|
July 15, 2003
I see that Gareth Parker supports those, such as science blogger Aaron Oakley, who characterise the environmental movement as fanatical and as having abandoned science and reason. Gareth's position is that green policies encourage reactionary and backward looking governments to adopt anti-development policies.
This anti-green position that denies its opponents any form of rationality has great insight. Its has depth. It opens up new ways of looking at national politics. It helps us to understand what eludes us in terms of public policy.
Why, it was only the other day when I was in Canberra that I heard John Howard the Prime Minister talking about green policies on water and salinity. The big plan was announced with much fanfare, and water reform has now become a central part of the Howard Government's third term agenda.
And it was only last night on national television that I saw John Anderson, the Deputy Prime Minister, saying that the Murray-Darling Basin needed environmental protection and water reform.
As I understand it, John Anderson has been placed in charge of water reform. And big things are expected of him. I hear around the traps----the corridor gossip you know--- that John will deliver before he retires to the farm. It's an obligation thing he has with the nation.
I have to admit that I never had considered the Howard Government to be reactionary, backward looking, fanatical and abandoning science and reason.
But there you go. Its a new perspective on conservative politics.
No doubt we can expect dire consequences from the imposition of the forthcoming anti-development policies on irrigators. Make no mistake folks. Its dire. It will leave the country sterile and bankrupt, with no future for us. If the Howard Government continues on its current path of ill-considered and irrational decisions, then Australia will be exporting people soon. Our destiny, it seems, is to become a banana republic.
|
eeeeww...I'm not sure the US wants a 51st state that's akin to a banana republic.