Sifting Through The Ashes

'Tis more fun to look for things than to find them

How do you feel about creatively holding the Government to account? It seems like fun to me, and possibly necessary (otherwise no one will pay attention). I’m not quite sure how to do it though. I’ve been chatting with a Westpac Scholar in Tasmania about it, and was reminded of an old project idea I had of digging up old departmental goals and checking whether any of them were met or not.

What better place to find departmental goals than an annual report?*

The hunt for annual reports can be uneven and arduous. Some present themselves to you freely (thank you RFS). Others hide behind broken links or are altogether gone. For the spirit of the NSW Environment Department (more name changes than a football stadium) I managed to get as far back as 2003-2004 but there the road stopped. The 2002-2003 report sits tantalisingly here - we are encouraged to download the whole thing “if you have a broadband internet connection” but alas, the link to the whole thing and its constituent parts (for those with a dial up connection) is broken.

I headed over to the Environment Department’s publication search page and tried sorting annual report search results by publication year (reverse order). First up is The Future of the Kosciusko Summit Area A Report on a Proposed Primitive Area in the Kosciusko State Park, dating back to 1961 - almost twenty years before yours truly was born. Sadly there was no mention of brumbies or horses. There are however a few references to fauna, starting a with a long passage worth quoting in full:

All local and visiting biologists are impressed by the fact that, after only a short period of settlement, very few virgin areas of native vegetation survive in Australia. Native plants, birds and animals are rapidly disappearing from the scene, even in districts in which there is no settlement as yet. A number of primitive areas will be essential if we wish to preserve for posterity characteristic examples of the Australian biota still existing in their natural environment, so that they can be studied by the scientist and, at the same time, provide a living museum for the naturalist and layman. Such primitive areas must be large enough to ensure that hydrological features, soil, and local climate are undisturbed by man's activities; large enough also to ensure that the ecological balance of the plant and animal communities is maintained. It follows that grazing, forestry, roadmaking and all
engineering activities are out of place in a primitive area.

The report notes that the proposed area “has been seriously damaged by fire” and later in the appendix states: “The animal life of the area has not yet been intensively studied, but there is little doubt that the fauna includes rare species found in few other places, if at all.”

Moving on, we come across many provocative titles, including Indigenous Kinship with the Natural World in NSW, from 2003. This report describes a project

that looked at Aboriginal culture in New South Wales and whether 'totemism' is an appropriate way to describe the affiliations Aboriginal people have with plants, animals and the landscape.

Totemism is not a word I hear used very often these days. The report is engagingly written and worth your time. See sections like “A Guide For The Perplexed” and “Swimming Upstream: Reconciliation and Australia’s Future”. One recommendation bears repeating here: “NPWS to provide greater assistance to people in defending their intellectual and biological resources”. The report makes reference to cultural fire and fire-stick farming.

One year later and we find the National Biodiversity and Climate Change Action Plan 2004-2007. There is something both fascinating and harrowing about uncovering old reports about climate change. Like finding notes from your childhood about all the great things you will do - but never did. The report refers to altered fire regimes, something for which there was little concrete evidence back then. Now we are drowning in it. We also find repeated versions of the same objective - one I recall well from my environment department days - “To minimise the impacts of climate change”. I have never seen a minimised impact in the wild - perhaps the altered world we find about us today is in fact the optimised version of what could have been, had we not gone about minimising all those impacts back in 2004. There is concern in the report but to me it feels detached, like a threat has been identified and is in the process of being neutralised. I wonder when Commonwealth Government reporting will start to feel commensurate with the scale of the climate catastrophe currently unfolding.

The report includes this quaint figure

Temperature trends, from a 2004 biodiversity and climate report (Source: Commonwealth Government)

Now let’s take a look at the latest one. I’ve averaged the maximum and minimum temperatures from the above figure to make a single line: mean temperatures (yes, this is how mean temperature is calculated).

Temperature trends (Source: Bureau of Meteorology)

Looks a lot worse, doesn’t it? Interestingly, the use of bars instead of a continuous line makes it much easier to track the trend. The same kind of plot used in 2004 would have told a much more compelling story. Is this biased presentation?

Oh dear, would you look at the time? It’s the end of the post and I haven’t even gotten into the reported goals from fire agency annual reports. That will have to wait for another time.

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*I challenge readers to use ‘What better’ in a sentence. Bonus points for including it in a peer reviewed scientific journal article.