World Watches as Wik plan favours the rich

Who stands to benefit  from the Howard government's 10-point Wik plan for the effective extinguishment of native title. Certainly not Aborigines and the hardy battlers occupying marginal leases. The biggest beneficiaries will be those with the biggest pastoral leases.

It is no surprise that the biggest leases belong to some of the richest and most powerful companies and individuals. The influence of this group is magnified by the media and political connections of some of the biggest players.

Mr Kerry Packer.    owner of the Nine Network and more than half the local magazine market and potential buyer of the Fairfax group ( owns the AGE) is the seventh largest pastoralist in the country.

Mr. Rupert Murdoch who controls about 70% of major newspaper circulation around  Australia.  He owns nine properties in New South Wales and Western Australia. 

Australia's top private landholder, Mr Hugh McLachlan is the cousin of the Federal Defence Minister, Mr. Ian McLachlan.  The second largest landowner is the McDonald family, which is run by Mr. Jim McDonald and his two sons, one of whom, Don, is the federal president of the National Party.

Mr Howard is burning up a lot of his domestic capital to fight an unethical legislative war against Australia's most disadvantaged group on behalf of Australian and Asian millionaires.

To win he will have to change the political composition of the High Court by filling three impending casual vacancies with appointees willing to reverse the Wik decision.

He runs the risk of turning his government (and Australia) into a racist pariah.
Already Australia is developing a reputation as an environmental vandal, prepared to sabotage global efforts to impose greenhouse gas emissions targets that would not suit Australian's aluminium industry.

All Australia needs to become a pariah state is an election fought on Aboriginal land rights and for Mr Howard to win on the basis of his 10-point plan.

Statesmanship requires government capable of imagining the world opinion as it will be in the 2000 at the time of the Olympic Games. Can't the people who preach the virtues of global disciplines think ahead?

In 2000 the rest of the world is going to be far tougher on countries that are perceived as racist land thieves and environmental renegades than it will on those with low tariff duties, rather than no duties, on clothing, textile and footwear and car imports.

The pastoral industry in the remote regions of Australia has no future next century. For the most part, the industry is already uneconomic. The meagre profits that are available  are extracted at the expense of the environment.

The future of the commodity trade is bleak........particularly sheep and cattle grazing on margin land that typifies pastoral leasehold.

A government concerned with making decisions that link the future with the present in a manner  that ethical, economical, culturally enriching and environmental sound, would consider extinguishing pastoral leases in order to enhance native title.

Early next century wilderness values will increase Aborigines will be better able to exploit this value than graziers.

How do we create the impressions that are necessary to create the new world of ethical opportunity?  Part of the answer must lie in the way we measure success.

GDP (Gross National Product) is no longer a satisfactory measure of National Wellbeing.  Because it fails to take into account the human cost of pollution, soil degradation, widening income differential, increased national debt, the run down of the public infrastructure, overwork, unemployment and under deployment, it may be giving misleading signals about economic priorities---- even in terms of achieving the narrow goals of GDP maximisation in the long term>

Economists around the world have been working on this problem and have come up with the idea of the GPI (genuine progress indicator).  Two Canberra economists, Dr. Clive Hamilton of the Australian Institute and Dr Hugh Sadler of Energy Strategy P/L, have come up with a GPI indicator that shows Australian progress stagnant since the late 1970s.

Environmental economics has been burrowing away at the rotten foundations of economic rationalism for some years and has emerged as a real challenge to old economic orthodoxy.

The subject is now sufficiently mainstream to warrant a conference in Canberra on Friday sponsored by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the CSIRO and the National Citizenship progress, (sponsored by Swinburne University and funded by the Australian Research Council and the Myer foundation)

The ideas are around.  But will they arrive in the public consciousness in time?

Extract THE AGE (MELB) 1st edition Thursday 3 July 1997 page A27