Leftist darling Tim Flannery is well known for his unfortunate habit of making dud climate predictions, then flatly denying ever having made them. Less remarked is his habit of letting slip with statements which raise the ire of his lefty chums. For instance, in his The Future Eaters, Flannery argued that New Zealand’s Maori population had over-consumed their natural resources to the extent that they were reduced to cannibalism to survive. The arrival of Europeans, he hinted, saved the Maori from self-extinction.
Flannery was suitably chastened for his “racist” view – in much the same way that Aboriginal academic Marcia Langton has berated Flannery for what she claims is his “racist belief that indigenous Australians are ‘enemies of nature’”.
Then there was Flannery’s sensible argument that a well-regulated whaling industry should be considered. You can guess how well that went over.
Flannery has also argued that Australia should secure its future by remaining a low-population agricultural nation – the “food bowl of Asia” – and concentrating its defence efforts on keeping out regional powers who might think to grab all that food-producing land for themselves.
Who wants to take bets on how long that argument will last, now that the wicked farmers are taking a stand against the virtuous environmentalists and animal activists?
Finally! The National Farmers Federation has announced that it will implement a long-term public relations campaign to mobilise public and political support for a major expansion of the agricultural industry in Australia and to combat the zealotry of animal rights activists and green extremists. Such a response is well overdue.
The NFF is making the same argument as Flannery: Australia is well placed to be the major food supplier to a growing world population. But the NFF has, belatedly, realised that it is fighting a deeply-entrenched elite which views all agriculture as the “rape of Mother Earth”. This urban elite is implacably dedicated to attacking and shutting down development in almost all forms.
Australia is afflicted with deeply entrenched anti-development forces. It must therefore re-affirm its national identity as a frontier society, ready to engage in nation-building projects on a continental scale, and prepared systematically to harness the natural and human resources required to develop a thriving, highly productive society. This is a battle that must be won in the realm of culture, and it can no more be ignored than the financial or physical infrastructure requirements of this gigantic project can be ignored.
Radical environmentalists have had a free ride in Australia for decades, shutting down innumerable worthwhile projects and strangling others in green tape and with “law-fare”…complex, capital-intensive projects will be slandered, stymied, suffocated and sabotaged by a well-resourced cadre of cosseted vandals (“protesters”) aided and protected by an array of political, legal, judicial, academic and media supporters.
Even worse, these modern-day Luddites are funded by the taxpayer, not just through the dole, but through publicly-funded bodies like the “Environmental Defenders Office”.
Put succinctly, the primary industry sector (both agriculture and mining) in Australia is facing a crisis because neither it nor various governments over the past fifty years have been prepared to combat the corrosive impact of the black-armband view of history. They opted out of the ideological struggle and now they are paying the price.
Nevertheless, the challenge must be undertaken.
That the hero-myths of the bushman, jackaroo and jillaroo, the ANZAC, and other heroic characters refuse to die suggests how deep the love of the frontier is embedded in the Australian psyche.
Moreover, there is significant latent popular support for the nation-building, frontier society ethos that historically underpinned the development of Australia […]for generations the opportunities provided by this nation-building project attracted millions of settlers and immigrants determined to make their lives in Australia and to hand something on to their children and future generations. It is this ambitious, forward-thinking and optimistic nation-building spirit that explains the ease with which our society remains remarkably cohesive despite the fact that a huge proportion of its population is overseas-born.
Vast numbers of Australians want to make something of their country and to contribute significantly to the world. Hopefully, the NFF and the federal and New South Wales governments are now recognising that a once-in-a-generation opportunity now exists to re-kindle the foundational spirit of Australia as a frontier society. However, fine talk will not suffice, and these key actors must be prepared to engage vigorously in an ideological struggle if the enormous damage inflicted on Australia by fifty years of Green-Left propaganda is to be successfully combated and the enormous potential of our country is once again to be realised.
quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/12/australias-opportunity-for-a-new-frontier/
