The Greening of Australia

Good evening and Welcome to the Ninth Lesson of term number three of my television training. In this term, I will share my progress with a birthday spectacular. You’ll agree I’ve presented a number of creative and entertaining programs. Tonight is no exception. Tonight!! The greening of Australia.. 2000’s answer to the Green revolution. Where is it heading? Can we afford it? Can we afford not to have it?

Ten minutes is definitely not enough time to seriously discuss a topic as complex, vitally important and at times controversial as the environment, so I have decided to spend the first five minutes or so discussing important environmental issues, and the last five minutes being completely flippant.

The Australian Environment is one of the most diverse and fascinating in the world. It is also one of the most fragile. The extremes of climate and landscape have created incredible biodiversity as plants and animals adapted to the conditions, but it has also meant that upsetting the balance in any way can bring devastating results.

I might mention at this point that we cannot isolate Australia in the big environmental picture. The whole planet is a fragile system, of which Australia is but a small part. Global industrialisation has seriously affected the entire biosphere in ways our scientists are still struggling to comprehend, and struggling even more to not only guess the long term impact of our folly, but to figure out how we can do anything to fix the problems and bring the world back into balance.

The problem as I see it is that life on earth has evolved into something so incredibly interdependent that all things affect all others in an ingenious dance of life no human or group of humans could even conceive, let alone duplicate, yet humans, as just one of the millions of species - have evolved enough to think that they can control and manipulate nature for their own gain. Unfortunately, that gain is measured in years and dollars, but the biological clock of planet earth is measured in millions of years and sheer expression of the life force. The environment is being destroyed by bad decision-making, short-term greed and the inability of those in power to even come close to understanding what they are messing with.

Lets look at some of the problems facing our environment. – And the biggest threat of all is literally in our own back yards, or front yards… yes, our own gardens. Domestic gardening and domestic animals are threatening to choke whatever natural biodiversity is left in Australia, and around the world.

Lantana was introduced as a popular garden flower because it was so pretty and grew very fast. The Lantana loved the Australian Climate and now chokes millions of hectares across the land.

Privett is a weed that is threatening pockets of remnant rain forest that environmentalists are trying to preserve. These tiny patches are literally surrounded by invading privett and require constant vigilance to weed out the plant. Privett was introduced and sold by nurseries as a hardy little garden hedge.

Vines such as Climbing Asparagus, Madeira Vine and Cats Claw Creeper are winding their way through forests everywhere. They look great on your lattice-work down the side of your house, but they are totally transforming the biological mix of our land. Bogainvillia and Cocos palms are yet two more weeds running rampant through our countryside.

Many years ago, the Department of education in its wisdom, recommended the planting of Camphor Laurel trees as great shade providers for the kids in the playground. Little did they know that these trees seed prolifically and birds love to eat the seeds, but don’t break them down when they digest them, so they excrete them all over the land wherever they fly. Camphor laurels are big, fast-growing and changing our entire landscape. They have no natural enemy, so the only way to control them is to manually kill them. A massive task.

Coffee plantations are becoming profitable little enterprises in Australia, but the coffee plant is very hardy and loves low light conditions, so they are taking over the under-growth of our great rainforests.

By far the most ridiculous of all policies regarding domestic impact on the environment would have to be the “protection” of native animals. The government decided that our animals are so precious that noone is allowed to own one or keep one as a pet without a special permit. So what does everyone own… dogs and cats and foreign birds! Instead of supporting native wildlife, this policy has created a massive population of exotic creatures, while the native animal populations slowly dwindle away to extinction. If people were allowed to keep bilbies and Quolls, wallabies and wombats, we’d all be a lot better off. They are cute, friendly, can be trained, and if they escape into the wild… great! That’s where they belong!

Like I said earlier, these problems are just too big to comprehend. The impact is unquantifiable, and the solutions uncertain, making it almost impossible for governments to draw up appropriate laws. Past attempts to correct problems of species domination have had very mixed results. The cane toad is an obvious failure, yet other trials have succeeded very well. In the 1880’s the Australian Cottony Cushion Scale Insect brought the Californian Orange Industry to its knees, but another Aussie insect, The Vadalia Ladybird, came to the rescue, with great success. Yes our Aussie critters are stirring things up overseas as well.

The problem for governments formulating policies is, that because data and data projection is so inaccurate, it is very easy for big companies to pay scientists to prove that the impact of their activities is not so bad, and can even be beneficial for the environment. The logging industry is constantly telling us what a great service they are doing to the country by logging rainforests, planting rapidly re-growing trees, AND creating new jobs. The government was recently convinced to allow green house gas emissions to INCREASE by 8%, even though the world’s scientists agree we need to REDUCE them by about 25%.

Fortunately, the more we become aware, and the more the People of Australia and the world realise the importance of environmental sustainability and bio-diversity, the more likely it is that governments and industry will “do the right thing”, so to speak. Already, the sustainable energy industry in NSW is growing at 25%, more that IT and tourism, and if we get smart and manufacture environmentally friendly products, we can improve our economy and save the world at the same time. Imagine if Australia became a world leader in cheap and clean transport, we could potentially sell a billion cars around the world – even at 20,000 each – that’s 20 trillion dollars! When you add composting toilets, solar cells, portable safe housing for third world countries, renewable fuel such as hemp oil or rape seed oil, we could be the richest country in the world AND help everyone else get out of the vortex of environmental destruction that we are all sucked into by greed, ignorance and corruption. The greening of Australia Could mean the Greening of the entire world.

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To discuss this issue tonight, I have with me ___________ and _____________

What do you think is the most important environmental issue?

How environmentally conscious are you in your day-to-day activity? How many times a day do you think about it? How many things do you do about it?

What do you think of Australians keeping native animals as pets instead of cats and dogs?

Genetic Engineering is in the headline a lot lately. Do you think we are smart enough to know how to responsibly handle this subject, after all it can do great things, but it can also created great harm…

Thank you for your participation in this discussion. The environment is the very thing that created and sustains us. It deserves pride of place in our list of priorities, both on a personal, a national and a global scale. For without it, we are nothing.

Please allow me now to introduce the highly respected and renown Australian bushman, environmentalist and raconteur, Harry “Cobber” Malone, as I ask him for his view on the Australian Environment. Harry?

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G’day, yeah, well you city slickers, you’re not out there, out in the bush, hackin’ away at the undergrowth. You don’t know what it’s like, and I can tell yous - it’s a jungle out there, well, it used to be a jungle until our great pioneers, the sheep and cattle farmers, the wheat and sugar cane growers did the right thing and cleared the bloody lot of it. If you want yer bloody nips and yer bloody krauts and bloody wogs to spend their bloody eco-dollars in Australia, there’s plenty enough left for em up in croc country – up in Northern Queensland, but for Christs sake leave the rest of our bloody country to those of us who know the bloody land and know what we’re bloody doing. We cleared the bloody lot with our own two hands so as yous’d all have a bloody wool industry and a bloody meat industry. If yous think yous can do a bloody bettyer job with yer bloody wanker scientists, and yer poofta environmentalists, and yer dole bludger greenies and yer bloody dope smoking do-gooder bloody wowsers and fairies and all yer bloody fancy computers and bloody genital mutation, I’ll shove yous all into me bloody sheep dip, stick a cattle prod up yer bloody date and tell yous all to go to buggery!! Stuff yous ALL!!!

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Thank you Cobber, wise words in this time of great controversy of the future of our planet. Perhaps we have been overreacting a little, and maybe we do need to revert to the old ways. To discuss this issue further, it gives me great pleasure to introduce Paul Wilkins, environmental activist and head of the Greening America Movement, currently on a lecture tour in Australia …. Paul??

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Man…. How green can you get, man… look at this… man that’s green. Hydroponics.. it’s the wave of the future, dude. You know, if we all had a hydro set up in the roof, man, or like in the shed, like, we’d all be totally over the problem… *cough* or at least we wouldn’t give a damn, and let nature take it’s course.

Hemp is the magic weed, dude, god gave us hemp for fuel, for clothes, man, rope, sails, soap, medicine, man the American greenback was made of the stuff. You know, that’s where they got the name from - if you gave someone a bag of pot, and they never paid you for it, you’d say hey, gimme my green-back man. Cough…… hehehehe

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Thanks Paul, very enlightening – I never looked things quite in that way before. I thought I would ask Mr Average, the man in the street, Accountant James Whittington could you suggest any ways to make Australia more green?

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Picking nose… funny loook…

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Ah yeah, thanks for that….

Finally tonight, to get a perspective of the overseas viewpoint, I have with me legendary singer, activist and popular icon, Ziggy Tosh. Ziggy, how do you see Australia’s approach to our environment from your perspective?

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You be not be understand me the basic of the problem mon. In Jamaica, we be dancing in the streets to the reggae music mon, be making the power of Jah to changing the people, mon. To be changing the people, you be changing the land, man, with the revolution to the white man’s oppression to the throwing of the acid on the faces of the soldiers of the queen, man. We be working the voodoo, working the magic.. I have the power man, to be wipe you off the face of the earth man. Peace…..

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O……… K… then. Alright… I think I understand your point. Thank you for your enlightening views.

I’d like to thank all my guests tonight for their contribution to this most important of topics – the Greening Of Australia.

We no longer have the Tasmanian Tiger and countless other species of animals and birds native to the Australian Continent. How long before the Koala disappears?? Until next week, this is Stefan Sojka, wishing you Good night!!!