neil

Queensland’s Proposed Iconic Legislation

September 1, 2007 By neil

In August 2007, the Queensland Government introduced legislation to bring about forced amalgamations of many local governments in Queensland.

Extensive argument was responded to by Premier Beattie, who proposed the introduction of ‘iconic legislation’ to afford protection to the particular characteristics of distinctive places, particularly from the councils-to-be-subsumed of Noosa and Douglas.

One month has been offered (from mid August 2007) for stakeholders to suggest the form and intent of the legislation prior to the government commencing to draft the legislation. It will then be introduced into parliament in late October/early November 2007 and brought into effect by 15 March 2008, prior to Council elections.

‘Iconic’ has been described as including areas of state or national significance, areas of historical significance, areas of unique natural environment and World Heritage areas like the Reef, Daintree & Sandy Straits. It may be an area where development growth is restrained and sustainability is more important than growth.

The stated intent of the proposed legislation is to give the force of state law to already existing planning schemes in environmentally significant and important areas, to ensure those planning schemes now have more grunt and the clout to ensure icons are even more protected, to allow appropriate development to continue but with the new laws, planning schemes in these areas become more powerful than ever.

I can only imagine that the underlying motive of this exercise is to extract political capital from the illusion of parliamentary concern. In the Daintree, for example, World Heritage is already quarantined from development. The Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage is enabled domestically under the provisions of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984. Queensland’s Wet Tropics World Heritage Protection and Management Act 1993, provides statutory authority to ensure Australia’s international obligations, as defined within the World Heritage Convention, are met. The Integrated Planning Act 1997 provides another level of protection and local government is utterly subordinate to state interests in the adoption of planning scheme amendments.

Tasmanian Forests – The Wildcard in Australian Politics (Part 2)

August 29, 2007 By neil

According to Caroline Overington from The Australian, political aspirant Geoffrey Cousins’ inspiration is attributed to The Monthly’s Out of Control – The tragedy of Tasmania’s forests, by Richard Flanagan.

It is certainly a powerful lot of words that draw heavily on reader-environmentalism. Reference to Tasmania mortgaging its future to the woodchipping industry, reminded me of a contrary allegation from the Prime Minister in 2005, who described his offence to the idea that the extreme greens have a mortgage on concern and compassion for the forests or for the environment of this country.

No doubt there is as much cynicism from both sides of the debate, but in this mounting electoral issue: of national conservation significance versus state economic opportunity, Australia will be further divided unless political integrity prevails.

In matters such as these there is no doubt that corruption represents the greatest obstacle to the achievement of political propriety. Whether the iconic forests of Tasmania are quarantined from logging or their availability for woodchipping is secured, federal and state intervention is vulnerable to corruption without:
• the effective integration of economic and environmental considerations;
• maintaining or enhancing the productivity of environmental assets, as well as their health and diversity,
• ensuring that environmental actions are cost-effective and not disproportionate to the significance of identified problems, and
• ensuring that consumer pricing is consistent with the full life cycle costs of providing environmental goods and services.

The evolutionary power of persuasion

August 26, 2007 By neil

Why would a fungus want or need to create light? According to the Wet Tropics Management Authority, no one knows why many species use bioluminescence, but across its incredible evolutionary history, in circumstances of such windlessness, the fungi would appear to have adapted through mimicry of the flightless, female firefly. The fungus emits an indistinguishable light from an identical chemical reaction to lure the male firefly into making contact, who then carries the spores throughout the forest on his journey ahead.

Why is the flower of the bottlebrush orchid (Dendrobium smilliae) so attractive to green tree ants (Oecophilla smaragdina)?

In an ABC news article by Dani Cooper, Anne Gaskett (a PhD student from Macquarie University in Sydney) offers some interesting insight:

Ms Gaskett used a spectrometer to analyse the colours of a female wasp of the species whose males pollinate five species of native tongue orchid.

Taking into account factors including the background colour, ambient light and colour range of the male wasp’s receptors, she found the orchid replicates almost exactly the colours of the female orchid dupe wasp. She has also found ‘hidden shapes’ that feel like a female wasp to the male, including ‘love handles’ the male wasp grip onto while mating.

Perhaps the prominent dark-green glossy aspects of the bottlebrush orchid present an irresistible abdominal similarity to the ants.

The Great “Illegal” Logging Swindle

August 22, 2007 By neil

In a note from Gavin, attention is drawn to Tim Curtin and The Great “Illegal” Logging Swindle.

It appears that the primary issue concerns the propriety of Australia’s (and other OECD countries including USA and UK) criteria for establishing the ‘illegality’ of import logging.

Australia’s Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation (Senator, the Hon. Eric Abetz), relies largely upon its commissioned Jaakko Pöyry Report (JPC), which ranks source countries of Australia’s timber products, first by Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (TICPI) and then by its own assessment of their governance and managment capacity (GMC).

JPC deems the total timber exports to Australia, from countries with high TICPI and medium or low GMC, as illegal or at best “suspicious”.

Under its own environmental policies, Australia has acknowledged that to achieve sustainable economic development, there is a need for a country’s international competitiveness to be maintained and enhanced in an environmentally sound manner. Unfortunately, there exists no compliance requirement to its own Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment and as a consequence there is often no accountability.