What can we do?
Cartoon by Tandberg, The Age, 4 March 2008.
The Mornington Leader newspaper has run a series of in depth articles on the massive turmoil heralded by this Bay project. Perhaps people who have ‘turned a blind eye’ on the supposition that this is just ‘maintenance dredging’ will begin to think about this event horizon. There are letters and reports from people from around the Bay.
Bay of Dregs: Wes Hosking, Mornington Leader
Experts respond: Is the bund safe? Wes Hosking
There have been numerous issues confronting the people of Victoria and locally groups have formed and been active in their protests and voicing their displeasure through the media.
Due process has been followed: most have pinned their hopes on the ‘new vision’ emerging from the new Federal Government with regards to focussed concern on climate change and the need for Australia to consider Environment and Health.
Whether the concern be the Pulp Mill in Tassie; the glamour, money driven ideas of developers,; the greed and self interest of lobby groups; the m,ost unwise introduction of GM crops; or for us here, the health of the Bay, the same core issues arise:
How do we en masse – grasp the opportunity to think carefully and wisely about mankind’s rampant destruction of what is irreplacable?
What can we do in a society that is still only superficially democratic when money and power are at stake?
I ask these questions sincerely – I do not know the answers.
I have some concerns with the poisoning of the Bay that are not even raised in debates or environmental plans:
1. Sea mists: These come and go through all seasons. If most of the carcinogenic and poisonous elements actually become more powerful when smaller particles, then these (like mercury and DDT) will become part of the ‘fresh air’ which is one of the Bay’s marvellous gifts as a huge carbon and regenerative sink.
2. Earth changes: We are blessed (so far) by not worrying too much about tectonic plate shifts here in Southern Victoria. We are bombarded by storms, King Tides and the churning of the Bay and ‘unseasonable’ weather. Predicatability of the planetary state and previously reliable patterns and behaviour is becoming an intuitive art. Science is based on ‘what is known’ and we are entering a period (how long?) of more of the ‘unknown’.
3. Selective expertise: People hear so many different ’expert’ opinions and advice that they resort easily to a parental/child relationship and prefer to trust the Government and Corporate worlds rather than think for themselves. In this, the ‘blind eye’ is created and normal senses: sight, smell, touch, feeling and hearing are muted.
4. Trust: I have lived in Melbourne all of 50 + years and throughout those decades, the Port of Melbourne has not been renowned for its fairness, transparency, honesty and integrity. This concerns me deeply. To discover now, the extent to which the MCC and the State Governments (and until recently – the Bayside Councils) have been happily complicit in an arrangement involving the health and welfare of an entire Bay and marine sanctuary – with the POMc – is disturbing. That this arrangement will be long term (20 years) and is already explicitly unco-operative and disrespectful of many enterprises, people and nature – is betrayal. It betrays us now: the Bay, the marine world, the lovers of this seaside lifestyle and the future generations of Melbourne.
There are so many good ideas out there: the recent SBS Insight program revealed in both its program and the letters on the site following the broadcast, that there is much we can do – now. All it takes is will and a shared vision.
Australia is a young nation – we must accept that we have much to do and that we will not be settled as a nation and and a cultural lifestyle until we adapt harmoniously to the environment and climate of this land. Wherever I have travelled overseas – this one factor is evident: the climate and environment determines the peoples, cultures and human creations. If we destroy the nature and land that nurtures and feeds us, then we must start again … and again … and again.