Don Henry ("We're no joyless mob") claims that the Australian Conservation Foundation is not against economic growth. He says the ACF wants growth that makes use of less land, water and energy. In other words he favours planned growth in areas that he and his apparatchiks prefer rather than development that responds to consumer wishes. Such central planning failed in the former communist countries even though those countries did not carry the additional ACF favoured handicap of substituting basket weaving for aluminum smelting. To re-align the economy into the ACF mould would mean a massive lift in taxation of energy, water and land use with considerable economic disruption and gradual impoverishment.
Mr Henry repeats the canard that the FTA with the US will give US corporations special privileges. In fact one of the only areas of change is in strengthening the copyright laws. Most would argue this is an unjustifiable bonus to artists, but it is a measure for which the President of the ACF, Peter Garrett, has campaigned.
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