May I answer Wendy Logan in today’s Age:
Our values are “mine it, log it, drill for it, crush, truck
and export it; then die in a pile of nuclear waste
and streams of leaking underground carbon gas”.
Forestry lies, superannuation-fired bankruptcies
and the likes of Professor David Lindenmayer –
stop ignoring the values of remnant rainforest
in southwest VIC – as you have for how many years?
Otway hippies and terrorised locals were vilified
by most professionals except Dr Norman Sanders.
We were gaoled, our lives were threatened.
Shame on “educated” and middle class values.
Perhaps one day even the good doctor Dr Bob Brown
will see Immature plantations are good for erosion
and piles of matchsticks. Beware central Victoria!
It takes hundreds of years before mature trees
can shelter threatened critters in trunks and hollows
not 85; or the scant 25 this filthy industry allows;
not to mention erosion, rot and bloody bulldozers.
We didn’t get decent roads before National Parks
stepped in, and now they’ve closed our waterfall.
I am sure Australia was saved from virus by its size
and meagre population, not a politician.
Forests and fish have long been squandered.
Rainforest in poor West Papua is being savaged today
By our neighbour and “friend” Indonesia.
Tourism, capitalism and racism do not lie together
at peace in the same bed.
It takes more than economy to make a nation,
but you can’t sell bloodied cake and eat it too.
Wake up Australia; revisit your values quickly
And those of you “friends and neighbours”
before the clock ticks much longer.