Readers will know that I have borrowed the name for this blog – The Northern Myth – from a favourite book of mine of the same name published in 1965 and written by the distinguished agricultural scientist and economist Dr Bruce R. Davidson.

Davidson was a man well before his time and of whom many of the current boosters of the mantra of “develop the north” should take notice.

He was highly sceptical of the overblown claims being made by politicians, commentators and other boosters in the 1950’s and 1960’s of the potential of the north as an unburdened paradise for broad-scale agricultural development.

Davidson’s The Northern Myth presents a brutally clinical assessment – based on good science and thoroughly researched economics – of the prospects for many areas of agricultural and pastoral development across the top one-third of the Australian continent.

Parts of Davidson’s book are of course somewhat dated – but I’m sure that Davidson would be just as sceptical of some of the current claims being made – by the same classes of people – about the apparently bountiful future of agriculture in the north.

The most well-known of the failed experiments in northern broad-acre farming in the Top End was the Humpty Doo rice farm project.

The good folk at the Litchfield Shire Council provide this useful snapshot of the rice project – and of the mood of the time that is strikingly similar to some current views:

Rice grown at Humpty Doo was going to feed the starving millions in Asia. The Northern Territory could become the world’s food bowl – and the post-war world desperately needed food. With new skills, new markets, big money, and big ideas, northern development would become a reality, not just a hollow cliché. Certainly there had been failures before, the optimists admitted. But things were different now, they reasoned. Past failures were attributed to bad luck, bad judgment, inadequate capital investment, and similar reasons. Now, all these limitations and reasons for failure could be swept aside by a new wave of large scale capital development. And the Territory’s coastal plains would at last live up to all the hopes which had been held for them since explorer John McDouall Stuart in 1862 said of the area “it could be the finest colony under the Crown – capable of growing any and every thing.”

It didn’t quite turn out that way.

Suddenly, in the 1950s, the area became the focus for national ambitions to develop the north. The spectacular failure of these ambitions made the name “Humpty Doo” part of Australian folk lore.

In 1954 the junior Menzies government Minister Harold Holt infected the American mega-millionaire Alan Chase with enthusiasm for rice growing at Humpty Doo. Chase formed a grand plan for planting half a million acres to make the NT the world’s biggest rice producer. Chase declared that the Territory would be a food bulwark against communism. “Hunger in Asia breeds communism, and I believe that we have here the means of removing that hunger.” A specially commissioned film, “The Miracle of Humpty Doo” was produced and widely shown.

Chase formed a company Territory Rice which began experiments and plantings. By 1959 there were 5,500 acres under cultivation. It was proposed that the rice growing area would be subdivided in to 400 small farms, with housing and townships.

Magpie geese got the blame, but there were many more fundamental reasons – the project was always undercapitalised; no allowance had been made for rainfall and sunshine variability; soils were poor and drainage unsuitable; costs were high and poorly controlled; and marketing was never properly organised.

A few years later the land-clearing bug was still afoot in the Top End.

This excerpt comes from the NT Government’s Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Environment report, Land Clearing in the Northern Territory, written by E.J. Hosking in 2002:

In 1967 the first large-scale clearing project occurred in the Northern Territory on Tipperary station by the Tipperary Land Corporation (TLC) and at the time was believed to be the one of the biggest single agricultural projects in the world (NT News, 24/07/1967). The scheme planned for 79,000 ha to be cleared over 5 years, however, poor management, seasons and trying to do too much too soon eventually sent the Texan-based company broke (Mollah, 1980). Not learning from these mistakes, the Agricultural Development Corporation (ADC) undertook a similar feat in the early 1970s on Willeroo Station. An estimated 48,600 ha was recorded as cleared, with only 16,000 ha ever being farmed (Fisher, 1977).

With self Government in 1978, the NT launched the Agricultural Development and Marketing Authority (ADMA) in 1981/82. This Authority assisted private cropping developments (Sturtz, 2000) that helped establish the NT horticultural industry, and resulted in further clearing on Tipperary station in 1988/89 and development of the Douglas Daly research farms.

The Senate Environment, Communications and the Arts Committee is currently having a close look at forestry and mining operations on the Tiwi Islands just off the coast from Darwin. The Committee was scheduled to submit it’s report by Monday 26th October but there is no sign of the report at the Committee’s website and it has yet to be tabled in Parliament.

I’d heard a few weeks ago that the Committee would not make that deadline, in part due to the sheer complexity of the matters it has been charged with investigating, and also because there is a fair likelihood of separate reports from the Committee members.

You can see the Committee’s Terms of Reference here.

I’ve previously examined the mess that is left of the Tiwi Forestry operations here and here.

Most recently I looked at the predictable failure of the MIS schemes promoted by Great Southern Plantations, the operators of the large-scale Acacia mangium plantations on the Tiwi Islands that have been left to rot after its collapse in May this year.

It is clear, to me at least, that the collapse of the forestry operations on the Tiwi islands represents not just a failure of an ambitious agricultural scheme but also a failure of good corporate governance and highlights the need to conduct appropriate risk, economic and environmental analyses of the overall project – particularly in environmentally and culturally sensitive areas.

And it is not just in Australia that the Tiwi Forestry operations have drawn attention.

In late September Verlyn Klinkenborg editorialised in the New York Times and pointed to the broader impacts of the collapse of the forestry scheme on the islands:

…this is not just another forestry project gone awry — 75,000 acres of bankrupt monoculture where there used to be native tropical woodland…What’s left behind is a sense of desolation and distrust. I talked with several Tiwi Islanders — over a dinner of mud crab, local barramundi, local mussels and magpie goose — and it was clear that many of them doubted the good faith not only of Great Southern and the Northern Territory government but also their own Tiwi Land Council, which had encouraged the partnership

...

The question that night at dinner wasn’t just the economic loss involved — the loss of jobs and royalties and individual investments. It was the meaning of this failure, its demoralizing effect on a people who have been striving to find a way toward economic self-determination. Like traditional owners on the mainland, the Tiwi have had to struggle with the cruel vicissitudes of Australian policy toward its aboriginal population — everything from the brutality of official racism to the confused tolerance that has come in more recent times with cultural and political empowerment.

Apart from the social fallout from the failure of the arrangements between the Tiwi Land Council and Great Southern Plantations there are the very real questions about what will happen to the trees in the ground – will they be left to rot or is at least some part of the project capable of being salvaged?

On 16th May 2009 Administrators were appointed to Great Southern Group. Subsequently, on 18 May 2009 McGrathNicol were appointed Receivers and Managers of Great Southern Limited and certain subsidiaries of Great Southern.

In September McGrathNicol issued Circulars to Investors advising that the Tiwi Island forestry schemes (which consisted of a large number of tree-plots leased by small investors) would be unfunded after 30 September.

On 2 October McGrathNicol issued a further Circular to Investors in the Tiwi Leases, advising that:

The Tiwi Island operations are commercially unviable. The operating costs and capital expenditure requirements are extremely high. As we have been without funding for the Tiwi Island operations from 30 September 2009, we have commenced cessation of these operations. We also wrote to the landlords, the Tiwi Land Council, on 30 September 2009 advising that we will not be accepting any liability for the lease costs from 30 September 2009.

On 1 October 2009 the Tiwi Land Council terminated all head leases on the Tiwi Islands, relying on a clause contained in the head leases which entitled the landlord to terminate in the event of the insolvency of GSMAL.

In June the Tiwi Land Council had told the ABC that it needed a total of $120 million in order to:

…make the forestry plantations on the Tiwi Islands viable following the collapse of Great Southern Plantations…the land council’s Cyril Kalippa says he has asked the Federal Government for help because Great Southern’s account estimates show substantial money will need to be found to keep it going. “We need about $80 million for the next three years – that’s for the wages and the things that we need to operate the forest. “And also we need $40 million to extend the wharf or the jetty so that 50 tonne ships can come in and pick up the chip wood.”

Apart from the huge sums to keep the trees in the ground and alive – and the money to rebuild a ruined jetty – there remain very real questions about the viability of the whole scheme and who might front the large sums of money in a very tight market to a project with a troubled past and a far from certain future.

In early October The Australian reported that the Tiwi Land Council was optimistic that the project was still viable:

Despite the withdrawal of support from a banking consortium last month, Tiwi Land Council chief executive John Hicks said global demand for woodchips indicated the scheme was “clearly a viable operation”. “We have got it debt-free,” Mr Hicks said. “And it has a minimal rate of return of between 15 and 30 per cent.” The plantations will be harvested on decade-long cycles and landowners now have title to all fixed assets, including the camp headquarters, sewerage farm, port infrastructure, and airstrips. The TLC estimates it will need $80m to manage the plantation to maturity in 2013 and fix the Melville Island wharf so the trees can be exported.

Mr Hicks said at least 15 private investors had indicated they were prepared to support the group in the run-up to the first harvest in 2013. Mr Hicks said the 20 staff on the operation had been retained and that the plant had the potential to create 660 jobs in associated industries.

The controversial venture has already fallen victim to a cyclone and Great Southern was last year ordered to pay $4m for breaching environmental guidelines.

On 2nd October – the same day that McGrathNicols described the Tiwi Forestry project as “commercially unviable”, Dr Judith Ajani gave evidence to the Senate Committee’s Inquiry at Hearings in Canberra.

Dr Ajani is an economist specialising in forest and plantation research at the Fenner School at the ANU, where she has worked since 1996.  She is the author of ‘The Forest Wars‘ (MUP 2007) and is well placed to comment on the Tiwi forestry schemes.

Dr Ajani’s evidence to the Senate Committee centred on her assessments of the short-term propsects of Australia’s woodchip production and exports, the likely demand for the low-grade woodchips from the Tiwi Islands over the period 2010 to 2014 and the looming glut in supply caused by the rapidly increasing supply of plantation hardwood chips from plantations planted under the MIS schemes.

This is a glut that Dr Ajani says will require Australia to double the volume of sales into a flat market (Japan) where we export up to eighty-five per cent of out chips and where we  already supply about one-third of their intake – and that this will commence as soon as early in 2010.

Responding to questions from Greens Senator Rachel Siewert, Dr Ajani told the Committee that:

Dr. Ajani: What we have at the moment, and it is the really crucial issue here, is a very big volume of hardwood chip resources coming on stream from [Australian] plantations and we also have the native forest resource hanging in there as a continuing significant supplier of hardwood chips.

…

So what we are looking at here is Australia’s plantation chip resource increasing from our current level of production of around 4 million cubic metres per annum—that is the volume of that resource that we export currently from hardwood plantations—to around 14 million cubic metres per annum by 2010-2014. Native forest resources in there at the moment are supplying around 5½ million cubic metres. We have inevitably some very big resource volumes coming on stream very quickly. Some people might say that this is not a glut situation. I think they are not being open in their assessment of the reality here.

…

…with a glut we have a problem that happens in any commodity industry. Lower quality resources are the ones that always struggle to get market share and, in particular, to get market share at the price they expect.

…

…the Tiwi Islands chips using Acacia mangium are of a lower quality. They are of a lower quality, according to Great Southern plantations, because they have a lower pulp yield—in other words, you need more wood to make the same volume of pulp—and they are of a lower quality in terms of the additional costs that are required with respect to bleaching for paper production. That is information that Great Southern itself presented.

NT Labor Senator Trish Crossin asked Dr Ajani how the Tiwi might deal with their very real practical problems – they have trees in the ground that will cost a lot to maintain before they can be harvested and sold into an uncertain market:

Dr. Ajani: …it is a complicated problem…the Tiwi Island issue is embedded in a much bigger problem, which is the plantation MIS arrangements as a whole. The first job is to contain the problem. It is not just for the Tiwi islanders but also Australia wide—that is, in my view we should terminate the plantation MIS arrangements, because the last thing we want is greater havoc being played because we have more investment going into these operations while we are facing the market as I have described. The issue you raise is: what then happens to the trees?

…

…given the information that Great Southern itself provided some time ago and given the market conditions, there should be a great care about further expanding the plantation estate.

Liberal Senator Ian McDonald, in previous governments a Minister that provided no small measure of support for the plantation industry in general and MIS schemes in particular, asked a number of forceful questions of Dr Ajani, concluding with a question that revealed his belligerence and inability to comprehend her evidence:

Senator IAN MACDONALD—Chair, I am at a loss to understand the evidence Dr Ajani is giving.

Chair of the Committee is the Liberal Senator for South Australia, Simon Birmingham asked Dr Adjani about the prospects of the world hardwood chip market.

CHAIR— Dr Ajani, is the global hardwood chip market still growing?

Dr Ajani—The global hardwood chip market is largely flat…The trade figures are largely flat. The current downturn also is not presented in this graph on page 4. I do not see the hardwood chip trade globally recovering to such an extent that the wood volumes that we have coming on stream, virtually immediately, are going to be cleared easily and without putting pressure on the price.

Dr Ajani—…We are seeing globally a very strong separation of wood into wood products—paper and sawn timber—and the actual production trends of those products. In other words, what we are seeing globally are resource saving technologies coming through such that the strong growth in wood products is not flowing through to strong growth in wood input.

CHAIR—Recycling technologies and so on are substituting for plantation and native woodchips—is that your contention?

Dr Ajani—Yes. The main play here in the paper market is the role of recycled paper dampening the demand for wood despite strong growth in paper consumption.

Senator McDonald returned for one last unsuccessful shot at Dr. Ajani:

Senator IAN MACDONALD—What is your concern about the Tiwi Islands, from the Tiwi Islanders’ point of view?

Dr Ajani—I think they have a product which is not well placed in the play that is going to unfold over the next few years as our hardwood plantation resource comes onto the market.

In short, it seems that the Tiwi have been landed with a white elephant of monumental proportions – large swathes of pristine, high conservation-value tropical forest have been stripped and burned – or sold off in curious deals that have only made a loss to date.

The Tiwi have now been forced to go cap-in-hand for money from a cautious market and Governments that, understandably, have little inclination to throw good money after bad for a resource of dubious sustainability and diminishing value.

Many think that Tiwi Forestry is just another Northern Myth – an ambitious but poorly-researched and managed scheme that will – if it has not already – see large tracts of precious tropical forest land laid to waste for no good end.

As I indicated above, the Tiwi Islands forestry case is complex and I have only just touched the surface here.

I don’t expect everyone to agree with me – so if you have a view contrary to mine please register, and leave a (hopefully constructive) comment.

Similarly if you feel you may have something to add to or support my comments then please do the same.

You can read some background material (from a blog run by the NT Environment Centre in Darwin) here.

And I’d encourage you to read the Submissions and Transcripts of Evidence given to the Senate Committee at the Committee’s website here.

Thanks for taking the time to get this far!!

Wadeye township

I’ve written here recently about the fantastic (in the original sense of that word) approach that The Australian and its dwindling number of northern correspondents take to just about anything to do with Aboriginal affairs here in the NT.

This past weekend The Weekend Australian continued this dubious tradition when it ran this piece from its northern correspondent, Nicolas Rothwell.

Rothwell examines apparently new economic and governance developments at the troubled remote township of Wadeye, in the west of the NT’s Top End.

And Rothwell, after many years in the NT, has apparently finally realised what anyone with any experience in remote Australia would have found out a long time ago – that Wadeye, like most small townships in the NT, and elsewhere – is a town that is “mostly ordered and peaceful”.

If you take the assertions in Rothwells piece at face value you would think that the good citizens of Wadeye had turned their backs on all forms of Australian mainstream governance and were boldly charting a course of their own, free from the controls imposed by Australian governments at all levels.

As Rothwell says:

“…what bureaucracy gives, it can also take away. Not only did the federal intervention of mid-2007 sweep through Wadeye; the Thamarrurr local council was wound up as the Northern Territory unveiled its new regional shires. The council, though, gave birth to a new Thamarrurr Development Corporation, which was bolstered by strong support from the Rudd government. The upshot of this administrative upheaval was a deepened desire among the Wadeye leadership group to pursue their own path.
…
“The idea aims to assert control over their own region and in time to supplant the long-established Northern Land Council, which is widely seen as a moribund arm of the Territory Labor Party. “We will set up our own council,” Nganbe says bluntly. TDC’s Berto says: “There’s a lot of people here not happy with the NLC and its complete lack of service, and its standing in the way of progress. We want to set the political agenda from the ground.”

And notwithstanding the brief reference to “strong support” from the Rudd government, Rothwell reckons that the people of Wadeye:

“…don’t like the deal on offer from mainstream Australia’s authorities. They want to keep their own culture, they want economic development and they want it on their own terms, under their control.”

What Rothwell is of course talking about here is localised Aboriginal self-determination, an aspiration that he has frequently, and as recently as six weeks ago, condemned to the dustbin of Australian political history:

“For some time it has been clear Aboriginal self-determination has had its day.”

Due credit should be given to the good citizens of Wadeye for getting their act together in what are incredibly difficult circumstances. By all accounts they have established a range of business enterprises that will provide real jobs and offer economic opportunities to locals.

Rothwell implies that the people of Wadeye have achieved these successes in spite of the bureaucratic and administrative barriers set up by governments at every turn. But it may be that a few inconvenient facts – for Rothwell’s thesis at least – might explain a somewhat different basis for some of Wadeye’s recent successes.

The bureaucracies that Rothwell says have taken so much from the people of Wadeye with one hand have been very busy giving bucketloads of money to the recently-established Thamarrurr Development Corporation Ltd (the TDC) with the other.

The TDC is a non-profit commercial operation limited by guarantee with no shareholders – just members that represent the 20 clan groups of the Wadeye region.

In the 2008/2009 round of funding for the Indigenous Heritage Program announced on 7 July 2008, the TDC was given two grants to a total of $62,704 for “the investigation and management of cultural heritage” of the Thamarrurr region.

On 8 October 2008 Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin announced that TDC would receive $500,000 as “an establishment grant to deliver a range of business services” to the Wadeye region.

At it’s meeting of 10 February 2009, the Victoria Daly Shire Council (the Council), the local government body that replaced Thamarrurr’s predessor, the Thamarrurr Regional Council, passed the following Motion:

“That Council agrees to lease for one dollar ($1.00) to Thamarrurr Development Corporation for the period from the 10th of February 2009 to the 7th of December 2009 all non – fixed assets.”

At the following meeting on 7 April 2009, the Council, in the course of the Confirmation of the Minutes of the previous meeting, amended that Motion:

“The minutes of the ordinary meeting, item (8) TDC were amended with a further dot point
added, saying that if all the above conditions were met the vehicles would then be sold to the TDC for the sum of $1.00. The minutes were  then taken as read and accepted as a true record of the Meeting.”

The value of the assets leased to the TDC for $1, according to the Report provided to Council, was $760,073.

According to the same report, the insured value of the vehicles to be sold to Tharmarrurr upon it meeting Council’s conditions was $482,273.

You can read the Minutes of Council meetings and the Report from Council staff for yourself here.

On 4 March 2009, by joint press release Minister Macklin and Member for Lingiari, Warren Snowdon announced that TDC would receive a total of $650,000 to provide painting services and the purchase of civil construction machinery.

On 11 June 2009, in another joint press release, Snowdon and Macklin announced that TDC would receive a total of $1.422 million to purchase a mobile concrete batching plant and to provide accommodation for “key staff” at Wadeye.

As the ABC reported last month, the Thamarrurr Association, (also based at Wadeye but a separate entity to the TDC) following representations from then NT Indigenous Policy Minister Alison Anderson, received a $250,000 grant from the NT government in circumstances yet to be fully explained:

“Ms Anderson secured $250,000 of taxpayer funds for a corporation run by the powerful Yunupingu family in Arnhem Land, including Galarrwuy Yunupingu. The only other organisation to get $250,000 for community consultation is the Thamarrur Association at Wadeye, which has never declared an income before. The Government has not announced the payments and is yet to explain how the companies were selected. It says the money will pay for consultation on the Working Futures policy to help the Government get its service delivery right.”

I’ve not yet been able establish any direct connection between the TDC and the Thamarrurr Association – other than that they both do the same kind of business in the same small town.

On my back-of the-envelope reckoning the TDC has received control over $760,000 worth of assets for the bargain basement price of a single dollar from their local Council and, including the grant to the Thamarrurr Association, close enough to $3.5 million from the NT and Federal governments.

Not bad for a group that Rothwell says, “…don’t like the deal on offer from mainstream Australia.”

And what of the assertions in Rothwell’s article by TDC’s John Berto of the Northern Land Council’s “…complete lack of service, and its standing in the way of progress” at Wadeye?

John Berto should know all about the NLC and service delivery at Wadeye. After all, he had been a long-term employee of the NLC and for a period up to late 2006 he was the NLC’s Deputy CEO.

But Rothwell and Berto would also be aware of the benefits to the Traditional Owners of the Wadeye region (and beyond) resulting from the NLC’s negotiations on their behalf over the Blacktip gas plant and pipeline.

The deal negotiated by the NLC has given, and will provide into the future, significant economic and social benefits to the traditional owners and residents of the Wadeye region.

Indeed, there is every appearance that Rothwell consciously excluded these well-known and readily available facts from his piece because they did not support his oft-repeated spurious claims about the NLC. I found all of the material noted above after about ten minutes of searching on the web and a bit of scurrying about in the backblocks of various websites.

Rothwell ends his piece with a dubious comparison between Longreach in far-western Queensland and Wadeye, implying that Wadeye should be accorded the same services, government support and facilities as Longreach.

Longreach is a service centre in a region with a long history of extensive & highly productive mining, pastoral and agricultural activity. It is also has roads that lead from somewhere to somewhere else.

Wadeye services only itself and a few small homelands. It is at the wrong end of a long and rough road in a region with no history of pastoral, agricultural or any other significant development – apart from the above-mentioned Blacktip gas project.

Pity about those annoying facts getting in the way of a fantastic story.

Declaration: Bob Gosford has worked for the Northern Land Council as a legal advisor, most recently in 2008. He had no involvement in matters at Wadeye apart from a single meeting with an early version of the Thamarrurr council in about 2000.

Junior. Outside Warmun, W.A.

This story by Ashley Hall on last night’s PM program on the ABC referred to a tragic confluence of events and, perhaps, poor road design at an intersection in suburban Melbourne, Victoria:

Roadside memorial sparks distraction debate

A fatal car accident that killed a 21-year-old woman driver in Melbourne’s outer suburbs has ignited a furious debate about the safety of floral roadside memorials.

Police say the driver may have been distracted by a roadside tribute erected to mark the deaths of four teenagers at the same intersection a couple of weeks ago.

…Acting Inspector Jeff Smith, from the Victoria Police’s major collision unit, says the intersection was covered in flowers and pictures.

“Right on the intersection to have photos and tributes and stories and the like, it distracts drivers from what they’re supposed to be doing, which is looking where they’re going,” he said.

Martin Lacroix. Victoria Highway, N.T.

This issue of the safety of roadside memorials has been around in Australia for some time.

AM spoke to Dr Jennifer Clark, an Associate Professor at the University of New England at Armidale, who has studied roadside tibutes for over 20 years and in 2004 organised a conference on roadside tributes:

Roadside Memorials: a multi-disciplinary approach:

Papers are invited that examine the phenomenon of roadside memorialisation from the perspective of any relevant discipline including, for example, death studies, history, studies in religion, psychology, sociology, roadside studies, road safety, popular culture, studies in grief and mourning and studies in memorial culture. Papers on related topics, especially other forms of public memorialisation, also will be considered. It is intended that the most relevant papers will be submitted for publication as an edited collection.

In 2006 Clark spoke to Geraldine Doogue at ABC Radio’s Compass program:

Roadside memorials are not new. They were there in the ancient world, they’re all through Europe, through South America, through the United States.

…

So the place itself becomes very important. It becomes sacred space, regardless of the fact that this is actually a public roadside. And so we have the appropriation of public space for private mourning. And there is a great debate about whether or not they should be allowed. Emergency service personnel for example or people who have been involved in the crash or people who live near the memorial site often find it very difficult to travel past these memorials constantly day after day and be reminded of the great tragedy.

…

The roadside memorial is particularly important because it indicates to us that there is a new way looking at grief and mourning.
I think the practice itself indicates that there is a movement away from the belief that the church and the state has control over grief and mourning and has control over the ceremonies and rituals associated with death.

…

I think what it really indicates is that people in grief believe that their grief gives them the authority to put up a memorial where they want it to be put. It suggests that there is a very strong sense of the spiritual out there in your community, even though we know that church attendance is declining and that we hear a lot of talk about Australia being a secular society.

And the interesting thing about it I think is that it indicates that in our society people …are looking to express spirituality in their own way and to engage with a spiritual life. And there is a strong sense at these memorials that people making them have a very strong sense that something spiritual is going on while they are there.

Anonymous. Tanami Track, N.T.

The photos are my contribution – in addition to the roadkills that I’ve been photographing over the past several years I’ve recently started shooting the many and varied tributes that I find on my travels.

I’ll put up a post of recent new finds from time to time.

And if you have any particular shots of roadside memorials in your area please feel free to send them on and I’ll post them here for you.

Broken wing. Tanami Track, N.T.

And the last word, well, several words really, goes to the US where the National Memorial Registry has been established to:

The National Memorial Registry, Inc. was created to provide a place for any person to register a memorial or tribute to or on behalf of a person. It is our hope that the amount of people registering their memorial or tribute will be such a substantial amount that we are able to use this membership to affect legislation toward open display of these tributes on public lands. While we do not condone obstruction or cluttering of public parks or scenic views, we would like to have each country recognize the importance of allowing each citizen the right to pay tribute to any person they choose.

The National Memorial Registry, Inc. will work with all jurisdictions that regulate the placement of memorials. We will attempt to gain some consistency in legislation by means of public pressure. We will not condone open contempt for the local customs or legislation but will encourage change by means of legal methods as much as allowed.

It is the intent of National Memorial Registry, Inc. to maintain this database for future generations to access and gain valuable information about their ancestors past.

Roadside grave? Victoria Highway, N.T.

It can be both humorous and horrible to watch a political party eat itself alive in public.

Funny because it is rare that the hubris, rank ambition, incompetence and dummy-spitting of so many are all on public display at any one time.

Horrible because, well, you just don’t really want to see human nature in such a raw state – and blood is such a hard stain to get out of your clothes.

And this thankfully all-too-rare event is being played out in the NT and you can watch and listen to it live – right now, right here in the Northern Territory – as NT Labor’s parliamentary wing munches down on each other.

I got it wrong earlier this week when I said in Crikey that you’d be lucky to get evens on a bet that the NT Labor government of Paul Henderson would make it to the end of June.

Right now his government will be lucky if it is still in power at the end of next week.

On Monday this week ex-Deputy Chief Minister Marion Scrymgour, a backbencher since stepping down because of ill health in February from her position as the most powerful elected Aboriginal politician in the country, had one foot in, the other out, of the NT government tent.

By Tuesday, after a report on Monday’s 7.30 Report by ABC Darwin reporter Murray McLaughlin, she was outside the tent pissing on it for all she was worth – accusing the government of lying to and cheating Aboriginal people.

By Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting, after applying the softest of squirrel-grips to hapless NT Chief Minister Paul Henderson, she was back in the tent.

But that all went hell-west-and-crooked yesterday after the NT News ran a story on Scrymgour’s performance at the Cabinet meeting. By late morning she’d issued a statement to her constituents that she would leave the government and see out her term on the cross-benches as an independent.

The NT News report, and some egregious editorial comments, infuriated Scrymgour – perhaps because of inaccuracies but mainly because she’d lost trust in members of the government to give effect to the deal she’d squeezed out of Henderson the day before.

This much is clear from this part of her statement released yesterday:

“I can no longer rely on all caucus colleagues to implement the concessions that I won in the caucus meeting yesterday”.

You don’t have to read too far between the lines to soon realise that here she is only talking about Henderson, Lawrie, and most particularly NT Indigenous Affairs Minister Alison Anderson, with whom Scrymgour shares little apart from her Aboriginality and femininity.

Put bluntly, Scrymgour simply did not trust Anderson to implement the concessions she’d negotiated with Henderson.

Scrymgour thinks that the leak to the NT News came from Henderson and current Deputy CM and Treasurer, Delia Lawrie. Thats more than a bit of a stretch – it is hard to see what possible value there would be in Henderson and Lawrie bringing down their own government.

Word on the streets in Darwin is that the leak came from a staffer in Henderson’s office – again it is difficult to see any valid motives or reasons for such a damaging leak other than malice or mischievousness.

Henderson, after yesterday’s dummy-spit by Scrymgour, now has two very poor choices – try to keep his failed government alive by dancing to Scrymgour’s increasingly erratic beck and call or hold a fresh election ten months after the last one and more then three years before the next one is due in 2012.

If Henderson takes the first of his choices he risks ultimate and early failure. The first item of business when the NT’s parliament sits next Tuesday 9 June will be a motion of no confidence in Henderson brought on by NT Opposition leader Terry Mills.

Scrymgour apparently has given Henderson her word that she’d support him in any no-confidence motion and that she will support the money Bills for the NT Budget. But Tuesday is a long way away and the way things are going here anything could happen in that time.

Henderson will have to rely on Scymgour or the other NT Independent Gerry Woods to pass any legislation or win motions in the Assembly – and he will still require the casting vote of the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, Jane Aagard.

And Henderson’s second choice – call a new election – would almost certainly see him lose power and a swag of the thirteen seats Labor currently holds in the NT. Labor would be reduced to a rump – just as the CLP Opposition was before the unnecessary early election that Henderson took the NT electorate to in August 2008.

There is little doubt that Henderson and NT Labor deserve such total humiliation – the current chaos in his parliamentary party is largely a result of his ineptitude and poor political management, bad advice and the woeful performance of Labor since Henderson’s predecessor Clare Martin triumphantly led Labor to power in the NT for the first time in 2001.

While many of the failures of Labor in the NT have been felt by the wider NT electorate, it is no coincidence that Henderson’s government has been brought to its knees by an Aboriginal woman. If there is any element of its constituency that Labor in the NT has failed and taken for granted for too long, it is the Aboriginal people that make up roughly one-third of the NT’s population.

From the start Labor, rightly, saw that the keys to power lay in the white-bread northern suburbs of Darwin, and that is where it spread its largesse. But Martin, Henderson and all who advised them failed to meet even the most modest of expectations from its other power-base – the Aboriginal people in remote electorates that have remained loyal to Labor for decades. And with a number of strong Aboriginal politicians on the government benches there was at least some cause for hope that Aboriginal people in the NT would finally get a fair deal from their government.

They didn’t, and it is the supreme irony that the primary causes for the recent massive loss of the faith and trust that many Aboriginal people had in Labor have been the actions of Aboriginal parliamentarians – not least Scrymgour, and her successor as Indigenous Affairs Minister, Alison Anderson.

Scrymgour’s rushed and ill-founded decision in October 2008 to implement mandatory English for four hours every day in the eight remaining bilingual schools in the NT is seen by many Aboriginal people in remote townships as a fundamental betrayal of Aboriginal rights to language and culture.

And the announcement three weeks ago of the Working Future policy by Scrymgour’s successor as Indigenous Affairs Minister, Alison Anderson, is the latest example of the almost complete disconnect between Aboriginal people living in remote townships and NT Labor – particularly hose who loudly trumpet their care for and connections with their constituents in the remote dusty corners of the NT.

Scrymgour saw the Anderson version of the Working Future policy for what it is – a further retreat from the current parlous levels of service delivery and infrastructure provision to remote townships and a fundamental betrayal of commitments given to remote Aboriginal people by her and Pat Dodson, who led a consultation and engagement process that was quickly abandoned and ignored by Anderson.

For Scrymgour, Working Future was now a policy that had been hijacked and fundamentally changed by her arch political enemy, Alison Anderson – Scrymgour’s vision had been to fit the legitimate aspirations and needs of Aboriginal people in remote townships and homelands into the reality of Canberra’s demands for service improvement. Anderson’s version represented little more than a supine surrender to Canberra’s assimilationist directions that 10,000 people be moved away from their homelands to create new ghettos in an arbitrary selection of so-called ‘growth towns’.

I’ll have a lot more to say about this most interesting of Ministers in the near future.

And it is Alison Anderson who may well be the key to the futures of both Henderson and Opposition leader Terry Mills. There is the very real possibility that Anderson could follow Scrymgour’s lead and walk – not to the cross-benches – but across the Chamber to the CLP – gifting Government to the CLP.

And the last word goes to Terry “the man who could very soon be King” Mills.

On his Facebook page this morning he says that:

“A day is a long time in politics. Every day this week has been long! Wonder what today has in store? Former Deputy Chief Minister now independent member will make a statement today to explain her unusual actions of the past few days. With 11 Country Liberal, 11 Labor and two independents holding the balance of power democracy is getting workout in the Territory!”

Your comments please!

Enjoy – and of course, your comments please!!

Marion Scrymgour was Australia’s most powerful elected black politician — that is until illness got the better of her and forced her resignation from her several Ministries back in February this year and that mantle was handed to her arch-political rival and enemy — Labor member of Macdonnell, Alison Anderson.

Since then Scrymgour has undergone treatment in Adelaide. The accepted wisdom was that she would sit quietly on the backbenches until August this year when her parliamentary pension matured and would then retire.

But it seems that sometime during her treatment and recovery that she has had a Damascene conversion that recent NT government policies on blackfellas have been built on lies and deception.

As the ABC News website reports, “I feel strongly because we have lied to Aboriginal people,” she said. “We have said we would go back and talk to them before we made that policy.”

“That policy” is the recently announced “Working Futures” policy that will withdraw essential services from the many small homeland communities across the NT and force residents to move or travel to larger “hub” communities to receive those services.

And it seems that Scrymgour has also changed her mind about her own rushed and fundamentally flawed policy that would gut the remnants of the once proud bilingual education system in the NT, a policy that Scrymgour saw fit to vigorously defend here at Crikey from the views of a “cabal of self-important whitefellas“.

Working Future dates back to the decision in September 2007 by former Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough to hand responsibility for homeland policy and funding to the NT Government.

Scrymgour was responsible for developing the NT government policy on homelands and remote community development and commissioned a discussion paper and a team, led by Pat Dodson, to take submissions and conduct community consultation.

Dodson’s “Community Engagement Report” was given to the NT government in January and was publicly released late last month.

Following Scrymgour’s sudden resignation in February, Alison Anderson inherited the Indigenous Affairs Ministry.

On 20 May Anderson released a policy, a ghost-written op-ed piece in her favourite paper, The Australian and a bare-bones website.

The recommendations in Dodson’s report have been effectively ignored and the promises of a further consultative process with affected Aboriginal people living in remote towns in the NT, following the development of a draft policy, have been abandoned.

If Working Future is ever implemented, as Lindsay Murdoch reported in The Age it will mean that:

Thousands of Aborigines living on their remote Northern Territory homelands will be forced to move to larger communities to receive key government services in a radical shake-up of indigenous policy. The NT Government is set to announce that 20 communities will be developed into regional economic hubs with a wide range of government services such as housing, schools and clinics.

But about 580 smaller communities will be deprived of many government services, threatening the fruits of what became known in the 1970s as the homelands movement when thousands of Aboriginal people moved back to their ancestral lands.

Scrymgour’s electorate of Arafura contains a large number of homeland communities — small hamlets deep in the heart of traditional Aboriginal lands occupied by family and clan groups that have chosen to live a simpler, safer and healthier life away from the babylonian chaos that typifies many of the larger Aboriginal townships scattered across the NT.

Now, as Murray McLaughlin reported on The 7.30 Report last night:

Marion Scrymgour has thrown the Territory Labor government into crisis over her complaint that the outstations policy was announced prematurely ignoring the process that she had laid out when she was Indigenous Affairs Minister. Marion Scrymgour has told Chief Minister Paul Henderson that she’s prepared to go to the cross-benches over the issue.

Scrymgour: I’m not discounting anything but I’m saying very clearly that I will do everything in my power as a member of the government to make sure that government meets its responsibilities to Aboriginal people.

As Crikey noted back in February:

There is a long history of mutual antipathy between Scrymgour and Anderson, including a stoush in late 2007 that followed Scrymgour’s description of the Howard/Brough NT Intervention as a ‘black Tampa’ motivated by naked political opportunism.

And, as Henderson well knows, it is Anderson and Scrymgour who may well hold the fate of his “crumbling”, one-seat majority government in their hands.

Anderson, who, as evidenced by her vocal support for the Brough/Howard Intervention and outspokenness on matters sensitive to government, is widely regarded as a loose cannon perhaps more closely aligned to the CLP Opposition than to the centre and left of NT Labor. While she may be happy with her Ministerial appointments for now, there is the very real threat that she could jump ship, either as an independent or to surface as a member of the CLP, and force a change of government.

Crikey understands that Scrymgour warned Henderson of her concerns with Anderson’s policy soon after it emerged but that he chose to ignore her.

Since Henderson’s Labor government was re-elected with a single seat majority in August of last year an informal book has been running on just how long his government will last — the best money was that he might be lucky, very lucky, to make it to August — when a number of Labor members are eligible for their generous super payouts.

But this latest fight changes the odds substantially — Crikey reckons you’d be lucky to get much better than evens on Henderson’s government surviving the month.

Henderson’s failures are all his own doing, led by a poor set of polices that attack his electoral heartland and a supine surrender to the Federal government’s directions — but he hasn’t been helped by the loose cannons rolling around the deck of what passes for the sinking ship of state in the NT.

The Terms of Reference for the review, now known as the Yu Review, included, where here relevant:

The NTER Review Board will:

1. examine evidence and assess the overall progress of the NTER in improving the safety and wellbeing of children and laying the basis for a sustainable and better future for residents of remote communities in the NT…
2. consider what is and isn’t working and whether the current suite of NTER measures will deliver the intended results, whether any unintended consequences have emerged and whether other measures should be developed…
3. in relation to each NTER measure, make an assessment of its effects to date, and recommend any required changes to improve each measure and monitor performance.

In making these assessments and recommendations, the Review Board should give particular regard to the government’s intention that Indigenous interests be engaged to ensure effective policy development and implementation processes…(emphasis added)

The Yu Review was publicly released by Macklin on 30 September 2008.

In relation to engagement by those politicians and bureaucrats responsible for the development and implementation of the Intervention the report was scathing.

These excerpts are from the Executive Summary:

Support for the positive potential of NTER measures has been dampened and delayed by the manner in which they were imposed. The Intervention diminished its own effectiveness through its failure to engage constructively with the Aboriginal people it was intended to help.

…

The single most valuable resource that the NTER has lacked from its inception is the positive, willing participation of the people it was intended to help. The most essential element in moving forward is for government to re-engage with the Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory.

And apart from the failure to engage with the Aboriginal people the subject of the Intervention, the Yu Review also found that the Intervention was constructed and pursued in an information and evidence-deficient vacuum insufficient to properly inform the establishment of the Intervention or to justify its continuation.

From page 16 of the Yu Review:

Apart from some initial scoping data, there was little evidence of baseline data being gathered in any formal or organised format which would permit an assessment of the impact and progress of the NTER upon communities. The lack of empirical data has proved to be a major problem for this Review and is an area that requires urgent attention.

Three weeks after the release of the Yu Review Jenny Macklin’s announcement to The Sydney Institute on 21 October 2008 that “…we must continue sound, evidence-based policy interventions that close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians,” gave some heart to many concerned about the way the Federal Government policies in the NT had been designed and implemented.

That Macklin considered that she even needed to mention the word ‘evidence’ in relation to the development and implementation of policy shows just how far from the norm the Intervention was.

Within the week she’d turned that on its head. As John Tomlinson noted in a piece published by Online Opinion:

Contrary to recommendations made by her own Review, Minister Jenny Macklin has decided to continue, for at least another year, with compulsorily quarantining half of the Centrelink payments paid to Aboriginal people living on 73 Northern Territory communities. Minister Macklin says she is maintaining quarantining because some women from the communities have asked her to continue it.

So much for sound evidence-based policy-making – at least in the Federal sphere. And there has not been much evidence since that time that Macklin’s words to The Sydney Institute were little more that empty rhetoric.

I’d have some serious reservations about according anyone in the NT Government with more than a passing familiarity with the concept of evidence-based policy-making.

A prime example of this is the ‘cobbled-together-over-the weekend’ policy introduced by then NT Education Minister Marion Scrymgour in late last weekend that mandated that all children in previously bilingual schools in the NT, who overwhelming have an Aboriginal language as their mother tongue, be given 4 hours of English only education each morning. A bit like teaching Mongolian to a classroom full of Swahili speakers.

And while there is no reference to an evidence base or community consultation in the recently announcement by the NT government of a new policy called “Working Future“, that policies roots reach back to a decision in September 2007 by Mal Brough to hand responsibility for homelands (Governments prefer the term ‘Outstation’) funding to the NT Government by 1 July 2008.

In October 2008 the then NT Indigenous Affairs Minister, Marion Scrymgour, released the NT government’s Outstations Policy Discussion Paper that sought to “…stimulate consultation and discussion over the development of a Northern Territory Government policy on outstations.”

As the ABC reported in mid-October 2008, the major premise of the discussion paper was that a large number of homelands in the NT would have their funding and in-kind government support withdrawn from 1 July 2009:

Govt moves to shut down Indigenous outstations. The Northern Territory Government is formulating a new policy to stop funding to remote outstations that aren’t fully established and permanent. The Minister for Indigenous Policy Marion Scrymgour has released a discussion paper on small remote communities and has called for community feedback.

A total of 43 submissions were received in response to the discussion paper and Pat Dodson was engaged to head a team to conduct a number of ‘community engagement’ sessions over a two week period in December 2008.

The Community Engagement Report (”the Dodson Report”, available here) of those consultations points, yet again, to the lack of available data upon which to base the policy outlined in the discussion paper and the need to collect data to measure the impact of the proposed policy:

For example, it is important to quantify what costs may be incurred by not investing in homelands. For example, loss of potential income from arts and tourism industries; loss of health and wellbeing; increased human services and infrastructure costs (e.g. correctional services, public housing, homelessness, police, alcohol and drug rehabilitation) through approximately 10,000 remote Indigenous Territorians moving permanently to larger communities and towns/ cities with some expected increase in anti-social behaviour. Finally, the cost benefit analysis needs to account for the significant contributions which homelands make (and could potentially make) to the cultural, social, health, environmental, economic and security values enjoyed by all Territorians and all Australians.

In relation to policy development and further consultation, the Dodson Report notes that:

During the community engagement sessions in December 2008, participants were informed that further community consultation on the development of the homelands policy would occur in March through June 2009. It is recommended that during these future consultation sessions that all available data, including the outcomes from the economic modeling study and the cost/benefit analysis, as well as NTG proposed regional models of delivery are presented for public comment.

In relation to policy implementation and the delivery of municipal services to homelands, the Dodson Report recommends:

That the NTG facilitate and coordinate negotiations between Shires and Homeland Resource Agencies (HRAs) to determine as to whom and how the essential and municipal services are to be delivered to all those living in homelands within each Shire area. Those in receipt of such services must be consulted as part of this process. Consideration should also be given to Shires eventually taking over the delivery of all essential and municipal services to homelands as part of their responsibilities as the third tier of Government.

Much of the Dodson Report is couched in the sort of bloodless bureaucratese that infects most government-commissioned reports. But perhaps the most disappointing revelation is contained in the first footnote:

It should be noted that many of the written submissions to the NTG were made after the originally published submission deadline of 1 December 2008. Because of the lateness of many of the submissions, not all were read by the authors in time to be considered in this report. Therefore, the recommendations within are derived in the main from the community engagement sessions held between 1-12 December 2008. Readers should note that the Office of Indigenous Policy (Department of the Chief Minister) is currently preparing a full analysis of all written and video submissions for consideration by the NTG.

So much for the NT government’s aim of “stimulat[ing] consultation and discussion over the development of a Northern Territory Government policy on outstations.”

Other concerns with the NT government’s handing of this policy remain.

When, if ever, will Anderson’s Office of Indigenous Policy publicly release all of the 43 submissions provided to Dodson and his team? Or even it’s “full analysis of all written and video submissions”?

Where is the analysis of the costs of the estimated “10,000 remote Indigenous Territorians moving permanently to larger communities and towns/ cities with some expected increase in anti-social behaviour”?

Where is the “further community consultation on the development of the homelands policy would occur in March through June 2009″?

One week ago the Northern Territory Indigenous Affairs Minister Alison Anderson announced her government’s ‘Working Future‘ policy the outcome, apparently, of her government’s analysis of the October 2008 Discussion paper and the Dodson report.

Two days later she appeared on the ABC’s NT version of Stateline, where she was interviewed by Mel James, the best television journalist on NT television.

Mel had obviously spotted a striking similarity between key components of Anderson’s plan and that originally proposed by John Howard’s Indigenous Affairs Minister, Mal Brough, in 2007.

Mel put this to Anderson in no uncertain terms:

MJ – Alison Anderson, this sounds very much like the policy that Mal Brough was proposing. It’s exactly the same isn’t it?

AA – Oh look, this has been a policy that’s been delivered and, um, developed by the Henderson Labor government. It’s got nothing to do with Mal Brough whatsoever.

MJ – It does sound remarkably similar to the plan that he was putting forward when he was the Indigenous Affairs Minister.

AA – This is the…like I said Mel, this is a policy thats been developed by, er, the, um, Henderson Labor government…

But, nothwithstanding Minister Anderson’s claims of authorship, there is a direct line that runs from Mal Brough and the handing of responsibility for homelands funding to the NT Government in September 2007, through the office of Brough’s successor Jenny Macklin, to the present day.

On important part of that connection is the decision by Macklin that imposed Commonwealth government conditions upon the State and Territory Housing Ministers in relation to remote Aboriginal housing.

In mid- January 2009 the National Indigenous Times reported that Macklin directed the Housing Ministers by letter in which she:

…tells the state and territory housing ministers that Commonwealth funds must not be spent on public housing on Aboriginal-owned land in remote regions unless Aboriginal landholders first agree to lease their property.

“Ensuring sufficient tenure to support substantial government investment in housing and infrastructure on Indigenous held land must be the first priority in order to allow housing projects to proceed quickly,” Macklin writes.

“The Australian Government minimum requirements in this regard are… government must have access to and control of the land on which construction will proceed for a minimum period of 40 years.”

…

Macklin also directs the states and territories to embark on a series of “tenancy management reforms” aimed at ensuring that landowners are not able to intervene in the relationship between the government, as the public housing provider, and the tenant.

She also instructs the ministers to ensure that if Aboriginal groups are acting as public housing providers, that no construction begins until they agree to be replaced at any time “if required”.

I have more to say about the apparent willful blindness that affects successive Federal and Territory Ministers in their development and implementation of policies for the provision of services to Aboriginal people in remote communities – but I’ll leave that for another day soon.

What these examples show is that Governments have a responsibility to ensure that when they develop and implement policies, particularly where those policies affect Aboriginal people living in remote circumstances, they have a responsibility to firmly ground the policy development in sound evidence and qualitative, social science research. It goes without saying that these same factors need to be considered through the implementation and life of the policy.

The NT Intervention is an exemplary case study in the costs (both in money and policy effectiveness terms) of not properly designing and implementing policies in this area.

We can already see the costs of the abject failure of the NT Intervention – what will be the costs of failure of Working Future?

Marion Scrymgour has never been one to hold back from a firmly held conviction – she has been fairly quiet since she stepped down to the backbench from her position as the most powerful elected Aboriginal politician earlier this year but in the last week or so she has come out in strong defense of those she says have been left out of the benefits that may flow from resource developments on her homelands, the Tiwi Islands, just offshore of Darwin.

The ABC reported Scrymgour’s latest comments on 19 May:

The Member for Arafura, Marion Scrymgour, is calling on the Federal Government to investigate the Tiwi Land Council’s finances and its efforts to stimulate economic development on the islands. Marion Scrymgour says she is sick of seeing failed commercial projects on the islands, including the marine harvest fish farm and the Matilda Minerals project. Now the future of forestry projects on the Tiwi Islands, which are run by Great Southern, are in doubt after the company went into administration. Ms Scrymgour says the land council was unwise to set up the deal with Great Southern. “I know a lot of Tiwis don’t have confidence in their own land council,” she said. “They’ve never had that confidence and until the Federal Government steps in with a bit more commitment, they’re never ever going to move forward with any economic prosperity.”

And while Scrymgour might be less than happy with the conduct of the Tiwi Land Council, the ABC report of the same day from her Chief Minister, Paul Henderson, could only muddy the waters:

The Northern Territory Government has promised to help the Tiwi Islands deal with the collapse of Great Southern, which has plantations on the Tiwi Islands. The Chief Minister, Paul Henderson, says the Government is willing to pitch in. “We’ll offer any assistance we possibly can to make sure those jobs are maintained on the Tiwi Islands,” he said. He has spoken to the Tiwi Island Land Council and offered to send across a business analyst to look at options for the future of the plantation.

Don’t you just love it when the left hand and the right hand talk from the same page?

The following day the ABC reported that the Senate Committee currently investigating the Tiwi Islands resource industries was concerned that it had taken 3 days for it comprehend how payments related to the forestry program might be distributed and of a climate of ‘fear and intimidation’ on the islands:

The Senate committee inquiry, which is examining the impact of forestry operations on the islands, yesterday held an in camera session because a number of women did not want to put their names on record. The Member for Arafura, Marion Scrymgour, says the women are concerned about the environmental and social impacts of the operations. She says some women have been threatened with physical abuse if they speak out. “The fear and the intimidation is a real thing and that’s what I keep saying,” she said. “People deny that it happens.” Meanwhile, the committee has raised concerns that it has taken three days of hearings for senators to work out how payments from Great Southern’s forestry operations on the islands are distributed to islanders.

…

But Senator Trish Crossin says the land council has not adequately communicated the royalty payment process to confused islanders. “They certainly need to be getting their message out better on how that money is collected, how you can access that money and how that money is given.” Great Southern was expected to appear before the committee today but its appearance was postponed because of the company’s recent fall into voluntary receivership.

There is no shortage of shills, hucksters and flim-flam men in the NT – sometimes they sit on the Government benches, sometimes they operate businesses big or small and sometimes they walk into the offices of the largest landowners in the NT – the Aboriginal land councils that, between the four established under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (NT), administer nearly half of the land mass in the NT.

The Tiwi Land Council is one of the smaller land councils and controls just about everything that goes on on Melville and Bathurst Islands to the north of Darwin. The Tiwi people have always regarded themselves, for good reasons, as linguistically, culturally and politically distinct from mainland blackfellas.

Those distinctions have been good for the Tiwi Land Council – they’ve been able to avoid some of the more egregious attention paid to the activities of their mainland counterparts by governments and the often rabid bites of the mainstream press and the Tiwis have been able to get political and commercial support because of their apparent readiness to do business – even it was business of dubious value.

The deal that is currently under the Senate’s spotlight are the arrangements between the Tiwi Land Council and Great Southern, the promoter of broad-acre MIS forestry schemes on the islands, which have seen vast swathes of virgin tropical savanna transformed into a monocrop of the fast growing Acacia mangium.

Crikey readers will be familiar with the controversy that arose around the Tiwi Land Council’s conduct in relation to the contentious 99-year lease deal over the largest township on the Tiwi islands, Nguiu, from reports from reports in Crikey here and here.

Crikey has also reported on the Tiwi forestry concerns before here and here.

In 2007 the ABC’s Background Briefing broadcast the most thorough media report on the timber industry on the Tiwi Islands to date.

Wendy Carlisle noted that the proposal had some serious problems from the start:

…in the ’90s, former Territory Chief Minister, Paul Everingham’s company, Sylvatech, restarted the dream. It was a grand vision of riches for all. They sought and gained under new Federal environmental laws, permission to clear 28,000 hectares of native forest. But there was no independent environmental impact assessment and no public consultation process
…
The reports also claimed that there would be a nett greenhouse benefit from replacing the forests with the acacias. Yet there was no reckoning with 9-1/2-million tonnes of greenhouse gases that would be emitted by clearing the forest in the first place. Or that they would be replaced with the acacias that would then be harvested for their pulp.

And an important, some say vital, part of the Sylvatech deal was that it would get to sell off the existing Cypress Pine plantations and Eucalypt logs felled by the clearing of the plantation coupes.

Wendy Carlisle spoke to Professor Brendan Mackey Director, ANU Wild Country Research and Policy Hub about the forests of the Tiwi islands. Mackey gives a clear indication of the importance of the forest cleared on Melville Island.

Brendan Mackey: That’s right, Northern Australia, taken as a whole, is one of the most intact natural areas left in the tropical world. Certainly most of the areas that are what we call tropical woodland and the eucalypt forests on Tiwi Islands, fall in that category. They’re not closed rainforest like you find in the Amazon, they have been severely degraded just about everywhere else in the world, and really Northern Australia, and this is the main point we’re making in our report on Northern Australia, is it represents one of the last chances to do something sensible in a tropical woodland environment.
Wendy Carlisle: Your report looks at all the top of Australia, from Cape York right across to the Kimberley, so in terms of the importance of the Tiwi forest, how significant are they in that huge sweep?
Brendan Mackey: They are the most productive, biologically productive forests in Northern Australia. They have the best rainfall and the best soil, so they really are the jewel in the crown.

Background Briefing again:

Wendy Carlisle: In 2003 Sylvatech and the Tiwi Land Council began exporting timber from the old pines, and the best of the timber from the cleared forests to China. There were wild estimates of the value of the deal to the Tiwis.

ABC News report: It’s a deal that’s worth about $1.5-million a year for the Tiwis who will fill more than half of the expected 250 jobs. Canberra says everyone’s a winner.
…
Wendy Carlisle: Over the next four years, seven barges of Red Tiwi sailed for China. But it was a fiasco. Instead of being worth millions, the shipments made a loss of over $700,000.

In 2005 Sylvatech was bought out by Great Southern Plantations – which collapsed in spectacular fashion nine days ago.

Tiwi Land Council Secretary John Hicks and the Tiwi Land Council appear to be comfortable with timber and other resource companies that fail. As The Australian’s Paul Toohey reported, Hicks told him that:

…the Tiwis had seen their forestry projects fall apart eight times in the past 30 years. They believe they can ride out the collapse of Great Southern, which acquired the project from Sylvatech in 2005.

“The pattern of these receiverships is not something we’re unfamiliar with,” Mr Hicks said. “Great Southern has far more impact upon us (than previous failures); however, Great Southern don’t own the trees. They’re owned by 2700 mum-and-dad investors and Great Southern managed the forests on their behalf.”

In December 2008 the Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications and the Arts commissioned an “Inquiry into Forestry and Mining operations on the Tiwi Islands“, the major focus of which has been on the arrangements between the Tiwi Land Council, Sylvatech and, since 2005, Great Southern Plantations.

To date the Committee has received thirty-four submissions. Like all such inquiries the submissions range from the self-serving to the irrelevant, overly long, tedious or just wrong-headed.

But there are a few real gems, including that of Professor Stephen Garnett of the School for Environmental Research at the Charles Darwin University. Garnett points to a recent research paper that indicates the Tiwi may have been dudded big-time and would have been better off leaving their precious tropical savanna untouched rather than signing up to a tax rort:

The paper estimated that the Tiwi Islands forests that were logged by Great Southern Plantations in 2008 could have been worth up to $110 million under a REDD scheme under the Gold Standard of the voluntary carbon market.
…we recommend the inquiry determine why Tiwi Islanders appear to have been denied the opportunity to benefit from REDD opportunities…We think this is because of the way in which Great Southern finance their operations – that the tax savings available under a Managed Investment Scheme could only be attained if the forests were felled.

Dr Ken Eldridge has degrees in botany and forestry and, with more than 50 years experience of research and development in forest genetics and tree breeding, is well qualified to comment on the Tiwi forestry issues.

His submission expressed his personal opinions, and not those of the IFA or of CSIRO:

My impression of the Tiwi plantations, having seen industrial plantations of many species in several countries, was that ‘GSL have achieved good survival and weed control, and the trees were healthy with little damage from insects or fungi. However, stem and branch form was not good, many trees having forks, crooked stems or coarse branches. Such poor form is common when genetically unimproved ‘wild’ seed is used in Acacia mangium plantations elsewhere.’ Such form deficiencies reduce the return at harvest due to reduced yield and the extra cost of delimbing and debarking, prior to chipping for export at age 8 to 10 years.

In other words – they are planting and growing low grade seed-stock that will give poor returns.

Another of the very interesting submissions to the Committee is that of Peter Robertson, who for several years while living in Darwin and working for an environment NGO undertook investigations into the operation of the Tiwi (Melville Island) plantation project.

Robertson makes several important points about the administrative and corporate arrangements, sales and returns to the Tiwi, including that in addition to the MIS proponent Great Southern Ltd, and project ‘partner’ the Tiwi Land Council:

…there are at least four other corporate entities involved in
the Tiwi Island woodchip plantation project:
- Pirntubula Ltd
- Pentarch Forest Products Ltd;
- PenSyl Ltd; and
- Stratus Shipping Ltd.
There is a fundamental lack of transparency about the legal commercial agreements and contracts
that exist between the companies involved in the exploitation of the Tiwi forests and plantations.

…

There is far too little readily available information about these companies or the project’s
financial structure showing how much income each is making out of clearing the Island’s forests
and subsequent shipping and sale of high quality logs, or how much each will make out of the
woodchip export part of the project when it commences.
…
‘Commercial confidentially’ cannot be used as an excuse to deprive the Island’s landowners and
communities of clear and understandable information about the commercial involvement of these
companies in the exploitation of the Island’s natural resources, and the risks involved.

In relation to the valuation of the land used by Great Southern Robertson notes that:

There are two crucial issues here:
(a) how was the leasehold value of the Tiwi ‘Aboriginal Freehold’ land for plantation
establishment arrived at;
(b) how does it compare with leasehold land valuations for plantations elsewhere?
The Tiwi Islanders are being paid “~$17/hectare per annum (+ 2% of net harvest proceeds) for
plantation ready land and ~$1/ha pa for land that is not plantation ready”

There is ample evidence that this amount is a fraction of the amount landowners are paid by
plantation companies in southern Australia. An ANU research paper summarised lease payments
across Australia and found that they ranged from $75/ha/pa up to $300/ha/pa. The average is
around $150/ha/pa – or nearly 10 times the amount Tiwi TO’s are being paid. These are
already old figures and the current rates are likely to be much higher still.

Concerning the shipment and sale of logs clear-felled from the forestry site Roberston says:

According to GSL and the Tiwi Land Council, under the existing commercial arrangement the
Tiwi Traditional Owners will receive “2% of net harvest proceeds” from the eventual sale of
acacia mangium woodchips from Melville Island.
This means that only after all the other corporate parties involved – GSL and its tax minimisation
investors, Pentarch, Stratus Shipping, etc – have taken their cut of the income and profits will the
Traditional Owners receive a potentially miniscule residual income.
In fact, based on the log sale fiasco, it is quite plausible that they will end up receiving nothing at
all, especially if there is a fall in the overseas commodity price for woodchips, which is entirely
foreseeable.

And local MLA Marion Scrymgour, never one to suffer a fool gladly, has been concerned about the operations of the Tiwi Land Council for some time. As she said in a letter to yesterdays NT News:

There are many other things I have to say about the Tiwi Land Council and its governance but I will leave that for my submission to the Senate Committee.

Watch this space.

Fittingly the dead marsupial on the cover is a…you’ve got it, a Red Kangaroo, Macropus rufus.

Roadkill is a modest book by Len Zell, an Honorary Associate of the School of Environmental Sciences and Resource Management at the University of New England. Roadkill runs to 102 pages but is packed with interesting stuff – particularly for the newbie roadkiller.

Dealing with dead animals always contains a degree of risk, and I love Zell’s disclaimer at the front of Roadkill. Zell says that he:

…accepts no responsibility for any loss, inconvenience, injury, or feeling of angst, disgust or nausea sustained by any person using this book. All recipes are tongue-in-cheek and anyone considering using them should only use meat obtained from safe sources, as roadkill is likely to be infested with parasites and other not-so-clean aspects.

Okay, it seems that Len Zell has found that rarest of creatures – a lawyer who can write a funny legal disclaimer!

But more seriously, this little book is packed with all sorts of useful (and some irreverent and funny) suggestions.

These include a definition and scope of the roadkill problem, how to avoid killing things as much as possible and, perhaps most importantly, and wise advice about what to do with roadkill and being aware of the worst case scenarios:

If an animal comes clean through the windscreen, e.g. a kangaroo, they can kill you or your passenger should you be going fast enough. Once inside the car the frightened animal may be still able to try to get out and in the process destroy or damage the occupants or a car’s interior. There is very little you can do in this circumstance other than stopping the car, opening the doors and hoping.

…

To swerve or not to swerve – the answer is simple: DO NOT SWERVE unless you are going slowly enough to be able to maintain complete control of the car.

…If you see or hit an animal on the road, ensure that it is dead before moving on.

All good advice. The rest of the book is a sort of taxonomy of roadkill – the ’spineless’, the ‘wet and dry’, the ’scaly’, the ‘big flying feathered’, the ‘hairy warm’ and the ‘feral’ roadkill. Then follows a useful list of contacts and websites, a Bibliography and, what is a sad rarity in too much of Australian non-fiction, an index for handy cross referencing.

If you work in animal rehabilitation, spend long hours behind the wheel driving across the wide open roads of this wonderful country or are just interested in roadkill I can highly recommend this book for your bookshelf or glovebox.

Roadkill will come in handy when next you run into a Black Kite as it lifts, engorged with rotting flesh and on struggling wings, off a carcass on the roadside – or when you run into a wombat, a snake, a horse…you get the drift.

You should be able to find the book at most good booksellers – but please take the time to buy it, and all of your books, from an independent bookstore.

Or you can try the publisher, Wild Discovery Guides here.

The collapse of Great Southern and Timbercorp has only served to highlight the flaws in an industry that many believed was unsustainable from the beginning. “The original plan was to get city money into the bush,” says Liberal senator Bill Heffernan, a long-time critic of the MIS industry. “But it quickly grew into an industry of greed that relied on the generosity of the Australian taxpayer.”

And he might have added the venality of the promoters and the rank foolishness of the so-called investors.

Not long ago, just before Great Southern really went south, Michael Pascoe had this to say about the banks that have supported these rorts and the mug punters that invested in them:

So ANZ has a $500 million exposure to the failed Timbercorp tax deduction empire. What fools. It’s hard to know for whom to feel the most scorn – bankers stupid enough to back inherently flawed businesses or the mugs suckered into buying products on the lure of tax deductions – and the salesmanship that tends to come with particularly fat commissions. And then there’s Great Southern Plantations, trading presently suspended pending some further attempt at rescue. Ditto the scorn for all involved. Oh, and the various “independent” expert reports that have been purchased by management at various times, never mind alleged “investment recommendations”.

Angus Grigg also makes the following interesting comments about the impact of the MIS industry on the Douglas Daly region to the south-west of Darwin:

The Douglas Daly region of the NT provides a recent example of how quickly an area can change once the MIS industry moves in. The Queensland Country Life newspaper has reported a doubling of prices for cleared freehold land over a two year period.

…

It also estimates that 50 per cent of the 100,000 hectares of freehold land in the region, two hours south of Darwin, has been snapped up by the MIS industry. To many observers the situation in the Douglas Daly neatly encompasses the advantages enjoyed by the MIS industry over traditional agriculture.

The ABC’s The Country Hour covered the controversy over the MIS schemes move into the Douglas Daly in March 2008.

Back then it reported that:

In the Daly, south-west of Darwin it’s believed cleared land that was worth about $1m a few years ago is now being sold for up to $14m. Herron Todd White’s Land valuer Frank Peacock says he’s heard the same thing, but he couldn’t be specific about which properties are changing hands because many of them are still being settled. He can confirm though, that there has been huge interest from forestry companies. “The majority of land sales over the last 18 – 24 months has been to timber plantation companies and I’d estimate close to half the freehold area in the Douglas Daly would have gone to tree growers.”

He says freehold land, as opposed to pastoral land, has risen to $2,500 a hectare, and some sales have risen to $4,000 a hectare. “It’s unprecedented really for cleared freehold land in the Daly. It’s just a matter of supply and demand and there’s only 25 or so properties in the Douglas-Daly and they have the rainfall and the close proximity to the Port of Darwin and they also have the well-drained red soils and when it’s in tight supply that will underpin demand.’ The Northern Territory government’s moratorium [on land clearing] on the Daly has also seen prices elevated, and Mr Peacock expects values will hold because there are up to five plantations companies vying for freehold land in the Daly.

The Country Hour believes the forestry companies buying up land are Great Southern Limited, Timbercorp, Northern Tropical Timber, and Plantation Tropical Timbers. New South Wales Snowy River grazier Robert Belcher compares these companies to cancer. He’s dedicated his life to lobbying against corporate forestry companies because he says he’s seen the devastation they cause to rural communities. “The first thing you’ll see is a massive acquisition of land, that will displace population and you’ll start suffering population decline which means your infrastructure services will decline. For example educational facilities, health facilities, that sort of thing. I’ve seen it in every state in Australia. “It happens everywhere where there’s rainfall and decent soils. Anywhere from Grafton in New South Wales to Tasmania.”

…

But, one of Australia’s largest tree companies has rejected claims it’s driving farmers out of the Douglas-Daly region.

Great Southern Limited, has recently purchased land in the area, to plant African Mahogany trees. Communication manager David Ikin says the forest industry will strongly support the local region.

And at about the same time the ABC also reported the comments about the effects of the MIS industry from of the operators of a company established to produce biofuel in the NT:

But, Energy Crops Australia were more concerned with what’s happening in the Douglas Daly because they can no longer afford to invest there. “The Douglas Daly has been crucified by the managed investment scheme where the price of land has escalated beyond all reality. Come By Chance (sic – should be “Kumbyechants”) sold for $15 million dollars, purchased for $1.4m four years ago. It’s out of anyone’s price range who hasn’t got massive tax deductibility.” He says these companies will crucify the community and have devastating social implications. “The Douglas Daly as a farming community is finished. When people are getting that sort of money they’re just taking the money and running so there’ll be no farming in the Daly, there’ll be just trees.” He says he’s aware of Great Southern Plantations, Timbercorp and another two forestry companies buying up land in the region.

And, as that icon of independent journalism, the NT News reported as recently as January this year, a lot more land in the Douglas Daly was being acquired, or was targeted for acquisition, to be turned into plantations:

The Northern Territory’s timber industry is likely to undergo a rapid expansion following the buyout of four cattle stations. Up to 40% of the newly-acquired stations will be planted with African mahoganies and the rest of the land kept for cattle. The stations are the 5000ha Stray Creek, 16,000ha Gypsy Spring and 5000ha Kumbyechants in the Douglas Daly region and the 5000ha Rocktear Park near Katherine.
Plantation Tropical Timbers paid $5.9 million for Kumbyechants and Willmott Forests paid $5.5 million for Rocktear Park.The stations are all small but further buyouts are expected.

As recently as three weeks ago the voice of the Australian plantation timber industry, the Australian Plantation Products and Paper Industry Council was trying to put a brave-faced spin on the imminent collapse of the MIS house of cards :

Timber plantations funded through managed investment schemes (MIS) will continue to grow a large proportion of Australia’s future wood resource, despite the decision by leading agribusiness MIS manager, Timbercorp, to go into voluntary administration. Richard Stanton, CEO of Australian Plantation Products and Paper Industry Council (A3P) said today that Timbercorp’s decision was a response to the convergence of several factors directly affecting that company’s business, and did not indicate an impending collapse in plantation forestry investment or some inherent problem with the MIS business model. “Forestry remains a sound long-term investment, negatively correlated with other asset classes, which many regard as an important element of a diversified investment portfolio,” Stanton said…”Up from about 5% in the late 1990s, MIS forestry now accounts for more than a third of the national plantation estate – nearly 700,000ha of 1.97m ha at the end of 2008 – and over 80% of the annual establishment of new timber plantations, as well as a substantial and increasing area of replanting following final harvest.

It is a little too early to tell what the medium-term effects of the collapse of these schemes will have on the viability of what is undoubtedly a valuable and useful agricultural enterprise – there is nothing wrong with growing high-value fine grade timber, for which there is a growing market – but it remains to be seen how many of the trees that have been planted will ever be harvested – or just be left to rot in the ground.

But back to Blinky Bill Heffernan – the ABC reports today that:

Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan has announced the Senate’s current inquiry into food production will now also consider the impact of MIS. He says startling evidence has already come forward.

Looks like the Senate Committee are going to be very busy in the NT for a while – the Senate Environment, Communications and the Arts Committee is currently conducting an inquiry – with Hearings on the Tiwi Islands as I’m writing this post – into “forestry and mining operations on the Tiwi Islands”.

You can see the Terms of Reference for that Committee here and what appear (because I haven’t got around to looking at them…yet) to be a very interesting set of Submissions – here.

The collapse of Great Southern is of great importance to the Tiwi islanders – Great Southern bought out the previous operators, Sylvatech, a few years ago and the forestry scheme, which will produce pulp from about 30,000 hectares of Tiwi lands, has been mired in a web of controversy since the beginning – a coming attraction here at the Northern Myth.

The forestry operations on the Tiwi Islands are a very complex issue to tackle – so bear with my while I get my head around it!

“…a poor dried up land afflicted by fever and flies and fit only for a college of monks whose religious zeal might cope with the suffocating heat and musketos which admitted no moment of repose.”

Matthew Flinders describing northern Australia, The Northern Myth, p. 3.

The fever (more than one really – the NT was rife with malaria and dengue, among others, in early days) may have gone but the flies, the suffocating heat and the mosquitos are still pretty much as Flinders described them all those years ago.

Bruce Davidson’s book “The Northern Myth” was first published in 1965 and set out to dispel the then popular belief that tropical Australia could be easily transformed into a magical land of milk and honey from which boundless agricultural wealth for all would flow. Davidson’s book should be mandatory reading for any contemporary politician or self-professed land manager who puts “the north”, “water” and “broad-acre tropical agriculture” within a bull’s roar of each other.

At least one of Davidson’s predictions has become largely true. At page 287 he concluded that “the future still lies with large dry-land cattle properties operated by companies or individuals with adequate capital, which remain the only economic form of development possible in tropical Australia”.

Here I want to have a quick look at Chapter 1 of The Northern Myth, entitled “Motives and Objectives in Northern Australia”.

Davidson opens his book with look at some of the myths and ignorance that informed much of what passed for the minimal interest in the far-flung north to those living in the temperate south.

Davidson asks some uncomfortable questions that “few Australians have ever asked themselves”:

1 – Why should we develop Northern Australia?

2 – Why hasn’t it developed at the same rate as the southern half of the continent?

3 – Why is agricultural settlement considered the right sort of development?

4 – If agricultural development is desirable, has our approach to the problem been a sensible one?

Davidson then notes six motives that he says have dominated Australian thoughts on northern Australia:

1 – Unless the north is occupied by Australians it will be occupied by our neighbours iin southern and eastern Asia who have insufficient agricultural land.

2 – It is essential to have a large population in the north to defend the area.

3 – Valuable resources in the form of land, water and minerals which are close to large markets in Asia are being wasted.

4 – Agricultural development is essential in northern Australia to supply the undernourished regions of the world, particularly Asia, with food.

5 – Tropical crops could be produced in northern Australia as part of an import-saving campaign to preserve our balance of payments.

6 The north must be developed to raise the standard of living of the aboriginal.

Davidson says that the motive to populate the north to prevent an invasion from the north – use it or lose it – is the oldest suggestion and one that motivated much of the early activity in the north – but a motive that he no longer says applies. And he then methodically and forensically proceeds to banish the other motives as unfounded, the product of too-feverish political opportunism or a failure to appreciate and learn from the lessons of recent Asian and Australian history.

In relation to the suggestion that northern Australia should be developed because a large proposrtion of its population are aboriginal people whose standard of living needs to be raised to that of the rest of the Australian population, Davidson notes that this is, or was at 1965, the “least discussed reason for development.”

Davidson wrote The Northern Myth shortly before action by the Northern Australian Workers’ Union led to the Equal Pay Award in 1966 and almost immediately after that decision was handed down Aboriginal employment in the pastoral industry across the north plummeted – with many productive Aboriginal workers ejected from their homes on remote stations and drifting to an uncertain future of unemployment and poverty on the fringes of the town and cities across the north.

And Davidson’s book was written almost a decade before the establishment of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 of the Commonwealth which has resulted in the grant of over 40% of the Northern Territory land area to Aboriginal people.

Davidson’s assessment of the role of Aboriginal workers in the pastoral and other industries in northern Australia are still worth reading:

Aborigines are employed as a part-time labour force in the pastoral industry and this form of employment has probably retarded integration and raising of living standards. If the Aborigine is only to be used as a part-time labourer in any agricultural settlement, it is dountful if his situation would improve. The meat works in the north have never employed aborigines inside the meat-works even in semi-skilled occupations although Aboriginal labour could have been obtained at far lower cost than labour imported from southern Australia.

And Davidson provides an early example of an idea that has recently been revived in some quarters – that of assimilation (here referred to as ‘integration’) through internal Aboriginal migration:

It is possible that the standard of living of the Aborigines would rise faster and integration would take place at a greater rate if they were encouraged to migrate to the southern cities, where they would form a far smaller proportion of the total population and would have a far wider range of opportunities for education and employment.

With a prescient nod to more recent debates about development of the north, Davidson advises that any northern development cannot operate on the basis of an abundance of one or more particular resource but will need to be part of a matrix of physical financial and social resources and restates what should be an obvious point – that the north has to produce more, and do it more cheaply than southern areas:

Unless it can be established that a given combination of land, water, capital and labour in northern Australia would produce a larger output than the same combination of labour and capital with land in some other region of Australia or with some other natural resource, it cannot be said that land and water are being wasted in the north.

With limited labour and capital it is impossible to develop all our land.

Concluding Chapter 1 of The Northern Myth, Davidson, having dismissed social and defence reasons for northern development, refines his enquiries and the focus of the rest of his book:

…it is the purpose of this work to examine the last three premises…are resources in the form of land and water being wasted in northern Australia or, in other words, would their combination with labour and capital, using the best techniques known, yield an output of greater value that that of the resources used, or yield a greater output than the capital and labour employed would yield in some other use?

Similarly, comparisons between the cost of producing various products in northern and southern Australia can be made to discover where these crops could be produced most cheaply.

I’ll slowly work my way through the rest of Davidson’s book over the next few months. I’d really appreciate any comments or suggestions that you might have about Davidson’s ideas, the current debate and proposals for northern development and any other related issues.

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