Perseus : I can see from Bill Burrows article that there is a plausible case in favour of allowing the clearing of some regrowth areas given the evidence that much of it has resulted from the suppression of fire since Europeans displaced the aboriginal population.

If you are able to read Chapter 1 of "Collapse" which concerns Montana, as state of the US, with ecological problems simiar to that of Australia, you will see that Jared Diamond is also aware of the problem of the thickening of vegetation:

"On the other hand, the public also dislikes the proposals for forest thinning programs that could make the forests less flammable, because people prefer beautiful views of dense forests, they object to 'unnatural interference' with nature, they want to leave the forest in a 'natural' condition, and they certainly don't want to pay for the thinning with increased taxes. They fail to understand that western forests are already in a highly unnatural condition, as a result of a century of fire supression, logging and sheep grazing. (p 46)"

However, there remains a political risk that the pendulum might swing back towards open slather clearing which would would be clearly unacceptable. The bottom line is that farmers, or any other social group, must not be allowed, in pursuit of their own economic interests, to destroy the fragile ecology of this continent upon which we all depend. Our Governments must have the right to act on our behalf to prevent this. If it is true that, at the moment, they are more strict than what is absolutely necessary for the preservation of a healthy environment, then that can be changed.

We should also question economic justifications for permitting the more damaging farming pracices. Bill Burrows states that "selective thinning of thickening vegetation ... is uneconomic."

If certain modes of agriculture cannot be made economic without causing irreparable harm to our environment, then they should be abandoned.

Your last para, Daggett, almost gets to the point. The precautionary principle only applies in cases of serious or irreparable harm. You and your kind have assumed that any intervention by man is not only harm but, serious and irreparable harm. This is not the case and doubly so when the character, scale, intensity and significance of an activity is grossly exaggerated.

How can the clearing of regrowth and thickenning amount to irreparable harm when the very existence of regrowth is unambiguous evidence to the contrary.

And on the question of economics, it seems the urban community is more than willing to export local manufacturing jobs to low wage economies in the interests of consumer benefit by cheaper products. But the same community will not have a bar of importing low wage workers into the bush to carry out the numerous ecological works that could be done but cannot currently be done at domestic wage rates. These are jobs that currently do not exist but they should exist and the only way they can exist is with a system of temporary guest workers. We cannot use Mexican illegals like our major competitor.

"And you tell me, over and over and over again, my friend", (as the song goes) that we must be economically viable in an international economy, and meet high environmental standards that urbanites need not meet themselves, but we are denied the labour market flexibility that would make it all possible.

Ecological sustainability is a lot like fighting for King and country. Few were able to argue against such a widely accepted ideal but many soon found that there was a big difference between the high ideal and getting butchered by incompetent boofheads. Plus ca change.....

Perseus wrote; “The inescapable conclusion is that a measure that has been implemented to deal with a grossly exaggerated problem can be nothing else but a disproportionate response to the real situation. And a disproportionate response can be nothing else but an unreasonable response to the circumstances. And when such unreasonable responses are enshrined in policy and law it can be nothing else but injustice and persecution”

We have the most total disagreement here.

The bottom line of this regulatory approach is to strike a reasonable balance between productivity and conservation. It is also very strongly in the interest of long-term productivity to protect environmental values. It affects people unevenly - this is where compensation is really vital, and where the Federal government should have come to the party right from the start. But, if they had, the Act would have been implemented much sooner in all probability, which would have meant much less ‘panic’ clearing and many more disaffected landholders. Many landholders have said, and not so quietly; “thankyou Mr Beatty for giving us the opportunity to clear all that we wanted to before the restrictions came in”. A few landholders have actually said things to me like; “you think Beatty has been heavy-handed on tree-clearing? Bah! He was responsible for enormous clearing rates before the Act came in”.

The Beatty Government could have brought in the new restrictions quickly and with minimum publicity. They could have ended broadacre clearing, straight-up. Afterall, this notion has been around for a long time and every landholder in the state knew of the potential for easy land-clearing to very quickly be curtailed. Instead, everyone got all the warning in the world.

Alternatively, the government could have done nothing, allowing massive clearing rates to continue, making it necessary for a subsequent government to deal with. The whole environment would have been much more degraded by then, and sympathy for green in issues stronger. Consequently, restrictions would probably have been more severe and less fairly apportioned. Or they could have implemented some pissy token effort, with the same results.

More next posting

Continued from last posting

The government could have struck a more balanced approach between productivity and nature conservation. Rather than regional ecosystems having to be 90% cleared before it came under category of Endangered and 70% under Of Concern, they could very easily have said that there will be no more clearing of any REs that have reached 50% remnant. Also, the rules for regrowth coming back to remnant under the Act, ie 70% original height and 50% original cover, could very easily have been 50/50, with no requirement for the canopy composition to be the same.

The notion that thickening can be traded off against clearing is entirely a productivity point of view. But from an ecological point of view, both are negatives. The fact that thickening has occurred very extensively in Queensland should not for one moment lessen the fact that the massive clearing rates needed to be curtailed. A fair and reasonable balance has been struck – there is provision for treatment of thickening.

Yes, this is uneconomic for some landholders, but then so is the treatment of regrowth, weeds, soil erosion, maintenance and building of fences, dams, etc.. for some landholders. Saying that thinning is uneconomic for some, as Bill Burrows has, is to pull out one economic factor in isolation. We could just as easily look at the other side of the coin; clearing or thinning or sewing with buffel is unviable for the plants and animals of that community.

Grappling with the perspectives is difficult. It is one thing to have some knowledge of the whole business and be able to quote lots of stats, but it is another thing entirely to gain a realistic perspective. I have spoken to hundreds of landholders, at length, about all of this. But no one seems to have as much difficulty with perspective as Perseus.

In conclusion, the issue is nothing like a “grossly exaggerated problem” and neither is the response to it.

You continue to refer to massive clearing rates when the governments own data shows that half of it was pasture maintenance and another quarter was only partial clearing, leaving woodland habitat intact.

And I seem to recall that there was already $100m on the table back in the mid 90's to compensate for the endangered 10% vegetation. That is, there was an admission of state responsibility to compensate. To then take it to a total ban but with the same old $100m on the table and blame the feds for not pitching in, is pure political spin.

A balance between an exaggerated problem and an actual farmers right cannot be anything but an imbalance. And contrary to what Beattie, former Minister Robinson and all the culpable officers concerned would like to see, this issue will not go away. Every farmer will look out from his back step as he puts his boots on in the morning and takes them off each night and see the evidence of malgovernance before him.

And somewhere, sometime, the class action will kick in and we will have the final say on Beattie's place in history. Don't you worry about that.

Perseus, you have gone off on some interesting tangents and also have erected, and successfully demolished, a number of straw men.

Why would you presume that I favour the export of manufacturing jobs? I have already lost at least one job as a result of such decisions made by selfish short-sighted investors, and my current job is not secure, either. Of course, some privileged sectors of our society do well out of this, and, I would add, a few not-so-privileged sectors as well, but by losing all of our manufacturing skills we will only become dependent on other countries, and in the longer term, we will all become much poorer.

You advocate the importation of low-wage workers, to do the work you seem to think Australians either should not, or would not, want to do.

What kind of solution is that? Would you then have them deported again, or would they remain, but as some kind of second class citizens, or would they eventually be allowed the same rights as existing Australians?

The biggest challenge we face is to somehow find a way to get this largely dry and infertile continent to support it's 20,000,000 inhabitants when we no longer can use cheap fossil energy to enhance our soils's productivity. Increasing our population will only make an already bad situation worse.

We must, as a national community make the necessary sacrifices.

We must do similarly to what President Roosevelt did in the 1930's, that is, put to work restoring our environment, the hundreds of thousands now out of work, or who are working in menial social useless occupations such as telemarketing or junk mail delivery.

They must be paid decently so that they don't suffer inordinately from performing this urgently necessary task. The necessary taxes should be raised from the rest of society, regardless of the inevitable loud indignation that will come from 'small government' ideologues.