The Antarctic Treaty, strongly supported by Australia, envisaged the pristine, white continent as being used for strictly peaceful purposes for all of humanity. When pressure was brought to bear by a number of countries, among them the US, for a minerals convention to be signed to allow access to the huge resources potential of the Antarctic, and with even the Department of Foreign Affairs in favour, this was seen by many to be undermining the treaty and was strongly resisted by conservation organisations, including Greenpeace and the ACF.
A handful of campaigners, among them Lyn Goldsworthy and Jim Barnes, formed the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition to raise awareness of the threats to the Antarctic. They were so few in number it is said they had their first meetings squeezed around a kitchen table. Their efforts paid off as the issue gained more prominence, helped by the famous French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, who was pressuring his government not to agree to a minerals convention at the same time as Bob Hawke was being lobbied in Australia.
Success, as the saying goes, has many fathers. Hawke deserves credit for persuading President François Mitterrand and the French government, led by Prime Minister Michel Rocard, to join with Australia and refuse to sign up to the convention. If one of the founding signatories to the Antarctic Treaty opted out of the convention, this meant that it was dead in the water. The federal Coalition in Australia had signalled that it, too, was opposed to the planned convention.
Yet it is unlikely Hawke would have been so emboldened had it not been for the efforts of the early movers who got the campaign off the ground. From the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition to the Greenpeace activists, who at one stage set up a base camp in the Antarctic, to the persistent ACF staff, who relentlessly badgered the bureaucrats who sat in the negotiation process, everyone played a part. In the final stages, Phillip Toyne’s role was crucial. At a key juncture, when it seemed that Australia was retreating and Hawke was convinced he couldn’t get a decision across the line, Toyne pulled a rabbit out of the hat. With the assistance of Hawke’s environment adviser, Craig Emerson, who later served in the Gillard cabinet, he managed to get in to see the prime minister and show him a short film (excerpts from a Four Corners episode), narrated by ABC science broadcaster Robyn Williams, which illustrated Antarctica’s phenomenal beauty. The pictures were worth 10,000 words and more.
Around the same time, Hawke and his wife Hazel had invited our family over to Kirribilli House—the prime minister’s Sydney residence—for lunch. It was a rare opportunity to get in the prime minister’s ear at a critical time and turned out to be a visit we would never forget—for reasons that had nothing to do with politics.
We’d dressed smart casual for the occasion and were greeted at the door by Hawke himself, in shorts, bare feet and a sports shirt—only in Australia.
It was a glorious Saturday afternoon with the harbour at its shimmering best, but Hawke, a keen punter, was constantly checking the racing guide as I tried to steer the conversation to the environment. I’d brought a boom box with me and insisted on playing ‘Antarctica’, an Oils track that had been worked up late and ended the Blue Sky Mining album. It was a haunting, softer piece, featuring the refrain ‘There must be one place left in the world’. Get it, Bob? I don’t claim the song made any difference to the eventual decision, but it was certainly a full-court press.
Along with a few members of the prime minister’s family, we went across to the swimming pool at Admiralty House, next door, to continue the discussions. A lilo was floating in the pool and while everyone was chatting, May, aged two and a half, toppled in without anyone noticing, and was floating underneath the lilo out of sight. It must have happened in seconds; we later speculated that she may have tried to step on it and fallen in.
There was a sudden shout as Hawke’s son-in-law, Matt Dillon, who’d spied Maysie sinking, leapt fully clothed into the pool and fished her out. We held our bedraggled bundle of joy upside down as water poured out of her nose and mouth. Mercifully, she was breathing again in seconds. It was a heart-stopping moment, and recalling it still gives me the shakes. Doris and I are eternally grateful for Matt’s quick action, and whenever I’ve found myself around a swimming pool with kids since then I can’t relax.
There was a happy outcome for the Antarctic, too. Hawke, along with Rocard, held the line, and with Australia and France in lockstep for the time being at least, the frozen continent, like the northern reaches of Jervis Bay, was safe.
The resulting agreement, called the Madrid Protocol, commits nations to ensure the environmental protection of the continent. This is consistent with the original vision, very much driven by Australia, that the Antarctic remain a natural reserve devoted to peace and science. The Antarctic occupies a unique place in global ecosystems. It is the canary in the coalmine in relation to atmospheric changes, where the evidence of increased levels of carbon dioxide, as well as radioactive decay from nuclear testing, can be detected and measured. As global sea temperatures increase, the disintegration of West Antarctica glaciers makes the rise of the sea level inevitable. The only question is, by how much?
Unfortunately, there has been increasing activity by nations that do not necessarily share the goals of the Antarctic Treaty, nor respect the territorial claims of Australia. A number of countries, notably India and China, have increased their Antarctic programs—in China’s case, erecting a number of research stations, as well as a weather station that sits on the highest peak in Antarctica, located within the Australian Antarctic Territory. This creeping utilisation of a resource that Australia, along with other claimant countries, holds in trust for the rest of the world carries the possibility of the base being used not only for research—the single legitimate purpose under existing Antarctic Treaty law—but also for communications which, in the future, may have a military purpose.
The pronounced role of the Chinese is an issue I took exception to as a government minister, as the record should show in twenty years, when the cabinet papers are released. I remain convinced China is playing a double game: paying lip service to the treaty, but working to maximise its access to the Antarctic’s minerals. Recent talks aimed at creating marine protected areas were not supported by Russia or China, and Ukraine has openly canvassed the minerals promise that the Antarctic holds.
The arrival of new entrants onto the Antarctic stage has coincided with Australia in some instances playing down its involvement, and an overall levelling out of research activities. It is imperative that we commit sufficient resources and increased diplomatic effort to make sure the founding principles of the Antarctic Treaty System and Australia’s early and sovereign interests are preserved.
…
The backstory to the rush of environment issues onto the national political stage lies partly in the collision between unfettered economic growth and nature, and partly in the collisions of cultures—European and Indigenous—played out as the white settlers adapted to the physical character of Australia.
Unbeknown to the settlers, the park-like appearance of much of eastern Australia that featured in many early colonial paintings was the result of active large-scale landscape management by Aboriginal people, who lived directly off the land, carefully modifying the vegetation mix with the judicious use of fire. European Australians were slow to awaken to the reality that Terra Australis was far removed from their mother country not only in distance, but in every other way imaginable.
Not only is it hotter than hell at times, but the local trees breathe fire and most don’t appear to produce any edible fruit. The rivers run all over the place, sometimes in flood, more often dry. In many places the soil is thin and, with much tree cover removed, easily blown away. Rocky escarpments, arid plains and vast deserts make up much of the continent, and regular droughts continue to take their toll—and there will be monster dries ahead. Notwithstanding that, eco-ignorant politicians still talk about drought-proofing the country.
In their desire to harvest the riches that this new continent
offered—gold, wool and wheat, and numerous minerals—the newcomers to the country engaged in some practices that trashed the land. I’d seen some of this degradation from the road and the air as Midnight Oil sped from city to city. On closer examination, the facts were depressing: a substantial decline in native species, the disappearance of wetlands, spreading dryland salinity—all evidence that the early path chosen was often the wrong one.
Living near the coast, and buffered from the harshness of the inland climate, many people had only a limited idea of the scale of problems faced on the other side of the Great Dividing Range, and benumbed farmers pressed on. It was only due to repeated ringing of the alarm bell by scientists, environmentalists and occasionally individual farmers that the rural community and political parties started to take seriously the parlous condition of many agricultural landscapes.
For an organisation like the ACF, aware of the havoc that farming practices like intensive land clearing had caused to the habitat of native plants and animals, a positive relationship with the rural sector was desirable, and fortunately, the stars were coming into alignment. Like the ACF with Phillip Toyne, the peak farmers’ organisation, the National Farmers’ Federation (NFF), had appointed a new executive director, Rick Farley. Farley had grown up in northern New South Wales and had been a hippie in his youth; importantly, he was open to breaking old paradigms. The two young directors hit it off and managed to persuade their organisations to work in the face of mounting evidence that across the country things were crook.
This alliance meant ignoring the city–country divide. I’d spent some time on rural properties while still at school and felt at ease with people who made their living on the land. In our first tentative meeting, NFF president Graham Blight and I found plenty to talk about. Later I was able to develop constructive relationships with Ian Donges, a rangy wheat and sheep farmer, when he was elected president, and then Peter Corish, a cotton grower from New South Wales, throughout the 1990s decade of Landcare.
This national decade of Landcare was a partnership between farmers and conservationists, the first time such a partnership had been forged in Australia, if not the world. After intense negotiations, the NFF and the ACF agreed on steps to repair the waterways and landscapes by seeking significant government investment, based on best-practice principles, to achieve a healthier environment and ensure the future of agriculture. Allied with increasing support from government came a more developed ethic of caring for the land, utilising not only the government’s resources but also volunteers as local Landcare groups were established.
Previously, the two groups had had an antagonistic relationship, and the likelihood of either securing big sums to fix degraded lands, let alone agree on the priorities, was slim. Now, standing together, it was win-win: with the farmers’ close links to the Coalition and the environmentalists’ links to Labor, the bipartisan push was impossible for governments to resist.
As is often the case, setting aside old preconceptions was the biggest barrier to change; the main obstacles were not political or financial, but cultural. Farley and his president needed to bring a very conservative organisation to the table, many of whose members had contempt for ‘city slickers’ and saw environmentalists as the enemy.
Correspondingly, Phillip and I had to persuade the ACF’s council to agree to a partnership with a section of society that was partly responsible for the very problems ACF had been arguing for years needed fixing. Getting senior government figures and the media on side proved easy; getting the council to agree to the new partnership less so. But following numerous meetings, discussions and phone calls, agreement was reached inside the organisation and the program was launched with great fanfare by the Hawke government in 1989.
There was always a sizeable rump in the farming sector that was resistant to change. While they were willing to accept additional investment on their farms, self-interest ruled as they invariably opposed those measures that restricted them in any way, such as caveats against the clearing of native bush from their properties. This remains a sore point today when conservative state governments relax existing native-vegetation controls, despite the weight of scientific evidence showing that such measures are necessary to slow the decline in our biodiversity, the full suite of plant and animal species.
The large-scale problems that the Landcare program sought to address required big money. At one stage, the estimate ran to nearly $4 billion at a time when the health budget was $24 billion and defence about $18 billion. Protection of river frontages, plantations for salinity management, fencing for remnant vegetation, environmental flows for stressed rivers—all these measures come at a cost. But while repairing damaged natural ecosystems costs money, doing nothing comes at a greater cost, one that increases over time. At some point we needed to start investing in the environmental health of the country, and Landcare, with its well-articulated plan of repair and recovery, was the down payment.
Landcare was mainly confined to the south-east and south-west of the country, where landscape change had been greatest and the problems were most acute. It wasn’t so long ago that farmers had been paid to chop down trees to clear their properties, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that around 40 per cent of our forest cover has gone. When John Oxley explored the inland rivers of New South Wales in the early days of colonisation, flocks of waterbirds blocked the sun, and lagoons abounded with fish and fowl. Now, nearly every waterway in south-eastern Australia is in poor health.
Yet across the north, from Cape York to the Kimberley, rivers run free, there is plenty of clean water, and there are big stretches of country still in good shape. On my increasingly frequent visits to the Top End, I was struck that here was an opportunity to do things differently. I wasn’t alone in thinking this way. In the north, European populations were sparse and while there was never any shortage of plans to develop the region—a constant ever since pastoralists and miners moved in from the south and were trotted out with increasing frequency by governments of all persuasions—surely, by working closely with local communities, who knew the land intimately, the mistakes of the past, so evident down south, could be avoided. It was exciting to think that we didn’t always have to follow the same script, that previously untried ideas and outcomes were possible in this extraordinary part of Australia. This was a project that really started my engine, and one to which I would try to devote more time as the months and years unfolded.
…
The ingrained habits from old Europe were in clear view at Sydney Cove, the site of first occupation, where the direction was set early.
Chosen on account of its sheltered anchorage and supplies of fresh water, the site hosted the colony’s first dwellings clustered along the little Tank Stream that flowed into the harbour at Sydney Cove, now Circular Quay. In no time it became an open sewer as soldiers and convicts alike threw their rubbish, and shat, into the stream.
So rapid was the Tank Stream’s demise, that despite successive governors issuing laws to punish the polluters, it became a major source of illness in the fledgling settlement. Finally, in the 1830s, Governor Macquarie prohibited its use and instructed that water be sourced from the nearby lakes and Botany Bay swamps. The stream of precious water that flowed falteringly down to the ‘finest harbour in the world’, as British officers proudly asserted, had lasted less than fifty years.
Fast-forward 150 years and, with 12 million people living on or near the Australian coast, history was repeating itself on an industrial scale. Now, huge pipes carrying untreated sewage were pumping the muck straight into the ocean. It was lazy engineering and negligent in its failure to take account of the impact on ocean ecology.
I was one of thousands angered and puzzled that I had to swim through turds and rubbish at our much-loved beaches, especially if I’d ducked down to Manly on a day when the wind was blowing onshore. Even the apolitical surfing community decided they’d had enough, and the rumble of discontent quickly built to turn back the tide.
&nb
sp; So began the marches and concerts organised by People Opposed to Ocean Outfalls (naturally enough called POOO), joined by local environment groups and a new organisation, the Surfrider Foundation Australia, supported by a few of the big names in surfing at the time like Mark Richards, Wayne ‘Rabbit’ Bartholomew and Nat Young.
I’d first come across Nat when I inadvertently dropped in on a wave he was carving up when I was bodysurfing at North Narrabeen. He was a former world champion with the nickname Animal, and didn’t take too kindly to this breach of surfing protocol, particularly from a lowest-of-the-low body basher. Despite a few heated words, with neither of us giving much ground, we became friends.
Nat Young wanted to give the surfing community a louder public voice, and get the beaches cleaned up in the process, and soon after our collision he decided to run as an independent for the northern beaches seat of Pittwater in the New South Wales parliament. Along with a handful of local activists, and a few of his friends, I threw myself into helping get this last-minute tilt at political office underway. Nat ran a boisterous campaign attacking all and sundry and making a splash with scandalous posters featuring the outrageous cartoon figure Captain Goodvibes, riding a giant wave through canyons of office blocks and smoking an oversized joint. In spite of the salvoes he polled well, but still ended up missing out, probably a good thing for him and the electors of the northern beaches. Nat was a restless spirit, inclined to speak his mind regardless of the consequences. I couldn’t see him sitting still for too long, which is de rigueur in state politics.
Rabbit was another former surfing champion with ample energy who helped organise competitions for the group Surfers Against Nuclear Destruction (SAND). A grassroots initiative by Gold Coast surfers, with local solicitor Denis Callinan driving it along, SAND ran competitions through the 1980s and got the word on nuclear issues out to a new generation of surfers.
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