by Shana Thu May 05, 2011 10:00 am
It's such an easy thing to say no. It is one of our smallest words but no has the ability to stop everything happening.In
The West Australian yesterday, Environs Kimberley board member Howard
Pedersen spoke for the small band of greenies committed to saying no to
anything that looks like substantial agricultural development in the Top
End, which was the thrust of the Rudd Government's recent Northern
Australia Land and Water Taskforce report he sought to defend.Mr
Pedersen sneeringly refers to people who advocate the north as an
irrigated food bowl as "water dreamers" while pointing out that many
scientists believe that the Murray-Darling river system, which helps
produce 60 per cent of Australia's food, is doomed.If he's right about the Murray-Darling, then it's actually an argument in favour of developing the north, not the contrary.It just demands land care practices which avoid the mistakes of the past.If
a drying climate in the south of Australia does limit the productivity
of our traditional agricultural land, we will need to find a replacement
somewhere or start relying even more on importing our food. I wonder if Mr Pedersen had C. Y. O'Connor in mind when he was dismissing water dreamers. Or Sir John Forrest.Those two dreamers created Mundaring Weir and the Kalgoorlie water pipeline against plenty of opposition.Those
projects changed the economics of WA from a mendicant State to a
resources powerhouse and charted the course for our present prosperity. Too easily we forget the mindset and efforts of these "dreamers" who didn't stop just because some people said no.
do you like the place where you live?