Going Native: Living in The Australian Environment

Reviewed by Margaret Setter

NB. THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN ALTERED TO CORRECT ERRORS
REFERRED TO BY BOB BEALE

BOOK REVIEW Going Native: Living in The Australian Environment By Michael Archer and Bob Beale ISBN 0733615228 Publishers:  Hodder Headline Australia Pty. Ltd., Sydney 2000. Website: www.hha.com.au

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INTRODUCTION: THE PROBLEM STATED

Going Native is a collaborative effort between Michael Archer, Dean of Biological Sciences University of New South Wales, and journalist Bob Beale. A fascinating book in many ways, it contains a wealth of factual material about the ever-changing ecology of Australia, ranging from its distant past as part of the larger continent of Gondwana to the present time.

The stated aim of the book is to educate the reader about Australia's geological, biological and cultural past so that we may preserve our fauna, soil and water resources and sustain the life-support systems of the land and surrounding seas.

Archer and Beale identify what they regard as the most important problem facing Australia as a developed nation. This is population growth - 'the uncontrolled, rapid growth of the world's poor' and its increasing but 'unplanned demands'. The authors argue that Australia has a special responsibility to meet the basic needs of the world's poor and to provide them with 'all the elements of a western-based diet'. (They simply assume this, taking it for granted that a western based diet is what the 'world's poor' really desire.)

The preface outlines a beguiling picture of an Australian childhood: Long carefree days spent 'chasing barefoot after frogs, climbing trees, gazing at the clouds'; a childhood that prepared them for their role in adult life, founded on their mutual 'love' of the natural world and our unique Australian native wildlife. The book claims to provide answers to the problem of protecting this nostalgic vision of Australian childhood as it used to be while meeting the challenge of rapidly evolving technological change.

We must 'rediscover old ways and kindle new ways of thinking about nature and natural resources, its vast wealth of minerals beneath the ground and the living things Australia enjoys in such abundance'. It will entail a kind of 'slow' revolution, involving 'every aspect of our personal and public lives, including tax regimes and corporate decision-making processes'.

Their proposals add up to what has been described elsewhere as 'natural capitalism', a new Industrial Revolution, where natural capital (natural resources and natural ecosystem services) are factored into the design of new industries based on biological models, with closed loops and no avoidable waste. The industries most beneficial to the Australian economy and those most likely to survive, will be those which satisfy their customers' needs, increase profits, and help solve environmental problems – 'all at the same time'.

To take advantage of this revolution in technology we must 'identify and institute legal recognition of new forms of property rights'. 'We must break the institutional gridlock that binds how we manage landscape, water, air, biodiversity and our industries and communities." (This general approach has been applied in India, a process Vandana Shiva describes as 'the enclosure of the biological commons'; what was once considered common property belonging to the people will be up for sale to the highest bidder. In Australia this could lead to the privatization of natural resources owned and harvested by Australian Aborigines.

For example, in chapter 6 we are told Aborigines had traditionally used smokebush, a member of the banksias family of plants, for healing. In 1981 the WA government granted the US National Cancer Institute a licence to collect native plants, which were sent to the US to be held in storage. In the late 1980s it was discovered that smokebush was one of only four such plants found to contain the active compound conocurovone, which lab tests showed could destroy the HIV virus in low concentrations. (Prior Aboriginal discovery of the plant's healing properties having gone virtually unacknowledged.)

The authors appeal to Australian nationalism, referring to the 'public outcry' that has resulted when Australian companies and popular brand names have 'gone offshore', for example, Kraft's Vegemite. It seems the authors are numbered among a majority of Australians who are unaware that a US multinational conglomerate has owned the rights to this iconic product for the greater part of my lifespan of 70 years.

In a globalised economy any assertion of economic nationalism is in contradiction with the market-based strategies aimed at solving systemic economic problems. The reader is asked to consider why there have been no 'howls of indignation' over our failure to 'capitalise on or protect our very own natural resource', kangaroo meat. 'This tasty, free-range, low fat, low cholesterol, disease-free, high-protein and environmentally superior as it is, 'still battles' for a respected place at the dinner table'.

So there it is in a nutshell. Irrespective of the authors' long-term objectives regarding the ecologically sustainable use of native resources, the most likely result would be for the kangaroo industry to aggressively pursue the expansion of an industry condemned by many as unsustainable, of little or no economic benefit to Australia, and one which inflicts great stress and suffering on kangaroos, the iconic symbol of Australia, second only to the United States' Statue of Liberty in public recognition.

'Sustainable harvesting' of kangaroos is a contradiction in terms. It is both controversial and deeply problematic for mainstream environmentalists and totally unacceptable to animal liberationists such as myself.

Dr Timothy Doyle, an environmental scientist, states this model of 'green economics,' with its concept of 'sustainable development' has seen the 'gutting of much national and state-based environmental protection agencies in recent times' . Doyle asks when institutional and other barriers to farming kangaroos and wildlife on private property are removed, 'is there any guarantee that foreign investors will place sustainability before profitability.

SOME FACTS ABOUT THE COMMERCIAL KILLING OF KANGAROOS

Archer and Beale claim the kangaroo industry is highly regulated when in fact mere 'guesstimates' form the basis for annual kill quotas. The Voluntary Code of Practice stipulates that kangaroos must be killed with a single shot to the head. However, this is a voluntary code. Supposing it were otherwise, kangaroos would continue to be shot in the mouth, limbs, or stomach by unsupervised weary shooters in outback areas. Little or no monitoring or policing in the field, or at the point of kill, is undertaken.

The Code of Practice does not acknowledge the fate of uncounted young-at-foot orphaned joeys, thousands of whom are left to fend for themselves. Dependent on the mother, these young, terrified kangaroos perish from starvation, exposure and predation.

In-pouch joeys fare no better. They are seized from their mothers' pouches, their brains dashed out either by being bashed against a tree trunk, bludgeoned with an iron pipe, or crushed underfoot. Although the authors protest their abhorrence of any form of cruelty to animals, they seem silent about the cruelty that is an intrinsic, unalterable part of the kangaroo killing industry.

The Animal Rights position is dismissed (page 140) as "a movement of the mind generated by a few individuals who, in our view, were profoundly detached from the natural world". On the contrary, Peter Singer's book Animal Liberation, was an ethical response based on empirical knowledge of the horrors of intensive animal husbandry. On page 144 we find the assertion, "many others before us have pointed out the seriously misleading and frequently dishonest nature of these claims, referring not to Singer, but anonymous activists apparently pushing some weird agenda of their own.

For example, they claim that in 1986 a German film director staged a kangaroo hunt with the intention of bringing the kangaroo industry into disrepute, actively encouraged by an 'animal liberationist film group'. They claim a German Court jailed him for four years for fraud in 2001. "This bizarre fabrication was then used ( by animal activists) to persuade British supermarkets that they should not stock kangaroo meat".

Thinking to check the veracity of this report I did a search and found two possible sources. One happened to be the website of the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia. The second came from a webpage dated December 23, 1996. A journalist named Michael Born was sentenced to four years jail on 17 counts of fraud in the German town of Koblenz. Born was convicted for the "selling of bogus documentaries, featuring "staging racist gatherings, cat shootings, drug smuggling and bomb-making operations – but I could not find any mention of a 2001 conviction for producing a bogus kangaroo documentary.

The truth is kangaroo harvesting is not and never has been, a sustainable industry. Quite apart from the cruelty involved, this industry can never play a part in feeding the world's poor. In any case, widespread hunger and malnutrition is not a technical problem. It is a political and social issue of the greatest magnitude. People go hungry, not so much from a shortage of available food, but because oppressive social structures keep them too poor to purchase what should be their shares in the present abundant food supplies.

Archer and Beale state, 'Australia currently produces primary produce to provide a balanced 'Western" diet for 80 million people –more than four times what Australia's present population needs'. The actual market to be tapped is the burgeoning middle class in the developing world. It is this affluent stratum of society, not the village poor of the countryside, who are leading the push toward a meat-based diet that is the norm in affluent western countries.

Let me paraphrase this example (beginning page 189) discussing potential markets for Australia's 250 species of native crayfish. Australian Aquaculture is barely tapping this market. Archer and Beale cite a recent study showing that the 'best performing yabbies' grow twice as fast as the slowest-growing population. Many individual male yabbies in this best performing class have tails – the desirable meaty bit – significantly larger than others. 'Tail size and growth rate are both under genetic control'. It should be possible with selective breeding to develop large-tailed, fast growing yabbies.

Scientists at the West Australian Department of Fisheries have experimented with crayfish from across the continent and have discovered that when two different species from New South Wales and Victoria are crossed, the resulting hybrid 'produces sterile, all-male offspring'. Export markets beckon with the promise of thousands of tonnes of yabbies per year, 'with the added advantage that foreign competitors will not be able to breed from the male to develop rival markets'. Surely this is no way for Australia to fulfil its moral obligation to feed the poor?

BUSH TUCKER, VEGETARIANISM AND WOMEN'S WORK

Chapter 9, titled Wild Solutions, contains interesting information pertaining to the cultivation of native plant-based foods. Like most people, until I read this book I was barely aware of the huge range of edible seeds, fruits and nuts cultivated for thousands of years by our indigenous people.

The list is truly amazing. From the seeds of some wattles the aborigines produce flour with a staggering 26% protein. (compare meat with its 18%). CSIRO scientists have helped native peoples in places like the African Sahel where famine is an ever-present threat. This is to be applauded. If we are to feed the world, our aim should be to live low on the food chain – thus freeing up resources that could be used to feed the world's poor, not cattle forced to endure appalling conditions in barren feedlots.

While careful to give recognition to Peter Singer's 'carefully reasoned' arguments, the authors claim there is no reason why we should become vegetarians, 'because it poses difficulties in achieving a balanced diet'.

This is nonsense. It is a failure of imagination not to conceive of a vegetarian diet that is just as varied and interesting as one based on animal products. For thousands of years, women, including Aboriginal Australians, have provided up to 80% of human nutritional needs in their role as gatherers or agriculturalists.

What third-world women require is secure land rights and guaranteed access to capital free of masculine control, if they are to fulfil their traditional role as food providers. This is not to argue that people in the developing world should not enjoy the fruits of technology. Rather, any fair person should agree that affluent westerners must take stock of their own wasteful consumption patterns. The real challenge for those of us living in advanced capitalists economies is how to do so without precipitating a catastrophic depression.

In my opinion, Archer and Beale are selling a version of environmentalism to the farming community, influenced by the rhetoric of biotech companies seeking new paths for growth. They appear to be sold on the likely benefits of genetic engineering. They also "share the concerns" of scientists "about the backlash in developed nations against genetically modified organisms". "It has become a blanket opposition produced by some radicals with a fervour we recognize well from our own dealings with creationists and animal liberationists".

While animal liberationists as a group take no stand either on creationism or atheism as such, we do 'fervently' oppose any procedures involving the violation of the bodily integrity of any sentient being. So far the production of transgenic animals has proved a tragic farce for its unwilling victims. Genetic engineering rarely if ever involves any net benefit for the animal concerned, but rather pushes its productive capacity, already dangerously extended, beyond the point the animal can endure before breaking down. As such it constitutes a wretched science without ethics.

The issues concerning the human-animal relationship, about changing the object-status of non human nature generally, are complex and ongoing, calling for honest, informed, dialogue and debate. This book contains much information of interest but it is based on a top-down view of society, hostile to any opposition coming from an informed public. As such it is a challenge to us all to keep working for a better world. Another world is possible.

Bob Beale Doesn't Like Our Review Read Bob Beale's Emails to Abolitionist-Online

Margaret Setter's Response Read Margaret Setter's Response to Bob Beale