Celebrating our Natural Heritage

An Address to the Queensland Rural Network Annual Conference
Heritage and Heroes,
Warwick, 11 September 2004

INTRODUCTION

Thank you for the opportunity to be a part of this conference, and what a great conference title and theme:  "Heritage and Heroes".

Poet Dorothea McKellar is a part of our cultural heritage, and 100 years ago she was writing about our "Natural Heritage" -- our environment.  In the poem "My Country", she wrote:

I love a sunburnt country
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of drought and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel sea,
Her beauty and her terror --
The wide brown land for me!

And the third verse:

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die --
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

In this poem, McKellar acknowledges and celebrates Australia's environment as diverse, with climate extremes -- and note that she wrote of "sweeping plains".

Her experience was of the countryside of north-west NSW around Gunnedah 100 years ago -- but when I read the poem, I think of north-west Queensland and the Mitchell Grasslands.

It is my experience that, over recent decades, environmental activists have sought to redefine what is understood by our natural heritage.  In last week's Land newspaper, Senator Bob Brown from the Australian Greens was reported as saying that his vision for Australia's agricultural landscape was one which was "evergreen, harmonious and teeming with life".

Planting trees, taking water off irrigators and being organic are considered "good for the environment".  But I will suggest that this approach has some major flaws, shows an ignorance and disregard for the bigger global issues and prevents us from celebrating our natural heritage and Australian agriculture's many significant achievements over recent decades.

In my 30 minutes I will focus in on three issues to illustrate this point:

1. I will briefly touch on tree-clearing in Queensland,
2. Then consider claims that the Murray River is dying, before
3. Looking at global population trends and the need over the next 100 years to produce more food from less land.

1. TREE-CLEARING IN QUEENSLAND

The outlawing of broad-scale tree-clearing was a key Queensland State Government election commitment.  The message from the government to farmers protesting against the new legislation has been to stop whingeing because the Government has a clear mandate.

But what if the election mandate was based on misinformation?  What if forest cover has actually been increasing in Queensland over the last decade?

I live in the marginal Brisbane seat of Indooroopilly and the propaganda on this issue in the lead-up to the Queensland Election was relentless.  The junk mail gave the very clear impression that broad-scale tree-clearing was turning Queensland into a treeless wasteland.  Indeed, this was the slogan for the media campaign driven by the Wilderness Society:  "Tree Clearing Turning Queensland into Wasteland".

Yet according to the State Government report, Land Cover Change in Queensland 1999-2001, there has been a 5 million hectares increase in the area classified as forest over the period 1992 to 2001.

Woodlands thickening and acacia forests are replacing once-open grasslands over approximately 50 million hectares of rangeland, thereby threatening grassland bird species and the productive management of our rangelands.

Interestingly, Queensland satellite data show that 26 per cent of all clearing in 2000-2001 was of land that had no trees in 1991.

Australian Aborigines were not forest dwellers.  They roamed over extensive grassland areas.  The end of Aboriginal burning and the introduction of sheep and cattle has resulted in forest encroachment beginning in the late 1800s.  Forest encroachment is well documented in the scientific literature.  It has, however, been ignored by the political process driven by activist campaigning.

2. CLAIMS THAT THE MURRAY IS DYING

"Water Dreaming" was the title of a feature in Melbourne's Age newspaper on 19 April 2003 in which Tim Flannery, director of the South Australian Museum, was reported as explaining how water is at the heart of our inability as Australians to reconcile ourselves with our land.  He also said that the Murray-Darling system is "the lifeblood of the continent" and a symbol of how we may be losing that war -- "The river is dying, trees that have been growing for 300 years are now pegging it because of the poor and declining water quality.  The loss of biodiversity in that river, the salinisation;  it is clearly unsustainable."

I came to the issue a few months later -- in July last year.  At that time, the Wentworth Group, of which Tim Flannery is a member, was asking all irrigators to give up 10 per cent of their water allocation for the "dying river".  The total amount of 1,500 gigalitres (3 Sydney Harbour equivalents) was worth approximately $1.8 billion.

The Australian Greens -- the party that may hold the balance of power in the next federal parliament -- are now asking irrigators to give up double this amount without a cost-benefit analysis or a plan or explanation as to how this will actually benefit the environment.

When I came to the issue last year, I looked for the evidence to support the claims of declining water quality, declining native fish stock and dying red gums.  I discovered junk science supporting predetermined agendas.

Last year the CSIRO Website was claiming that "salt levels are rising in almost all of the Basin's rivers." The reality is that salinity levels have reduced over the last two decades, particularly at the key site of Morgan where the levels have halved.  Morgan is just upstream from the off-takes for Adelaide's water supply.

Despite repeated claims that other water quality indicators are also deteriorating, official statistics indicate that nitrogen, phosphorus and turbidity levels are stable and generally consistent with a healthy river system in the context of inland Australia.

Red gum forests in Victoria and New South Wales are generally healthy.  Indeed, the largest forests are recognized as internationally significant wetlands because of their high biodiversity and because they regularly support very large colonies of water birds.

Despite propaganda that dryland salinity and rising water tables are destroying agriculture and the environment in the Murray-Darling Basin, the region celebrated a record wheat harvest last summer.

Murray cod was listed as vulnerable to extinction in July last year on the basis there had been a 30 per cent decline in numbers over the last 50 years.  The Australian newspaper ran a story titled, "For cod's sake, Murray needs stronger flow" (July 5, 2003).  But there are no data to support the claims of declining Murray cod numbers.

The most widely quoted source on native fish status in the Murray-Darling Basin is a 1995-96 NSW Fisheries survey.  The report's principal conclusions include the statement that:  "A telling indication of the condition of rivers in the Murray region was the fact that, despite intensive fishing with the most efficient types of sampling gear for a total of 220 person-days over a two-year period in 20 randomly chosen Murray-region sites, not a single Murray cod ...was caught."

A local Murray River fisherman's retort to the scientist's declaration that they caught no fish goes something along the lines, "The scientists, although having letters behind their names, spending some $2million on gear, and 2 years trying, evidently still can't fish."

In short, in the same regions at the same time that the scientists could catch not a single Murray cod, the commercial harvest was 26 tonnes.

The Environmental scientist sector is currently operating well below the standards of accountability that have been established and are enforced for other sectors.

Metropolitan Australia gets upset about "children overboard" and WMD -- but turns a blind eye when it comes to whopping lies from environmental activists.

3. FEEDING THE WORLD

The world's population has doubled over the last 40 years.  Renowned environmentalist Paul Ehrlich predicted in 1968 that, as a consequence of the rapidly increasing population numbers, "The battle to feed all of humanity is over.  In the 1970s the world will undergo famines -- hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death."

This didn't happen.  The world's farmers managed with the help of technology -- fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation and new varieties -- to produce twice the amount of grain and oil seed from the same area of land.  We now feed twice the number of people from essentially the same land area, 1.5 billion hectares.

The UN predicts that population will grow by another 3 billion and start to plateau at about 9 billion by 2050.  So we have about 3 billion more mouths to feed and bodies to clothe over the next 50 years.  That is a lot of people;  2.98 billion more than the current population of Australia.  Furthermore, people in the developing world are getting richer and eating better -- in particular, more meat and dairy.

The significant growth in demand for food because there are more people, and also because they are eating better, will put intense pressure on the world's natural resources over the next 50 years.

People who really care about the environment should be looking to back efficient farmers -- farmers who can produce a lot of food from the smallest area and with the least amount of water and pesticide.  Thinking globally and acting locally, environmentalists should be looking to back the world's most efficient farmers.

On a tonnes per hectare basis, Australian producers have long reigned supreme.

But I don't know how often I have heard members of our supposedly educated elite say "but we simply shouldn't grow rice and cotton and sugar in Australia because we don't have the water".  Yet according to the World Resource Institute, Australia has 51,000 litres of available water per capita per day.  This is one of the highest levels in the world, after Russia and Iceland, and well ahead of countries such as Indonesia (33,540), the United States (24,000), China (6,000) and the United Kingdom (only 3,000 litres per capita per day).

Furthermore, according to the Federal Government's Australian Water Resources Assessment 2000, we divert only five per cent of the average annual national runoff.  So, effectively, 95 per cent of the rain that falls in Australia is for the environment.

We cultivate approximately 6 per cent of the land area of Australia to crops and sown pasture and this area has remained stable since the early 1980s.

So we:

1. Use 6 per cent of our land mass,
2. Less than 5 per cent of the rainfall that falls in an average year,
3. Have the most efficient farmers from a production perspective in terms of tonnes per hectare and water use efficiency.

And yet everyone seems determined to take water and land off our farmers!

Australia contributed approximately 14 per cent of the wheat traded globally last financial year.  Rice production in the Murray-Darling Basin over the last 10 years was enough to feed almost 40 million people a meal each day, every day of the year.

Interestingly, most of our primary industries are concentrated in southern Australia.  Not because this is where we have most suitable land or water -- most water falls across northern Australia and there are fertile flood plains in the north -- but because most water infrastructure has been developed in the south.

The Murray-Darling Basin covers 14 per cent of the land mass of Australia and produces 41 per cent of the national output from rural industries.

I don't necessarily want to see any more land cultivated or any more water infrastructure developed, so I say let's back our efficient and sustainable producers where we already have the infrastructure.

Don't keep insisting they give up water allocation -- just because it makes those with narcissistic tendencies feel more righteous.

IN SUMMARY

Some months ago, I gave a lecture to university environmental science students on the "Burden of Proof in the Environment Sphere".  My key message was that proof or evidence appears to be increasingly unnecessary as scientists increasingly operate on the basis of belief.

Evidence is information establishing fact.  Belief is trust and acceptance of a received theology.  It is the latter -- acceptance of the belief system that underpins environmental fundamentalism -- which is increasingly underpinning public policy decision-making in Australia.

I have noted that while environmental campaigners often express great concern over a problem, they often also seem deeply committed to the continued existence of the same problem.

Theirs is a pessimistic mindset and a determination to preach doom and gloom regardless of the real state of the environment.

There is a need to reject this approach.  If we walk around with our eyes wide closed to the facts of the matter we risk bumping into things and falling down flights of stairs.  We risk wasting time and effort on phantom issues while real and pressing problems go ignored.

Boxing at shadows can be exhausting -- and it achieves nothing.

We need to start acknowledging that we really do have a lot to celebrate.

1. Australian agriculture has the smallest footprint in the world and therefore is arguably the most environmentally friendly -- in terms of both yield per hectare and megalitre of water per tonne of product.
2. The hard data, the evidence, indicates that key environmental indicators show general improvement.  Australian agriculture is generally reducing, not increasing, its impact on the Australian landscape.  Forest cover is actually increasing in both Queensland and nationally.  Water quality is generally improving, including in the Murray.  There have been no species extinctions for over 20 years and Koala numbers are increasing to such an extent that the Victorian government is developing a hormone-based contraception control plan.
3. There is an economic opportunity and a moral obligation on Australian farmers to stay efficient as the world's population both increases and gets richer, seeking more resource-intensive food.

We need modern high yielding agriculture, including biotechnology.  Biotechnology/GM food crops offer the next big potential efficiency gains and pesticide saving -- yet our pseudo-environmentalists are even rallying against this.

In Australia, only the cotton industry has access to biotechnology because the first GM cotton variety was introduced before the Greenpeace anti-GM campaign.  The campaigners conveniently ignore cotton as a source of home-grown GM vegetable oil -- so they can invoke the precautionary principle.

In Sydney last year, Greenpeace re-launched its True Food Guide.  The big names of the Australian food scene attended the launch where Margaret Fulton declared that she hoped to keep Australia free from GM food and thus our food "safe to eat for my children, grand children and great grandchildren".  Never mind that the takeaway down-the-road was probably selling fish and chips cooked in cotton seed oil.

IN CONCLUSION

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of drought and flooding rains,

And I salute Australian farmers, and farmers all over the world, for the progress they have made since Dorethea McKellar penned "My Country" in 1904.

Their history, our history, has mostly been one of continuous improvement.  Sure, mistakes have been made and environmental disasters have happened.  But they have mostly now been fixed or are being fixed.  The evidence is clear -- key environmental indicators are trending in the right direction.

I also salute the technologists.  The plant breeders and irrigation specialists and developers of herbicides -- that have freed us from the burden of manually weeding the fields.  Thanks to modern high yielding agriculture we now have a capacity to produce double the amount of food from the same area of land.  This means we can feed the world while protecting wild places -- our natural heritage.

Farmers and technologists -- you are my heroes.

Thank you.