders, the Traditional Owners, Cape York Land Council and the Cairns and Far North Environment Centre.
The degradation reflects the broad-based interest that wants without cost. It is a scenario that largely describes a collision between cultures; the reverence of a sacred site versus the hedonism of a covetous democracy.
Thanks Neil. Are there other suitable swimming holes close to the WHA (or in the general vicinity) that could be presented as alternatives?
In my mind it is similar to the proposed Traveston Dam, which will effect endangered species supposedly protected under an EPBC Act and the Gubbi Gubbi people’s sacred animal, and all the while other options have not been fully exhausted.
The only totem or sacred beast in these cases are the pieces of paper the government writes these silly Acts and Plans on.
GraemeBird,
Please refrain from personal insults and abusive language. Argue to the issue.
“Do they own the site or don’t they? Who owns the site? Are we saying its not government land here?”
This is a fundamentally important question that remains unresolved. The site is multi-tenured: Some road reserve , some USL, freehold, and it is divided, with the major portion within the WHA and some not.
The traditional owners are simply that. Under the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003, regardless of tenure, the site has to be managed with a duty of care to the cultural heritage values. World Heritage has similar statutory requirements.
The site is definitely not the exclusive jurisdiction of a government land manager. Over 90% of the broader area is NP, declared for the purposes of public access, and yet practically protected from recreational swimming.
Libby,
According to QPWS, all watercourses within the area are crocodile habitat and unsafe for swimming. A ridiculous over-exaggeration but one that enunciates its broader concerns of avoiding liability in the event of injury (or worse).
My company and an number of others provide a facility for such activities, but as we are private-sector, there is a charge for cost-recovery. Another landholder in the area provides free and unrestricted access to freshwatwer swimming during business hours and strategically via his take-away store.
The nearest sanctioned public swimming venue, besides Mossman Pool, is an hour away at Mossman Gorge. Another informal site just north of Cape Tribuilation is popular amongst tour operators that choose not to pay commercial providers.
So there is a public demand for such a venue; an accompanying public reluctance to pay for the provision and management of such a venue and an adamant refusal by the state’s principle land manager QPWS to provide such a venue.
The DSC proposal has been made despite the opposition from the majority landholder and traditional owners.
“Please refrain from personal insults and abusive language. Argue to the issue.”
Why on earth are you talking to me about this?
Why didn’t you jump on Libby and KJ when they voiced their insults at Geoff Sherrington. That was when the mindless content-free stupidity started.
And I have put forward a lot of substantive questions that need to be answered by people who are (wrongly) contending by their jibes to be particularly expert on biology, global warming, ecology and so forth.
But what they really want to do is deprive everyone of energy and some poor folks of a swimming hole. Thats what they really are expert in. Abusing people and depriving them of stuff.
Where are the substantive arguments from Libby? or KJ.. Its all just abuse. Thats all their is and there isn’t anything else coming from them.
Now its pretty clear that there is no owner to this swimming hole. If there was an owner you could tell me who it is. This is public land. We might defer to the traditional owners by allowing them to set up various money-making enhancements for the enjoyment of the swimmers.
The majority landholder has to be a government outfit surely. What can this statement mean “The majority landholder”. Is this technical bullshit just to obscure the idea that they don’t own that piece of land. Are they or are they not the government? How do these people make their money?
Either someone owns the land or they don’t. Who is the majority landholder if not the government? And is this majority landholder really just some tax-eating outfit?
“It is a scenario that largely describes a collision between cultures; the reverence of a sacred site versus the hedonism of a covetous democracy.”
This is a disgraceful statement from some rich slob who owns tons of land of his own.
Its not rank hedonism to want to take you and the kids for a picnic for goodness sakes. Anyone would think you were talking about some sort of queer-orgy-site and not just a simple water-hole.
Thanks again Neil. It’s a very sad story, but typical. Please keep us posted.
GraemeBird,
Is that the best you can do?
Before large parts of Australia were declared as aboriginal land, we had a granted mining lease in the Top End over what anthropologists said was a sacred site. So I had a yarn with Big Bill Neidjie, who was an important person in the area. He laughed. “Oh that? That’s where there is a camp of flying foxes that we shoot sometimes. We can easily shift that site to another place. No problems with your lease.”
I thought that topical to this thread because the official designation of lands as aboriginal does not have the same significance in every locality. At times, the more you dispute it, the more sacred it becomes and the more revisionism comes into the recorded story.
The tree that fell into the water because people swung from it by a rope was amusing. Some tree! Some rope! Normally it takes a large bulldozer. Chances are the tree was on its way to heaven anyhow, as many trees by watercourses get undermined over the years.
To Libby who wrote “I am ‘one of those people’ decended from the Wiradjuri nation”, prove it please. Quote a family tree portion. I know of no “nation” of that name that has any official recognition. Dreamtime stuff.
Geoff,
I don’t have to prove anything to you, and it’s insulting that you feel the need to exercise your dominance in that way. I have to assume you are outside NSW if you have not heard of the Wiradjuri. I am giving you the benefit of the doubt.
Well Libby you never put up a case. Its all just abuse. You’ve given me nothing to work with.
A tree falls in the forest and people think its an existential crisis.
And don’t pretend you’re an aborigine sheila Libby. I know a stuckup white chich when I read one.
This reminds me of how some old farmers left their estate – to be held “in trust” with the family all being party to that trust. After years of decay and court battles the property is usually sold up in a degraded state.
Property needs to have a transferable title and be owned by someone not just bequeathed to a committee who have no funds and no real incentive in improving the value of the property
GraemeBird is he best thing that has happened to this board. Faaaar more entertaining than Motty could ever dream of being, and still manages to say nothing beyond abuse!
its enough to almost make you miss mott.
almost.
When I was President of the Northern Territory Chamber of Mines and Energy, I met many people from all walks of life. Aboriginal issues were high on the agenda and I had access to material far beyond the reach of most.
I saw separate NT budgets dissected for ab and other people. 7 times the expenditure on law and order, 5 times the cost of medical, 4 times the cost of schooling. I saw new names being invented – kakadu was originally gagadju. I saw some evidence that some stories from the dreamtime could not have been more than a few generations old. I saw ancient rock art touched up with a new blue pigment that turned out to Rickett’s bag blue from the laundry at Munmarlary station.
Events like this did not cause me any hatred or dislike, they simply made me work harder to redress the balance. But they did make me cynical that there was widespread use of myth and invention by all kinds of people to romanticise the notion of the “heroic savage”, a term coined long before my times.
What did disgust me was the opportunistic whiteys and some abs who jumped into the fray for personal gain or academic kudos. They were there to take, not to give. We gave, as I said, help with employment, medical, schooling, access to shops, housing. This was not compulsory, it was not bribery, it was simply to harmonise. When taken, it was taken with gratitude. Now, our reward is abuse from those with ignorant preconceptions.
So, in any locality where sacred sites and permanent sterilisation of areas is mentioned, my first question is, “Who’s making a quid out of it?” The second question is “What new myths will be invented?” The third question is, “Why can’t calm and rational people sit down and arrive at a comonsense answer?”
It was only with the passing of laws specific to aborigines that the rifts really widened. This country should repeal all laws based on different ethnic origins. They simply fuel fires.
“Dreamtime stuff”.
Geoff Sherrington,
“Why can’t calm and rational people sit down and arrive at a commonsense answer?”
I should imagine, for the most part, because those with the power to prevent it, do so.
In the context of this thread, I have implored the proponents over fourteen years, for a seat at the negotiating table. They simply will not allow it.
As the majority landholder; that is the freehold owner of the greatest area of land subject to the impacts of the relatively recent use and abuse, I feel I have the right to be involved in the decision-making. The Traditional Owners seem to have been given that right, but the unequivocal recommendation of their cultural heritage report has been contradicted by the proposal, so their involvement is at best tokenistic.
Your notion that you are disgusted by those who opportunistically jump into the fray for personal gain, really does fly in the face of capitalism and surely you will agree that the principle purpose of mining is economic? I applaud corporate ethics, particularly in sensitive areas, but each an every one of us has to put food on the table and a roof over their family’s heads and it is through the opportunity of work that personal gain is remunerated. Some gain is easily attributed in proportion to the work undertaken and yet other returns are less obviously earned.
We live in a complex society that is subject to corruption of processes. Pauline Hanson argued along the lines of your passing sentiments and I am confident that you have seen the failings of such an uncharitable ideology.
Dearie me, a tree falls down and a biologist surmises that a possible contribution to its demise was people.
From this event many positions are taken, stretching back into the dreamtime.
Neil, I think you are conflating capitalism with personal gain, not the same.
A quick google puts Wiradjuri people as being one of the largets tribal groups in Australia mainly central west and south west NSW.
http://www.samuseum.sa.gov.au/orig/tindale/hdms/tindaletribes/wiradjuri.htm
Rog,
Conservation management costs. I should know; it is my business. If you don’t believe me, write to your state’s director general of Parks & Wildlife Service and ask.
In the Wet Tropics, some $13.5million p.a. is spent providing, managing and maintaining visitor access opportunities for a measly $325,000 return. 97.5% of the cost of providing the illusion of free-entry is met through budgetary allocation (that is, the taxpayer).
My company, being a private-sector manager of World Heritage estate, receives no financial assistance from the government at all, despite its legislated requirements as defined within the World Heritage Convention. Nevertheless, it perseveres through the user-payments of travelers that seek to immerse themselves more thoroughly than the subsidised masses at the periphery.
This proposal aims to provide unrestricted, unsupervised, free-of-charge access for the public-at-large to an area that is inextricably connected to my land. The notion that the proponent has no intention of causing injury to the interests of the contiguous freehold portion is as absurd as a perpetrator of a brutal assault proclaiming innocence because not one part of the victim was personally touched by his wielding of the big stick.
But at the end of the day, if the proposal is adopted and the reserve declared, who is going to pay the private-sector land manager for the costs of unauthorised entry and degradation? What about the additional costs of management and supervision, rehabilitation, signage, capital expenses and the ongoing costs of depreciation; fuel for machinery, public liability insurance, administration, workplace health and safety, advertising, marketing, wages, salaries, training and superannuation?
For they are real costs and if, in anticipation of their unauthorised and unremunerated imposition, we lodge our objections and this is deemed by some to represent person gain, then so be it.
Ironically, if my company had disregarded the unsuitability of the site and sought to provide public access to the very same setting from its side of the creek, it would have been categorically prohibited by the very same government interests that have made this proposal.
“This proposal aims to provide unrestricted, unsupervised, free-of-charge access for the public-at-large to an area that is inextricably connected to my land.
The notion that the proponent has no intention of causing injury to the interests of the contiguous freehold portion is as absurd as a perpetrator of a brutal assault proclaiming innocence because not one part of the victim was personally touched by his wielding of the big stick.”
Well its up to you to fence it off then you rich slob.
Of course people aren’t going to know whose place it is if you haven’t got some clear boundary line that lets the critters through but tells the humans that this is private property.
Finally the clouds part and the true story shines through.
Private properties need a fence or a buffer or else there is going to be misunderstandings and conflicts of interest.
There we are. The ecologist movement. Spearheaded by communists, tax-eaters and wealthy aristocrats.
I suspect you have your own swimming-pool near the house. But not all of us are so priveledged.
>Of course people aren’t going to know whose place it is if you haven’t got some clear boundary line that lets the critters through but tells the humans that this is private property.
Graeme not all the humans are as clever as the critters or yourself and may well still cross that boundary. I am sure you have come across individuals yourself who seem unable to read signs or pay respect to other people. Perhaps Neil needs guards, like Africa’s armed poachers, to threaten any who cross the fence that will be kind to cassowaries and possums and compliment the aesthetics of the wilderness people have come to see. Neil could get the local Aboriginals to be the guards, as I’m sure the tourists would enjoy having their photos taken with a black fella in khaki carrying a semi-automatic. With said guards in place (finally gainfully employed and not just living off the land which so obviously was never theirs anyway) Neil can then retire to his banana lounge by the pool and reflect on how to make his next million.
GraemeBird,
It is true that you put forward a lot of substantive questions that deserve to be answered, but the unnecessary attachment of person insults, such as “you rich slob” simply makes the exchange unpleasant.
Fencing is not an option, either practically or legally. Signage does not work either; with 25 professionally produced signs destroyed or removed over the past decade.
The confusion that you have rightfully identified, is compounded by World Heritage listing being compulsorily inscribed upon freehold land. For Australia to impose such a management obligation without the provision of the statutory tools for the job, in an area renowned for its confusing tenure and then to declare unrestricted access onto this vulnerable portion, describes the nature of the dilemma.
Ordinarily, when such matters are considered, there is coordination and cooperation between affected landholders, but where I live there is a recurring anti-community ethos driving bureaucratic usurpation – in the name of the public good.
But I put it to you, that if private lands, which make up around 70% of the Australian landscape are prevented from conserving their important ecosystems via sustainable economies, then can it be truly said that the public interest has been served?
Graeme please do us all a favour and leave the abuse out of it. It does you no favours. Just because others are at times ‘abusive’ does not make it right for you to be. You make some great points at times that are detracted from by the accompanying nastiness. From someone who has similar opinions at times, it makes me embarassed to be in agreement. It certainly stops me from supporting you where I agree, because I would hate to be considered a similar human being!
For Neil,
Hang on, I’m on your side. When I asked “Who will make a quid out of it?” I was referring to deception and artificial labelling of areas. One of the companies I worked for lost at least $100 million through the Feds declaring World Heritage or nat parks or both, some 10 years after we had discovered the mineral deposits. No compensation was allowed.
In the Federal Court, judge Murray Wilcox likened our plight to a service station owner whose business dropped because the road was shifted to another route. He forgot that you can’t pick up mineral deposits and shift them to new places. Same judge had been President of the Australian Conservation Foundation, but nobody would dare suggest that his thinking was influenced by prior events, would they?
I am a committed capitalist. Hard work has to have its own rewards, so I worked very hard in a long career. These days, Governments seem to wield a sort of “Robin Hood Economics”. They steal from the rich and then keep it.
In the early 1990s I convened a meeting of world specialists on the arcane subject of Property Rights and flew in experts from several countries to add to the impressive home team. After learning from that meeting and others, I have deep sympathy for people whose property rights have been trampled, sometimes irreversibly, some times without compensation.
Yours is a problem needing a Property Rights analysis, one which will remove the bluff and falsity of claims and bare the truth. I wish you well with your endeavours and believe me, I know how you feel.
Finallly, can I say that it is the success of the Australian Mineral industry which has for decades helped to fund the luxury of creating questionable wilderness areas, world heritage areas, aboriginal land and so on. That is a perversity that is by taxation, not by choice.
I fully support Toby’s comment above. There’s never any excuse for abuse / rudeness in public forums.
I for one intend to ignore anything that Graeme says until such time as he says something substantive in a civil manner.
Don’t feed the trolls!
Neil,
I sympathise – but mostly I want to say thanks for bringing back a couple of nice memories. I stayed at the Heritage Lodge some 10 years ago. I remember doing the waterfall track (did’nt make it all the way) and then straying of the path on the way back and following the creek a bit… got to appreciate lawyer vine! We also cycled down to Thornton beach and the Cooper Creek estuary. It is a trully magnificent place.
cheers
Arnost
“A quick google puts Wiradjuri people as being one of the largets tribal groups in Australia mainly central west and south west NSW”.
Yes Rog, the Wiradjuri do exist. My great grandmother came from out Mudgee way. If you followed tennis during the 1970’s, you would be familiar with Evonne Goolagong, if you watch SBS weeknight news you would be familiar with Stan Grant, and if you watched Catherine Freeman in Going Bush on SBS, you would be familiar with Luke Carroll. All from the supposedly non-existant Wiradjuri nation.
“To Libby who wrote “I am ‘one of those people’ decended from the Wiradjuri nation”, prove it please. Quote a family tree portion. I know of no “nation” of that name that has any official recognition. Dreamtime stuff.”
First you ask me for proof of my lineage, then you dismiss a tribe because YOU have never heard of it. Forgive me if I lack confidence in your methodology Dr Sherrington, or fail to give you credit for any deeds well done. I have expressed my offence to your use of the term “ab” and yet you see fit to continue to use it. Forgive me but you exhibit the same arrogance as many old school Australians, and that does not seem likely to change as long as you pass that culture down to your children.
“And don’t pretend you’re an aborigine sheila Libby. I know a stuckup white chich when I read one”.
Don’t worry GremaBird, I use babelfish to translate my crude, broken English into something the latte-sippers will understand.
Thanks for that clarification Geoff and I agree that a Property Rights analysis would be most welcome.
You know if it were just a simple old compulsory acquisition, the jurisdiction of the Land Court would be activated and we would have our day in court. Under Queensland’s Land Act 1994, no such provision exists. Neither is there any court of appeal available under the Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage nor the Wet Tropics World Heritage Protection and Management Act 1993.
Neither the ACCC nor the Queensland Competition Council regards the environmental functions and mandates of government land management agencies as business activities; therefore, they are not required to maintain competitive neutrality. In addition, Section 51 of the Trade Practices Act 1974 essentially provides that regard will not be had to conduct which is specifically authorised or approved by any Federal legislation or by specific State or Territory regulation, regardless of their tourism impacts conferring such substantial exclusionary influences to fair trade upon non-government tenures.
There is only the EPBC Act 1999. An application for injunctive relief could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Contrary to Toby’s hysterical analysis of my financial state of affairs, these are prohibitive costs.
It is ironic that the economic success of mining has underpinned a national expression of environmentalism, but I believe that this is as much a result of so many people living apart from nature. Almost as if it were penance for enjoying prosperity at the expense of an increasingly marginalised rural sector. But that’s another issue.
How amusing this European discussion on property rights when the whole system that we now enjoy is based on the annexation of land from its original inhabitants. But of course before the Minerals Industry saved us all – the land would have been “useless”.
I have not heard of a “nation” of that name. We live in the Nation of Australia, last time I checked.
Attempts at geographic division cause social division, which none of us wants. That’s a good way to sart conflict, as a light reading of world history will show.
There is said to be aboriginal blood in my mother’s parentage, extent uncertain in the old history, but I take no notice of it because it has been made a cause by people who can’t cope, or who have chips on shoulders.
Probably most people have had possessions taken from them that they would rather keep. You can swallow the pill and forget or you can become a cause if you think that would lead to improvement for others.
I did not claim that without the mining industry the land would be useless. The opposite is true, all land is useful, mining tiny patches can enhance its value. Imagine what you would be living in and driving if minerals were not available to you. Try not to bite the hand that feeds you.
I did not say that the discussion on property rights was European. Please don’t assume when you do not know.
Come off it Geoff. UK went to war with Argentina over a wind swept rock in the South Atlantic. I don’t think we “just get over it” if you’ve got the guns or the power on your side.
We’re only only in “the nation of Australia” because we annexed it. But the current generation has had no say in their ancestors actions, and so we are where we are. But that does not mean we need to systemically tolerate disadvantage or be insensitive to others. And don’t think I’m spinning a gratis welfarist line either.
And I think you could extend Libby some common courtesy. She’s not asking you for anything ! Dismissing her aboriginality or her heritage is remarkably insensitive.
Indeed Geoff our original inhabitants have been remarkably tolerant. If they had Northern Island genes you’ve blown up every time you went down the shops.
And you forgot the “mining only alienates a small percentage of the land whereas agriculture .. .. and produces Y% of the GNP” part of the standard argument.
But of course if you like to eat you are involved in agriculture. And that is the real hand that feeds you.
If your grande property rights symposium had a comprehensive range of aboriginal input you only have to say so in the context of the current discussion. But you haven’t.
“Attempts at geographic division cause social division, which none of us wants. That’s a good way to sart conflict, as a light reading of world history will show.”
Intolerance is a good way of starting conflict. Having a monoculture of people and forcing them into all being one has been tried before and not necessarily successfully. As for checking history books, perhaps you could indulge. See if all is indeed fair when war is over and the soldiers return home.
“There is said to be aboriginal blood in my mother’s parentage, extent uncertain in the old history, but I take no notice of it because it has been made a cause by people who can’t cope, or who have chips on shoulders”.
That is your choice, and your interpretation of events. My great grandmother died after childbirth. Her existence was essentially written out of our family for decades as it was seen as shameful to have such blood circulating through our history. White is the new black.
You will often find that mixed bloods take up the “cause” as they saw how “accepting” their elders were, and the consequences for a culture. Now there is a bitterness and a shame felt by many mixed bloods, wishing that they were not a part of the crimes the Europeans had inflicted on their ancestors, ancestors not long gone, through having white blood in their mix.
Your contributions have been enlightening, given your gospels on “harmony”. You are speaking of integration, and you are essentially asking that one culture be given over for another. If mixed bloods have “causes” or “chips on their shoulders” it is because of bigots like you who make us want to fight for a culture, recognition of past deeds done wrong, and dignity. But that usually happens after a period of feeling loss, worthlessness and desperation, something you are apparently experienced at delivering.
Libby, you persist in hiding behind the skirts of sympathy demanded or expected. You make all sorts of assumptions about me, staring with the premise that I am an evil person, to be disliked. Why? Is it because I am mainly white? (You do not even know that). Is that the dominant reason for your criticisms?
Where have I written that I am intolerant? I have written that I seek harmony.
I have not written that I ask one culture to be given to another. I have been fortunate to mix with a number of aborigines and to learn their cultural stories before they were revised. I have photos of places that whiteys are not allowed to see now. Is that expanding cultural friendship or contracting it?
I have also been fortunate to mix with Greek friends and have long cultural discussions with them.
I would never use an expression like “White is the new black”.
On my father’s side, my family was taken from its homeland, wealth and land left behind by compusion, and shipped a great distance to this lonely part of the globe. I don’t make an issue out of that. It was only a couple of generations ago, but I manage to get on with life.
I did not say that a monoculture was a good thing, or that I favoured forcing all people into being one. I do rather dislike the concept of legislated emphasis on differences. I would prefer legislated emphasis on harmony, but most of all I would prefer no legislation.
Most of the nations on earth have had changes of ethnic mix over written history. It seems to trouble some more than others.
You wrote about the crimes that Europeans inflicted on their ancestors. Yes, there were some. But there is an exercise that you might try, as I have done a number of times. Go to a reference library for a few days and read the original preserved papers of the time, about some skirmish or masssacre. Sure, you will suspect bias in the reporting at times as any sceptical person would, but you might find that some of the “crimes” were not such; they are converted by revisionist historians into that category in the process of social engineering. This is not to say that I disbelieve records of poisoned flour and other crimes. I simply say that the old record does not support a deal of modern perceived wisdom, when subjected to thorough, impartial scholarship.
I’m not going to say that I feel sorry for anything that I have written, but I am sorry that you misinterpret.
This “shame felt by many mixed bloods”, is that in part from rejection by both sides?
I was talking to an aboriginal from La Perouse, he was telling me that as a kid he was sent to an orphange in Grafton, because they were a different tribe they gave him hell. Well, that was his story.
I did a lot of work around that area, heard a lot of stories.
When Geoff says “Go to a reference library for a few days and read the original preserved papers of the time, about some skirmish or massacre” then “This is not to say that I disbelieve records of poisoned flour and other crimes”. I get round to thinking back on what really wiped out the majority of scattered tribes early on round the country at the time of euro settlement in between sneezes and wiping my runny nose and eyes.
A cold can be so powerful!
Claiming an association with various ancestries is also powerful in a fashionable sense today, a bit like the Gallipoli thing. There was a bit of a mystery in my lot about black and convict connections but in the end the internet has provided the best clue with more bloody Irish and Pommy roots right through to the VDL. I can definitely relate to a “massacre” and a wicked thing or two as that pastoral enterprise expanded its perimeters.
Let’s draw another picture: Any one can google colonial genocide in Tasmania (arguably the worst case in British colonial history), look up Cape Grim etc and find right wing “history” challenges. I met a descendant of the original horseback shooting party who had recently emigrated from England and could hardly wait to babble once he thought there was a supporting ear. But we 5 & 6th gen. never discussed the fate of traditional owners after they all “disappeared”. Before the internet there were no records available either.
rog: One of my ancestors was a warder at Port Arthur where the locals even tried to up the prison’s existence after it was closed. It brings me to the India connection. Overseers were typically blooded there over generations. In my childhood, I was left a trunk full of private and semi official letters by a legless spinster “aunt” who thought I would appreciate some overseas stamps; problem was India stamps were so difficult to swap.
Nothing above was more moving though than living next door to the hapless remnants.
I watched their two room communal “house” dozed into the sand dune by an agent for the “authorities” after it was boarded up by local police.
Neil’s concluding observation in his lead post “There is a very acceptable solution to this matter that doesn’t involve the destruction of Cooper Creek Wilderness, but it would seem the proponents of this draft are resolutely disinterested” merely states the bleeding obvious, all NP type policy development today harbors collective guilt re the environment and decedents of “traditional” owners.
Title holders western style beware: you are “mining” value even in “wilderness”
“”And don’t pretend you’re an aborigine sheila Libby. I know a stuckup white chich when I read one”.
Don’t worry GremaBird, I use babelfish to translate my crude, broken English into something the latte-sippers will understand.”
Ha Ha.
Thats white-sheila-talk alright. But its sufficiently humourous for me to call off the bad vibes for the time being.
But look. Its got to be important to you, supposing you are righteous, that my way of doing things is superior?
Why do things a bad way when you can look to a better-world?
“I for one intend to ignore anything that Graeme says until such time as he says something substantive in a civil manner.”
No.
And the REAL reason you take that point of view is this:
I HAVE A HABIT OF BEING RIGHT.
YOU HAVE A HABIT OF BEING WRONG.
And you can’t handle the truth.
So all this other talk is just being a wimp.
Right.
Well thats the real problem Neil (and Travis).
Neils property is being violated.
Thats nothing for us to take lightly.
And attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.
And attack on the property-rights of one of us is an attack on the property-rights of all of us.
So the answer presents itself.
The idea is to clarify the property rights of the situation.
I share Neils concerns. His property ought not be compromised.
If his rights are compromised then all of our rights are compromised and then we cannot have the investments that lead to poor folks getting high-paid jobs.
But Neils property is being compromised right now. And a well-worked out lease arrangement could be just the thing for the molestation of Neils property…. (and therefore his person) to be reduced if not ended.
But we want to have deep-sixed these CO2-lies and got a comprehensive species-saving and nature-corridor-enhancing policy together……
…. And once we have such a way of doing things together then we need never get in the way of business again.
Libby I probably was going to come on and try and kick you in the throat.
But having said that, taking the wider view, I’ve got nothing against you.
But you gave Geoff Sherrington such a hard time when HE was the guy who looked like he had the experience to give us some sort of context.
I don’t feel the need to give you a hard time for the time being. But we ought to look at these problems in a scientific way.
GraemeBird,
Why do you feel the need to threaten with violence and be so needlessly rude? You have finally made some points that hint at a glimmer of hope for rational discussion, but you repel with what lies between.
As for Libby giving Geoff Sherrington a hard time, I think his constant lack of sensitivity and understanding is shameful, and accusations of seeking sympathy just enforce this. Seems our PM is not the only person with a problem saying the sorry word.
Gavin,
“…all NP type policy development today harbors collective guilt re the environment and decedents of “traditional” owners.”
The NP policy at play in this scenario has been described as ‘the sacrificial principle’, though it might more accurately be inferred as sabotage.
A number of years ago, concerns for protection of the associated assemblages at a spectacular swimming hole upon the neighbouring Noah Creek (which is completely within Daintree National Park), prompted administrative intervention.
Public swimming was effectively displaced and permitted to escalate into unsupervised, uncontrolled public use of the more vulnerable Blue Hole.
While both settings are within the World Heritage Area, the relevant section of Noah Creek is within Queensland’s Protected Area Estate, under the provisions of the Nature Conservation Act 1992 and the Nature Conservation Regulation 1994.
The WH-listed Blue Pool was not classified within Queensland’s protected area estate, although many plant and animal species inhabiting the area are listed under the various schedules of the Nature Conservation Regulation.
In order to achieve the same level of protection from the degradation at the Blue Hole, Cooper Creek Wilderness had its lands formally declared as a Nature Refuge under a Conservation Agreement with the State of Queensland. This administrative process incorporated the World Heritage rainforests of Cooper Creek Wilderness, and most importantly, the Blue Hole section, into the jurisdiction of Queensland’s protected area estate.
It has made no difference whatsoever, because protective intervention remained subject to the whims of the bureaucrats who have been entrusted with the statutory instrumentalities and they have been resolutely disinclined to use them, “collective guilt re the environment and decedents of “traditional” owners”, notwithstanding.
There seems to be a culture within the QPWS that longs for a return to the days when it held a monopoly function for conservation management. With Senator Graham Richardson’s decision to compulsorily include our freehold portion into Australia’s nomination for WH-listing, QPWS became subject to competition from the private sector and I would suggest that this is how they compete.
So, the business of bureaucratic competitiveness supercedes any underlying conservation ethos.
Sorry to read of your problem Neil – Government agency forcing a designated public access onto private land, in opposition to the landholder and local traditional people and their knowledge. It seems that world heritage listing and / or a conservation agreement on private land actually enables erosion of the power of a landholder (via the erosion of property rights) to deliver the protection needed. Thanks for the warning.
Helen Mahar
I have a friend who has been a paraplegic for 40 years. He cannot use his fingers, which is hard because he likes to type and to take photographs. He holds his camera in his wrists and activates the shutter release with his tongue. When typing, he uses a stick held in his mouth to press the keyboard.
I have never felt it necessary or required to comment upon his disability. His work is of an exceptionally high standard and when I judge it I say so when appropriate. I make no allowance for his disability and he knows this. In his words, “You take what Life gives you and get on with it”.
He would be mortified if I went into a rambling letter about his disabilities and how he had dealt with them and how I felt sorry for him. I do not feel sorry for him because he has demonstrated a determination to use what he has in a manner of excellence. I feel proud of him. I feel privileged to know him.
Transport this cameo into the postings of this blog.
I do not follow the reasoning that suggests that I should feel sorry for anyone I have not harmed. I have not been insensitive, I have been relaistic. But nobody likes quitters; people admire those who use what Life gave them and get on with it.
Sure I have mixed with Prime Ministers and their families and various assorted admired people. That does not mean that I have to mimic their thoughts and behaviour, or that I resemble the PM in not saying sorry (if indeed that accusation is accurate). Any decision I make on that topic is my own.
In real life, as a 65-year-old person of modest means married 43 years, with two lovable Burmese cats, a love of photography and art, a collector of extremely rare plants from other countries to make a sfe haven here (was I accused of ignorance of biology? I have given invited international lectures in several countries on ornamental horticulture) and a desire to make Australia better, I am not the ogre that is painted above.
Neil, your problem is not an isolated one. The infighting among officials is getting worse as the legislative complexity increases. There are still some Courts that are fair and not swayed by excessive politics and I can only suggest that you seek out others with similar problems, pool resources and then get judgement as to which law has precedence over which other. It will always be the case that there is a pecking order. Federal Law can usually be found to override state and local if there is conflict. You have to demonstrate the conflict to the court, so it can be made clear that you deal with one party only. I know it is costly. At one stage we were spending $5m a year on legal fees associated with property disputes. But that is the way the law advances.
Geoff
“Why do you feel the need to threaten with violence and be so needlessly rude?”
Because Luke said I was his bitch. That brings up sexual harrassment and sodomy. Whereas the truth of the matter is that I’d beat some sense into him just as fast as I could if he talked to me in person like he talks to people on the net.
Lest we forget I’m here under my own identity and Luke isn’t. So I’ll not tolerate sexual harrassment from someone like him.
It wasn’t important to actually track him down and kill him.
What was important was to wipe out the stain of his sexual harrassment before the good Doctor came down from Olympus and started wiping everything.
Leftist contempt for normal people is all around us. And like the air we breathe it can be quite hard to see sometimes. There is one rule for you guys and one rule for the rest of us and I aim to try and change that calculus.
Just for example you bastards no longer think you need to come up with evidence for anything anymore.
THATS FUCKING RUDE FOR STARTERS?
Thats totally filthy behaviour and ought not be tolerated in civilised discussion.
We cannot solve our problems without pulling you fascists down a few notches so that you no longer hold normal people in contempt.
Yes its true that you guys usually stay within the rules. But behind the superficial politeness the left is looking at the rest of us through a collection of shit-eating-grins.
WILDER ANIMALS LIKE US.
There is a certain SCIENCE to this matter.
And property rights work best, and eliminate conflict, if they are clear, give unity of control, and have a bit of a buffer around them.
For example if we were repopulating the New World again, with todays technology, we probably wouldn’t want to survey one mans land, such that it came slap-plam against the property of anothers. We wouldn’t want these shared fences. We wouldn’t want it that the rest of us were fenced in.
Rather we’d let individuals homestead the land to make it their own. But there would be a buffer zone between the private properties and therefore both a nature corridor and the means for future transport infrastructure development, without government seizure of private property.
And there would also be no fencing off of the hunter-gatherers or yet even the rest of us.
Reading the first few pages of Moby Dick reminds me that we’ve all allowed ourselves to be fenced in.
And THIS is the basic problem that has killed the critters and hurt and demoralised the former hunter-gatherers.
We need maybe a two hundred year plan to get to a point wherein you can ride your horse, or trail-bike, from the middle of the largest high-rise-cities, through land-good-land, along a curved path, to pretty-much anywhere at all.
And not be fenced in like animals.
And for the wilder animals not to be fenced in either.
Geoff I’m just wondering if you go around on public forums calling paraplegics ‘paras’, or doubting those that do have disabilities that they are for real and asking for proof. These are just two parallels I could draw. Objection was raised to a term you used, and I think that was fair enough, but obviously you didn’t seem to. So it goes.
I feel sorry for the people in Sudan at the moment, and I am pretty sure I have not harmed them. I feel sorry for the old homeless guy up the road, and I am pretty sure I havent done anything to him, and I felt sorry for Richard Ness, and again, I don’t think I did anything bad to him. I give money to UNHCR, various other charities, have an Indonesian kid I am putting through school in Jakarta, and so on. I do what I can, but I have the empathy to feel sorry for someone or something. It doesn’t mean I pity them and think they are pathetic.
Yes, people take what life deals them and get on with it. So perhaps Neil should just give up and get on with it. Or perhaps he should voice his concerns to various agencies and even people here, and try and put a case forward. I don’t see that what has been written in reply to you has been anything else, and in fact it has been put forward in an assertive manner.
Since your first post here you seem to have wanted some sort of affirmation from readers that what your companies did was good and right, and now even more so, that what you do is good and right. I am not sure that anyone is painting you to be an ‘ogre’, but it kinda seems you are doing that yourself.
Graeme writes:
>THATS FUCKING RUDE FOR STARTERS?
Then writes:
>Thats totally filthy behaviour and ought not be tolerated in civilised discussion.
Hmmm…
Graeme,
In response to what you have just written, which was in hyperspace whilst I was writing, do you support perhaps some sort of population control so that a 200-year plan can be implemented? This is a fair-dinkum question, as to get to a point in many areas now where wildlife corridors can be effectively established, you need to do something with the people that are already living there.
Bird – bolsh – you were well on your way before that – and your spray of venom over many blogs has been well noted.
You just were met with reciprocal force and had equally stupid arguments thrown back at you. And like a spoiled little boy – you did your nana.
Like most rightist scum you’re used to getting your own way. Nobody else has brought up violence except you. And you’re such a sucker and always very easy to wind up.
Anyway keep it up – can’t be long before you and your many dreay sock puppets get banned. And mate you aren’t going to do diddly squat about it.
If you are really Graeme Bird (what a ridiculous name anyway – consider change by deed poll?) just post your residential address to close the bargain. Can’t be long before Rudd gets elected and rounds people like you up for a stint in the gulag.
And one last thing Graeme – you lost the debate – so you now are my bitch. No back chat ! GOT IT !
Absolutely not.
Its not about population control.
Its about land use and eliminating the damage of socialism.
We can have massively enhanced energy production, massive capital accumulation, and a workers and consumers paradise in conjunction with a consumers hog-heaven… and multiplied by a massive and lasting baby-boom.
We can and ethically SHOULD have all of that and be leaving less of a bad footprint on the other species then at any time since we came out of Africa.
Its not consumption.
Its land use and bad policy.
Its not industrial production. Its one property cramped up against the next.
Its height restrictions on buildings and socialist infrastructure.
It is these things that do the damage and the damage is nothing to do with energy consumption, population growth, or industrial production.
It is true that the poorer in this world will have to forget about the quarter-acre-block for the most part.
But a better ambition is the half-acre sky-house.
And we can do it my oath we can. And one day, if we do it right, the proletariat will look down at the rich guys, whose Edwardian estates and hobby-farms are invading right into the heart of the city…
.. And the poorer people will look down at these rich folks, from impossibly massive (by todays standards) apartments in the air.
The more people the better under liberty-in-economics and a different view of how to arrange property.
Geoff: IMO what’s missing in your post is humbleness also we can’t really hide from public logic in these private cameo views in this hard headed unforgiving world. Today I was accused of snooping twice in a rival’s pickup box and that hurt.
Been thinking since if it would help if they knew I’m only the limits of normal sight these days but its best they don’t see a growing weakness. Competition must remain fierce at all times. When we have to drop out that’s amounts to declaring dependence on some system or other.
Off to collect my old Siamese boy at the vet. It seems he had to open a festering abscess overnight with his last remaining fang. “Territory” is such a valuable concept at his level too.
“Libby, you persist in hiding behind the skirts of sympathy demanded or expected.”
I don’t want sympathy Geoff demanded, expected or otherwise, yours or anyone else’s. I can’t misinterpret this comment. You have accused me of seeking sympathy. It is simply untrue. That is your assumption.
“You make all sorts of assumptions about me…”
See above. You have made many assumptions yourself about me.
“Is that the dominant reason for your criticisms?”
Read back through the dialogue. It is self-explanatory. I believe some others may have pointed it out too.
“…but I manage to get on with life”.
I manage to get on with life too, and I try and be pleasant and understanding to those I meet. However, I also don’t like injustice, lies, double standards or cruelty, and I will voice my opinions on these rather than stay silent.
I don’t think you are “evil” or an “ogre”. Those were not terms I used. Please don’t try and put words in my mouth. Who, perhaps, is asking for sympathy now, using such language?
“Libby I probably was going to come on and try and kick you in the throat”.
Luke has (until now) been nowhere on the scene for you to come out with a comment like this GraemeBird. It is an awful comment to make.
No its a great comment.
You are pretty evasive too and I consider that a blog-crime.
Graeme: those high rise dwellers need rainwater tanks, compost bins and fresh veg as the rest of us did.
So GraemeBird you can call me a bitch but Luke can’t? How reasonable of you. How the hell am I evasive? A few here have asked you post your residntial address. I’d like to know it too.
Rephrase, the babelfish was on loan to an Ethiopian former refugee…So GraemeBird, you can call me a bitch but Luke can’t call you one?
“Graeme: those high rise dwellers need rainwater tanks, compost bins and fresh veg as the rest of us did.”
Right. So why are we creating artificial shortages by not allowing a proper functioning price system for water?
Why are people falling over themselves insisting that we reduce CO2 emissions which would make the growing of these things cheaper?
Water falls from the sky. And yet thanks to socialism we have shortages of it.
Got nothing to do with population and high-rise. Its a shortage thanks to willful ignorance of economic science.
Whenever you don’t have a proper functioning price system you have shortages. And a drought is a shortage of water.
Bird – are you on a bad acid trip ? Socialism or price mechanisms cause record low rainfall? WTH !!?? Tell that to the inhabitants of Killarney and Leyburn who have run out of water.
Meanwhile back at Neil’s swimming hole……
Luke: Neil’s case (regards otherwise) is about as close as we get to a storm in a tea cup on this blog. When Neil convinces Jennifer that real conservation is doing something about some vast changes due to global warming and not maintaining the exclusiveness of a privileged few holed up in fancy legal property rights out in the bush, I will happily row the boat down the RH side cheering all the way.
Graeme: truth in sustainability lies in everyone recognising they are currently living and using over the top as they go. Also; economists particularly in policy, don’t do much for me in the main.
With Geoff I can sympathise: It’s not easy building a personal perspective from subtle changes in measurements at the leading edge of any field however I beg to fundamentally disagree with his comments on AGW.
For these cameos to work, I say you must collect lots of them. For instance I had a play with probably the only loose Geiger counter in the country as a kid. I then went on to work for a long term processor after he left Rum Jungle. Another boss cleaned up aircraft after they flew through the atomic clouds. Both have left for better places, but we are about to go into another level at the A factory.
Today I met a younger couple from our front line boarder security and I picked up some useful domestic hardware as they were moved a lot before going into policy. Guess what? Their practical problems managing at the front were mostly legal.
“Graeme: truth in sustainability lies in everyone recognising they are currently living and using over the top as they go.”
NO WE ARE NOT YOU STUPID JERK. I ALREADY TOLD YOU WHAT WAS HAPPENING. WE HAVE CHRONIC SHORTAGES IN WATER SINCE WATER ISN’T PART OF A FUNCTIONING PRICE SYSTEM.
“Also; economists particularly in policy, don’t do much for me in the main.”
THATS BECAUSE YOU ARE AN IDIOT.
There is such a thing as economic science. And its the most well-established fact of it that you need a good to be priced correctly in order to avoid shortages.
Shit man. How much water do you want?
“Got nothing to do with population and high-rise. Its a shortage thanks to willful ignorance of economic science.”
Notice that I said the ignorance was WILLFUL. And it was not a long time before Gavin demonstrated the willful nature of his anti-science denialism.
“With Geoff I can sympathise: It’s not easy building a personal perspective from subtle changes in measurements at the leading edge of any field however I beg to fundamentally disagree with his comments on AGW.”
For Petes sakes you total idiot. Instead of talking like the Universe falls in line with your pathetic whims GIVE US THE EVIDENCE.
Now we’ve established that you don’t have any. But like the energy-deprivation-fraudster and total lying idiot that you are you just persist with this trace-gas-hysteria after you’ve been proved wrong.
WE’VE GOT TO GET THIS ELEMENT OF PERSONAL FANTASY out of these debates. Its extremely rude to just start talking as if you were talking about an whole other planet in a galaxy far far away.
This planet is the one we are talking right now. THIS PLANET EARTH. And its a planet with a one-way cooling bias and its one where CO2-warming is so slight that no-one can find it.
Looks like Graeme got a D in economics as well as Climatology and Logic. Shortages are part of any functioning economic system relying on weather inputs. To have a system that had virtually no shortages you would need a vast amount of infrastructure that would be unused most of the time. Who pays for the unused infrastructure – the users. So demanding an extreme level of reliability will force the price up. In reality most people are prepared to live with some smaller level of risk for lower water prices.
The additional infratsructure currently being applied to droughted areas like SE Qld will see a substantial increase in the price of water.
And for a planet with a one-way cooling bias – the latest research must be most disturbing.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200704/s1908491.htm
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;316/5824/587
Meanwhile back at Neil’s water hole ……….
I’m departing this blog now, no adverse feelings to Jennifer, but it’s peopled by writers who like to rabbit on a bit about nothing in particular with no great depth of experience.
Neil is one of the sane voices, using what might seem to be a small location to highlight a major problem, a problem I’ve met before in less complex form when there were fewer participants from officialdom.
I used the term “arcane” when referring to Property Rights because it carries a special meaning among economists and other students who have studied it. That understanding did not come through in later responses.
As to the accusation that I presented material seeking some form of foregiveness or understanding, that’s balderdash. I have completed the formal part of my career and have been at the cutting edge for much of it over a wide range of topics. Because of an ability to select the right colleagues, I can proudly say that I’ve been part of teams that have put far more into society than they could take out in several lifetimes. We have provided for our children and our childen’s children, many times over. We have had a global impact.
Those who are not scientists should make the effort to wade through some of the Google material dated 2007, especially papers commenting on the IPCC work. With each new credible paper, it becomes more clear that the estimates of the contributions of humans to global warming is diminishing. Man is puny compared to Nature, even Al Gore, whose book I panned in the late 1980s.
Especially interesting are some of the “hindcast” papers, where existing models are used to reconstruct a measured past. Many are hopeless. But the whole climate debate has been run in a direction contra to the established scientific method, so it’s no surprise.
What’s more, as Jennifer knows, there is evidence from Australian temperature data that early models were rigged by selective use of the available data.
As the years go by, politicians will realise that they have been dudded by excessive special interest pleading. They will amend and revoke laws of the type that trouble Neil when they see the storm in the teacup that environmentalism really is and the trouble it causes. Ditto racist legislation.
Did I hear the PM today saying Australia would have a nuclear future? That’s a bit of a gain on the policies and words of Hawke and Keating, who held this country back for 20 years. We told them at the time that they were asses, but then they were bound to answer to their union masters who were about as wise as most of the writers to this blog.
Cheerio.
(Who was that masked man?)
Oh dear like John Howard, Geoff hasn’t gotten over black and white TV – his last rabbitting about Aussie temperatures was some issue he had from the 1980s. Yee Gods !
So there we have the dismissive pat on the head from a “born to rule” Melbourne deep blue Liberal. So nice deep royal navy blue.
As far the science method is concerned Sherrington proved last time he was a science ignoramus so I guess we’ll wait with baited breath for his next 1980s outburst in a national newspaper.
“With each new credible paper, it becomes more clear that the estimates of the contributions of humans to global warming is diminishing.” WTF ?!?
HELLO – can someone point to a serious denialist scientific paper?
“Carry on Neil old boy” “Tally-ho and keep a stiff upper lip old chap”. “As for the rest of the blog blighters they all need a jolly good flogging”. “And that’s why we need to keep the flag the same – now bugger off with you all and get a great big uranium mine up you”.
So cheerio Geoff old boy. Pip pip. Toodley flute and off you shoot.
“We have had a global impact”
Aint that a fact!
Geoff mentions those pesky models again.
In R/L we only need one reference for this debate on AGW.
Either way our answer is in the mass of ice. Rate of change today has no parallel in all human history. Any study of coastlines in say Bass Strait can tell us what happens with a slow change in sea level.
Procrastination over temperature variations here and there can show but one thing and that’s a total lack of perspective in grounding both measurements and models.
You stupid dishonest Jerk.
Of course all that stuff has happened. What do you expect when we’ve had the strongest solar activity for 1150 years.
I wanted some evidence and not for you to be a bullshit-artist.
We are talking about industrial-CO2.
You have not presented any evidence.
Lets see your evidence.
We wanted some evidence and not for you to change the subject and pull a fast one.
“Shortages are part of any functioning economic system relying on weather inputs.”
No no. Thats bullshit. Shortages are to do with a failure to have a free enterprise pricing system.
There is no such thing as a shortage when you have proper free enterprise pricing.
Get it right Luke and don’t talk nonsense.
No more bullshitting Gavin.
Lets see some evidence.
“(Who was that masked man?)”
Yowzas! The Lone Ranger has ridden off into the sunset after saving the world. I wonder if he has a sidekick Aboriginal Tonto, or is that Sambo? Watch that setting sun Geoff, you may disappear up your own proverbial. Boy! Get me my slippers!!!
Public liability may stop the DSC, most councils are scaredy cats when it comes to risk and will fence the area off with 6′ of steel if they have to sign off on the risk analysis.
How does having a free pricing system make it rain ? Are you on acid?
As far as solar is concerned. Put up one bit of evidence yourself.
For you average blog reader wondering about screams for evidence on Jen’s re climate change etc. there was a classic headline “Arctic island proof of warming crisis” yesterday on the front page of our mainstream daily the Canberra Times.
http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/display.asp?class=News&subclass=General&category=General
But see The Independent as CT have not yet posted the item on the www.
Folks I love these unbiased tip-offs (hot spots!) on the front page from people who make their living out of our daily news. Why should I respond to one or two odd balls here?
On theme, I have no objection to some people making a bit out of wilderness and heritage. In fact my background is full of instances involving individuals who wanted more people respecting their bit of bush or sea in close up. From old mills, railways, wrecks to beaches, caves, streams and islands I’ve been there looking for private tourism.
What matters most is people living in say the Cross need to know there is still an accessible bit of unspoilt bush back in the Blue Mountains or a fresh beach over the water north and south from Sydney (been there, done that too). Problem with the Cross it was full of ex pat kiwis who wanted the lot for nothing. Shifting populations create pressure anywhere.
To put that in perspective we should be asking what happens here when those beaches and estuaries get pounded away or where the shade remains after the fires knock out what’s left of the bush.
The problem lies with the title of the land, until ownership is clearly proven challenges and disputes will continue, much as it happens in nature.
Community title never works and is only a pause in the battle.
Gavin. How about coming up with some evidence. But we didn’t want evidence that some ice has melted. This is to be expected during the 20th century warm period when the sun is stronger then its been in 1150 years.
You guys are running an energy-deprivation-crusade. And you’ve become hysterical about CO2.
So we wanted something that is evidence to do with CO2 obviously you lame-brained idiot.
We wanted evidence for the likelihood of catastrophic warming. And evidence that some human-induced warming is a bad thing in a brutal and pulverising ice age. Now how many times have I repeated this phrase? So its not possible for you to have not known what it is we were after.
Failing all that you could come up with some evidence that industrial-CO2 can warm in the first place.
No more bullshit. You want to reduce CO2 emissions. Thats a stupid and unproductive goal. Total idiocy. But thats what you say you want. So obviously the evidence you tender has to have some sort of CO2 connection.
Go again you completely idiotic dishonest moron.
And this time don’t PRETEND to offer evidence and simply evade the question.
We wanted actual evidence. We weren’t interested in you being evasive.
Gavin,
“Neil’s case (regards otherwise) is about as close as we get to a storm in a tea cup on this blog.”
Geographically, perhaps, but I would rather hope that at some point in time, Australians take stock of the nature of their relationship with themselves, with each other and with the natural environment.
“When Neil convinces Jennifer that real conservation is doing something about some vast changes due to global warming and not maintaining the exclusiveness of a privileged few holed up in fancy legal property rights out in the bush, I will happily row the boat down the RH side cheering all the way.”
I make my own electricity. Not that I have any choice. Through regulation, my community has been excised from Ergon’s distribution area, to supposedly protect the rainforest from the adverse environmental impacts of reticulated electricity. It costs 30-times more than statewide equalized tariffs. If the Queensland Parliament increased equalized tariffs by 30-times to cover the cost of threat abatement, for all Queenslanders, we would have a new Parliament very quickly indeed and one that restored tariffs to their previous affordability and GHG-producing levels.
But I transgress. Like it or not, Australia nominated the area for World Heritage listing and the IUCN agreed that the nomination met all four criteria, inscribing the property on the 9th December 1988. The protection of its values henceforth bound Australia, ethically and under international law. Australia has since enacted domestic legislation in conformity, but this proposal is contradictory.
Humankind, as a whole, has a right to expect otherwise. And Australians, in particular, should expect nothing less, for not only is it their World Heritage it is also their protective responsibility.
The abrogation of this responsibility will result in the disposal of World Heritage, one storm in a teacup at a time.
Contrary to Rog’s most recent observation, World Heritage listing was supposed to ensure protection, regardless of tenure.
Who was that Sherrington bloke? He reckons that people here rabbit on about nothing in particular with no depth of experience after he has rabbited on about his paraplegic friend, burmese cats and the rare exotic plants he has brought here to make a safe haven for (like yeah, we dont already have enough exotic plants here). Whats wrong with natives? Seems to be some irony there, but he is to pompous to bloody see it. Cheerio yeah.
Neil: “but this proposal is contradictory”
Sure Neil but when in trouble with any concept in conservation I go back to our grass roots. In my way I’m still acting as a bit of custodian of that process. Some may recall the effort in getting “World Heritage” up in the first place. I for one did not write to people in high places but went straight to people where I found them, on beaches, in paddocks and on the streets then sent a ground swell towards building a better view. With the unions I failed though: that’s another story.
After your post Neil I hunted up some old b & w photos of people in our first book that survived the cutting room where several Melbourne acquaintances worked on the layout. There is a glimpse of all those youngsters frolicking in their bathers beside Maria Creek behind the embassy families I campaigned for my anonymous photographer on the big day. It seemed our creek in the wilderness was suddenly host to hundreds of water babies after dozens of plane loads landed nearby.
At the same time there was another group close by working towards UNESCO. 1972 was a big year for conservation internationally. Australia looked again at Cradle Mountain and Ayres Rock. Some went on to Frazer Island, the reef and the Daintree.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Heritage_Site
But what is World Heritage Neil? It’s only a listing and that depends so much on the babies who want to own it in future.
In the 60’s I hit on the idea that remaining wilderness we had then had to be rapidly shared via individual experience in order to protect it from exploitation from single minded development. It was about then I discovered there was hardly a good looking place on our earth that had not been trod by someone seeking a new experience. We follow in the footsteps of many at all times.
Universal sharing is the key.
Of course, Gavin, World Heritage is exactly what we make of it.
I regard it personally as a custodial honour. The bequest made in explicit terms, captures the values of the nominating generation and with respect, we honour their investment in our collective heritage and in so doing, honour ourselves.
It is in this matter that we could learn a great deal from our indigenous teachers and in this particular instance their lesson is unambiguous, “the site is sacred and it should not be turned into a common swimming hole”.
I agree that the key is universal sharing, but of the custodial responsibility, not unrestricted public access.
You keep coming back with these global warming lies gavin. As if you lying about CO2 warming everything up is going to make it true.
Now before you repeat this stupidity lets see some evidence.
Here’s my new thread on just one aspect on this incredible anti-science hoax:
http://graemebird.wordpress.com/2007/04/28/when-will-planet-earths-one-way-cooling-bias-end/
Wow Dodo-bird – dat’s a hard one. mmmm…. maybe you have us stumped there. Wow – I’m sure nobody ever thought of that.
ummmmm … who says it’s all gonna melt. You ?
ROTFL and try to get a brain !
Gavin – what pesticide does one use for serial trolls. Most pesticides attack the nervous system but we don’t have one to work with here?
P.S. Let’s start a count of how many times Boofy-bird says “evidence”.
NO LUKE.
1000 times dodging the need for evidence is not going to make the spell. You need some evidence. You don’t have any. Don’t lie and pretend you do.
A million left-wingers dodging the need for evidence one million times cannot change anything going on outside their own head in the natural world no matter how often they wish upon a star.
We need evidence from fraudsters like you and Gavin.
And in fact NONE of the land-ice can melt. The best it can do is a bit of it can blow-dry off. Some of it can flow into the ocean. But that all would be replaced in any case.
None of the land ice can hope to get even close to melting you dope. BECAUSE IT HAS TO GET TO ZERO DEGREES BEFORE IT CAN MELT.
Only that ice that flows into the sea can melt. Even if the rest of the oceans were to grow warmer. Which isn’t going to happen in any sustained way anytime soon either.
So get it right. Remember that you are an idiot. And none of your energy-deprivation-crusading confederates like James Annan or Tim Lambert or anyone else has any evidence either.
Ask them.
You will find they have none and will resent the question.
Under World Heritage the site remains the property of the country – in this case the Crown being the QLD govt. QLD govt can force the council to act within the terms of the WH agreement. Failure to do so could place QLD govt in breach and representation could be made to the UN (good luck!)
http://whc.unesco.org/en/conventiontext/
The QLD government is driving the proposal, through its DNR&W. The property is owned in part by the Crown – USL and Water Reserve, and in part by the holder of freehold title.
World Heritage binds Australia in international law and is supposedly assured through the statutory establishment of the Wet Tropics Management Authority. WTMA is inadequately resourced, administered by the QLD government and is generally regarded as a toothless tiger.
It would no doubt prevent a private-sector applicant from such a proposal on World Heritage grounds, but appears unable or unwilling to prevent the Queensland Government from doing whatever it wants.
As I said before, no proper title!
International law, without a sovereign nation called “international” to enforce the law, is good intentions only – I think the phrase is “just a chat”
Neil says “It is in this matter that we could learn a great deal from our indigenous teachers”. I agree with Neil but it should have included much more. I expect those teachers would hardly depend on a land title in their back pocket.
Re-establishing sacred sites in the name of some tradition requires considerably more re our personal motives. If it were a Japanese shrine or associated gardens we would be bothered by lack of purity in that rough jungle however IMHO it’s not the Australian way now or any time before.
It has occurred to me more than once Neil; the very supporters you need most are those perhaps unashamed young swimmers fooling about there today.
“our indigenous teachers” did not need land title to secure ownership; they used tribal law and a swift and violent punishment to transgressors to maintain order.
“1000 times dodging the need for evidence is not going to make the spell. You need some evidence. You don’t have any. Don’t lie and pretend you do.”
Graeme, no one is going to waste any time even bothering to reply to you. You have just stated quite emphatically that nothing we can say will ever be acceptable to you.
graeme
where do all of your lies come from? all the ‘evidence’ you keep putting up is self referenced or debunked aeons ago.
swearing doesnt make it scientific!
off you trot mr snake oil man!