Mood:
sharpTopic: aust govt
Bernard Keane as resident press gallery commentator at crikey.com.au says 'good people do bad things'. He was referring to 'holy' Kevin Rudd, PM of Australia.
The trouble with this analysis of the Rudd personality is that it's stupid. It's not too far conceptually from the 'I was just following orders' kind of morality. Or the 'spirit is willing but the flesh is weak'.
And coming from a journalist like Keane it's a bit pathetic. It's not the serious media's job to pre-emptively buckle on moral judgements about who is good or not good: 'By their actions you shall know them' should be the dictum of a journalist. If they do good they are good, and vice versa.
So what about this story of 'holy' Kevin saving a Tawny Frogmouth chick that fell from a nest near Kirribilli? It ran on Sunday 28th December 2008. Keep that date in mind because the Rudd regime are playing with it.
Well the fact that Get Up (as above) were running an advert in the tv coverage of the cricket attacking Rudd the very same day 28th December 2008 with satire over his Emissions Trading Scheme pathetic 5% target might have something to do with the timing? You think? Of course it was. The News Corp story in the Sunday Telegraph was all about running PR interference on Rudd's environmental credentials.
But the truth is here for so called 'follow the science on forest' Rudd. These videos from community activists show logging in East Gippsland in late 2008. The trees are easily 300+ years old.
Tree trunks as wide as terrace houses. Hollows for Tawny Frogmouths, Yellow bellied Gliders, Ringtail possums, and understorey for endangered Eastern Spotted Quoll. But the 300 years plus age doesn't quite describe the significance. This wet old growth is the climax stage of say a 1000-1,500 year process of grassland to dry sclerophyl to majestic wet cathedral like forest. And in this location that climax stage has dominated since the last ice age. In a sense that makes this forest about 10,000 years old. The home of Tawny Frogmouths for 10,000 years.
It just happens to be about the best forest on the mainland of Australia - anywhere from WA to the world heritage listed wet tropics.
And under the joint federal state government National Forest Policy and Regional Forest 'Agreements" between the Commonwealth, NSW and Victoria these forest giants were logged in November and December 2008 mostly for woodchips and transported to the export facility over the state border at Eden. i??For the innocent Japanese consumer to wipe their backside on or read cartoon books. The influential Forestry Union with Michael O'Connor on the ALP national executive would be gratified. It was O'Connor's colleagues in the logging industry responsible for this in 2000 in Victoria (below right), and NSW in 2005 (below left). O'Connor the ex boyfriend of Acting PM Julia Gillard, nice bloke. The friend of ex PM John Howard in Hobart Town Hall in 2004:
Most fair minded Australians would think this was wrong. A few million of us would probably even say it was evil. So we say judge PM Kevin Rudd by what he does. And that includes what he and his state premiers like John Brumby below fail to do.
Here's another saying for Bernard Keane at crikey.com.au and the big media - evil flourishes when good people do nothing. This newsletter was published in by Environment Victoria, a non government group 8 years ago:
