Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for June 20, 2012

After Gina Rhinehart Buys Fairfax

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‘The hilarious implication – and secret terror of every Melbourne hipster – is that Rinehart will turn Fairfax into some kind of 24-hour Mining Channel, with endless re-runs of Red Dog and Wake in Fright, interspersed with ads for blue singlets. You won’t be able to so much as pick up a copy of the Age without finding your hands stained red with dust, as you search in vain for a single article that isn’t about the Hancock family, while averting your eyes from the topless pictures of Andrew Bolt on page 3. 

I don’t know about you, but given the uniformly mindless dross scraped up, warmed over, rehashed and then served as ideological bubble-and-squeak on the ABC (even drizzled with its jus of self-righteousness and dark-green sea foam), I long for alternatives. In fact, I long for the much-anticipated sale of the ABC under the most enthusiastic sort of Liberal government, and dismantled by an equally enthusiastic Mark Latham. During the Renaissance, it was the independently filthy rich – the oligarchs, bankers and popes – who sponsored the finest artists of the age. Let a new Renaissance bloom at the touch of button 2 on the remote: I hope Rinehart buys the entire Fairfax group, and then casts hungry eyes on the ABC itself…

Read more here: http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2012/06/one-woman-army

From ‘One-woman Army’ by Philippa Martyr
Published at Quadrant Online on June 20, 2012

Alan Jones, About the Murray’s Mouth

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Hi Alan

Re: How to Keep the Sea Mouth of the Murray River Open

I was sent a podcast from your broadcast on 2GB Sydney radio this morning talking about the Lower Lakes and the barrages (Alan Jones on 2GB on June 20, 2012). Great to hear you put the Water Minister Tony Burke straight on a few issues including explaining to him that taking water from farmers/irrigators won’t stop drought! It was also nice to be quoted by you.

You might like to also consider quoting the famous British explorer Charles Sturt who wrote in about 1840:

“Australian rivers fall rapidly from the mountains in which they originate into a level and extremely depressed country; having weak and inconsiderable sources, and being almost wholly unaided by tributaries of any kind; they naturally fail before they reach the coast, and exhaust themselves in marshes or lakes; or reach it so weakened as to be unable to preserve clear or navigable mouths, or to remove the sand banks that the tide throws up before them.”

In fact, the Murray River often ran strong in spring and summer, but by autumn had slowed and then a southwesterly wind would pick up and the sea would pour in. So, the Lower Lakes, that the Minister now wants to keep permanently fresh, were often brackish and during prolonged drought, full of seawater.

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