Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Greenpeace Needs a New Campaign

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Greenpeace has been running a kept Australia GE free campaign for some time. The campaign should have got a boost over the last couple of weeks with findings of minuscule, but detectable quantities, of GM material in Australian canola. The material was first found in Victoria and more recently in WA. For some background on the origin of the GM material see a previous blog post here at https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/000741.html .

Greenpeace campaigner Jeremy Tager is claiming,

This is the most serious genetic contamination event that Australia has ever faced, … and the response from State Governments in the coming days will determine their commitment to upholding Australia’s GE free status.

But the reality is that while Greenpeace through their campaigning managed to get state governments to ban the commercial planting of GM canola in Australia, we are importing and eating a range of GM foods from overseas including canola – and of course there is the vegetable oil from locally grown GM cotton (cotton seed oil).

On Sunday Robyn Williams (ABC Radio, Ockham’s Razor) interviewed Craig Cormick from Biotechnology Australia who had the following comments,

According to the supermarket chains, although they are often on the receiving end of anti-GM campaigns about their foods, there has been little to no diminution in sales of those foods that are labelled as containing GM ingredients.

Could this be put down to consumers simply not being able to find the fact that the food has a GM ingredient on the label? Perhaps. But at the deli counter in Woolworth’s, all across Australia, there are usually two or three types of sliced chicken loaf that is clearly labelled ‘contains genetically modified soy’ on a plastic label, standing up by the meat. It is clear and prominent, and I make it a habit of always asking the person in the deli, wherever I travel, whether anybody comments or complains about the GM ingredients. Invariably I’m met with a blank look and the response that nobody seems fussed about it.

The complete transcript is here http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1430804.htm .

I reckon Greenpeace really needs a new campaign.

On Politics (Part 1)

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I am amazed at how many comments on this web-log prove at least the first part of the following proposition:

The left think the right are evil, and the right think the left are dumb.

People with such a narrow world view really should get out and about a bit more.

ACF supports Tassie Farmers

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“…food miles is a measure of how far food travels – from paddock to plate – and is an indication of how environmentally-friendly it is. Food freight – especially by air and road – consumes fuel and energy, and releases greenhouse pollution, affecting the global climate.”

And, so, according to the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) we should support the Tasmanian farmers in their campaign for country-of-origin labeling and buy Australian made, see http://www.acfonline.org.au/asp/pages/document.asp?IdDoc=2443 .

This seems to me like a rather superficial measure of the environmental friendliness of a food.

What about efficiency of land use measured in terms of tonnes per hectare of product? Condition of the soil resource? Quality of water in adjacent rivers and streams?

Robert Manne’s New Book

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Robert Manne has edited a new book titled ‘Do Not Disturb: Is the Media Failing Australia’ that includes a chapter titled ‘Murdoch and the Culture War’ by David McKnight.

Manne’s book is due out later this week but I did get to see a copy of the McKnight chapter today.

It focuses on The Australian newspaper and its purportedly special and amicable relationship with ‘right wing’ think tanks the CIS and IPA.

The analysis suggests McKnight has spent some time doing a content and author analysis of the Opinion pages of The Australian and also what is published in the IPA Review and Quadrant magazine.

While I work for the IPA I have not had such a good run in The Australian. Aspects of my ‘relationship’ with The Australian are explained in the piece I wrote for Quadrant magazine published in December 2004
http://www.quadrant.org.au/php/author_letter_list.php?author_id=393 .

McKnight must have seen this piece. I wonder if he read it? It does not support the general thesis of his chapter.

Perhaps he saw it as an exception to the rule? But even ‘exceptions’ can provide real insights.

While I haven’t been able to find anything about the new book on the internet (yet), McKnight did publish something by a similar title a few years ago,
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~abr/Feb04/McKnight.htm .

This piece, while significantly different to the new chapter, has a similar theme and begins,

Rupert Murdoch founded The Australian in 1964 as a bold statement of his belief that this country needed a quality national daily newspaper. His action was based on a nation-building vision that he shared with the leader of the Country Party, John McEwen, who deeply influenced him at that time.

For twenty years, The Australian lost money, a strange anomaly in the life of its ruthlessly commercial owner. In a 1994 address to the free-market think tank, the Centre for Independent Studies, Murdoch mentioned these losses but argued that some things were more important than short-term profits – ideas in society. He went on to quote John Maynard Keynes’s famous lines about the significance of political and philosophical ideas to men who regarded themselves as supremely practical. In the media business, ‘we are all ruled by ideas’, Murdoch added.

Superimposing Climate Data on a Fish

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American meteorologist George Taylor has done a review of the ‘Arctic Climate Impact Assessment’ for the Marshall Institute. Taylor has an interest in correlations and finding ‘matches’. This is what artic temperatures back to 1880 look like superimposed on a fish, specifically the black sea bass:

fish in climate data.jpeg

Read the full report at http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/309.pdf . The fish can be found on page 33 and in figure 38. There is some discussion of the famous hockey stick on page 32.

Supreme Court Decision on Coroner Maria Doogan

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The IPA held a conference in March 2003 about the lessons to be learnt from the 2003 bushfires which destroyed over 3 million hectares including three quarters of Kosciuszko National Park.

This was just before I started with the IPA and so I didn’t get to hear what Phil Cheney, one of three invited experts, had to say.

According to the summary as published in the IPA Review key messages included failure of land managers to follow established scientific principles as a result of green politics, see http://www.ipa.org.au/publications/publisting_detail.asp?pubid=198 .

The summary concludes that “there is little doubt that the management of Australia’s parks, forests and other public lands will come under greater scrutiny as a result of the horrific fires of 2003.”

This was the hope of many ordinary Australian who live in rural and regional Australia when Coroner Maria Doogan began hearing evidence on October 7th 2003. The inquiry had been established by Jon Stanhope, the Chief Minister and Attorney-General of the ACT.

Then the inquiry was closed down by the same government, on the basis of ‘apprehended bias’ on the part of Coroner Maria Doogan.

Michael Duffy summarized the situation in a piece titled ‘The firing line’ published in the SMH on 23rd May, see
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/The-firing-line/2005/05/22/1116700595179.html .

Yesterday Justice Crispin of the ACT Supreme Court handed down a long judgement dismissing the application from the ACT government.

The judgement is a fascinating read and includes much comment about the views of Phil Cheney, http://www.courts.act.gov.au/supreme/judgments/doogan1.htm .

And page 33 of 69 (paragraph 92) includes:

An apprehension of bias may easily arise when, as appears to have occurred in this case, a judicial officer has been led to believe that an expert witness has been independently appointed to assist the court when, in fact, he or she has been engaged by the ACT Government and that entity has also been granted leave to be represented as an interested party to the proceedings. It may be understandable that departmental officers accustomed to treating courts as a sub-branch of their department may have failed to appreciate the impression that could be created in this manner. However, s 59 of the Act was clearly intended to permit coroners to engage investigators who would be independent of any of the interested parties, and whose opinions could not therefore be called into question on the grounds that they may have been influenced by competing loyalties. A lay observer could well become apprehensive on learning that a coroner had treated a person as an independent investigator when, in fact, he or she had been engaged by one of the interested parties.

Despite Mr Burnside’s able submissions to the contrary, this was clearly a matter of potential concern in the present case and, if the evidence given by Mr Cheney and Mr Roche had generally favoured the ACT Government, a finding of apprehended bias may well have been inescapable. However, that was not the case. On the contrary, Mr Tracey’s submissions clearly reflected concern that aspects of their evidence was critical of Government employees and/or agencies. It is true, of course, that a party who has engaged experts may itself come to feel that it has suffered from subconscious bias due to them “bending over backwards” to be fair, but it will, of course, have been largely responsible for the situation that has led to any such psychological inclination. In any event, Mr Tracey did not raise any such contention. Nor did it lie comfortably with the ACT Government that, having created a situation of potential conflict, it then sought to complain of it.

The next really interesting read should be Coroner Maria Doogan’s final report – given she can now hopefully get on with the job of writing it.