Is science disappearing from the Aunty? What is with the ABC and Science these days? The latest reporter to join Catalyst is supposed to be worth listening to because she wrote a book on being green, not because she has strong scientific credentials. The award-winning natural history department has been closed down. The last one left is the New Inventors, so how long before it gets axed? Creation scientists and polluters must be dancing with happiness.
GetUp saved the forests! You might have thought that the change of heart by Gunns on native forest logging was a victory for Tasmanian community groups who have fought hard against the Tamar Valley pulp mill, say, or anti-logging groups that have protested for years, often at risk of physical harm, against logging. Or for the Greens, perhaps, who have led staunch opposition to old-growth logging for a generation in Tasmania. Or for the Gunns 20 group who fought a savage assault on free speech by the company.
Well, you’d be wrong. In fact, it was GetUp that achieved this great victory. On Sunday afternoon GetUp sent an email to members saying: “After years of fighting to protect Tasmania’s precious old growth forests we’ve finally convinced Gunns to get out of the business of native forest logging… We’ve mobilised shareholders and customers to influence the ANZ bank and scare off all other Australian banks from financing a destructive pulp mill. GetUp members like you then took the fight to the world’s biggest financial markets with ads in European and Asian newspapers.”
Only “our partners”, the Wilderness Society and Environment Tasmania, got a look-in for credit as well. “This victory,” GetUp triumphantly concludes, “has proved that when we mobilise in numbers, we can demand far more from unsustainable Australian companies.” And GetUp wonders why, despite its achievements, it is so widely derided…
Tony Abbott, circa 1977. It’s amazing what you find in the Sydney University archives…
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