A different perspective

There has been plenty of talk about "them" in the last week, and finally we are beginning to hear from those who are being talked about so much:

The Age yesterday received the following letter from a 13-year-old girl, written on behalf of her grandfather, a Warlpiri man from the NT.

I COME from one of the largest remote communities in the Northern Territory. Mal Brough and his team consulted the wrong people. He talked to only a handful and some are offenders themselves. How can we come to meeting when I can't tell time?

We wanted to say things but he left so fast. Some of the things he said are not what we agree on. Traditional owners cannot speak for us.

We never heard of all this rape and constant drinking here. That stuff happens mostly in the town areas. There is some but not the same as he says. Maybe same as Sydney or Adelaide.

If we have problem we always sort it out ourself. Spears stop even the worst of them. If bad stuff happens, they wait till night. Police don't patrol at night and our night patrol can't get money. Me and my family feel safer (with) night patrol than police. Police treat us like dogs sometimes.

Most drinking here is done by whitefellas who have drinking permit and we know they touch our kids but they all stick up against us when we talk.

How can we talk when they are our boss for work? They are all drinking mates as well. Nurse drink with mechanic, store manager, police and more. We don't like our kids to enter the white housing areas in our community. They don't even want to live with us. This makes us feel less than them.

But they love us at royalty time when they sell us a cheap bomb car for thousands. Some cars don't last a month. I sell a painting for $50 and in town my painting sell for $1000.

I love my kids same as you. Kids are my future. I do everything I know to help my kids, but Howard calls me a raper and will take half our money as punishment. Is that fair? How would you like that to happen to you?

Our law is strong in communities and we have strong rules for marriage. I want my kids to learn but why should our kids get education? There are no jobs here anyway, all the big jobs are taken by whitefellas.

They won't give us a go because they want the money. We don't have a say in our own programs and the salary money goes to their mates they bring up. We don't even know some of these people who work here. Who picked them? Like we are not good enough. We have ideas too and we want to do things but no one can help us.

If we make mistake, is that OK? That's how we all learn, by mistake. In the city you get many choices, sometimes we don't get a single choice. If we report any problems here, no one listens. They call us troublemakers or radicals. They rubbish us to our own family. They say our own family is against us, they try to make us feel shame.

I can't speak good English but I want a say in things. We can stop most of these tricks and whitefellas from touching our kids and selling us porn and grog, but permit system gone now.

Maybe it's best to just keep quiet and say nothing. We never took up a gun before because fighting is wrong. But I think they want a war with us now. What did we do wrong? How can I lead when I'm scared too? I want you to come to our communities to see how things really are and hear our stories. I think you will cry when you hear them.

Source: A voice from the heartland, The Age

Update on East Gippsland floods

Hundreds of people have fled their homes and more are preparing to evacuate as rising floodwaters threaten to engulf more towns, including the regional centre of Sale. Vast areas of East Gippsland are under water, main roads and highways are closed, and numerous individuals and communities have been isolated by flooding and the effects of flooding (ie on power lines).

Damage to property is expected to run into millions of dollars, and authorities have warned that the worst flooding may be yet to come. Major flood warnings are current for the Mitchell, Avon, Macalister and Thomson rivers (I think that's 4/5 major rivers, the Tambo River being the 5th major river in East Gippsland??), with moderate warnings for 6 others.

The effects of fires in early 2007 (and perhaps 2003) can be seen in the Mitchell River, which is reportedly heavy with silt and ash from the fire-scarred mountains.

Many individuals and communities in East Gippsland and surrounding regions experience forms of vulnerability which are related to geography and infrastructure and are not experienced in other parts of the State. This is demonstrated by the story of a woman in the Monaro region, adjacent to the East Gippsland region. She made an emergency call from her isolated property at Michelago, a small settlement in the Monaro region. She was suffering an asthma attack, was cold, trapped in her house by a blizzard, and her power had been out for seven hours (something that few Melbournians would tolerate in the depths of winter!!). It took 14 firefighters and 4 ambulance officers 11 hours to reach the woman.

Residents flee rising floodwaters, There's water for miles, Breaking their banks, All stops out for snow rescue, The Age

ACCC dismisses claim against Oxfam

The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) has dismissed claims by the Institute of Public Affairs (an Australian rightwing think tank) that Oxfam Australia was misleading the public for claiming that Fair Trade Coffee helped lift some of the world's poorest coffee farmers out of poverty.

The background to the complaint can be found here:

Fair Trade Coffee and the Institute of Public Affairs: a bitter brew

Oxfam coffee 'harms' poor farmers, The Australian

The Institute of Public Affairs, describes itself as "Australia's Leading Free Market Think Tank". Unlike Oxfam, they haven't published a press release regarding the ACCC's decision. Aside from the article published in the Australian, linked above, they have also produced a paper entitled "Free Trade or Fair Trade?"

There is an abundance of information on Fairtrade coffee on Oxfam Australia's website here. World Vision is also pushing fairtrade coffee and chocolate (see also here and here).

The wiki for Hooked: students for trade justice also has some great information, as does the Fair Trade Association.

Another Big Flood?

Almost a decade after The Big Flood, floods hit East Gippsland again.


I've been listening the reports and interviews with SES personnel for the last few days,
I undertook my first ever extensive research project in part of East Gippsland - and my focus happened to be "The Big Flood" of 1998.

In late June 1998, the Shire of East Gippsland (which lies in the far east of the state of Victoria, Australia) was declared to be in a State of Emergency following a one-in-100 year flood event. Media coverage of the “flood mayhem” ( "Flood mayhem: Gippsland braced for worst in 40 years". Herald Sun. Melbourne Wednesday June 24) tended to blame the “natural disaster” on “a record flood on top of a…drought” ("Natural disaster and a loss of hope". The Age. Melbourne Friday 3 July).

During the course of my research, I found that a historical analysis of the conditions creating and shaping vulnerability reveals that the disaster was not the result of an unusual coincidence of abnormal events in nature, but entirely foreseeable. While torrential rain may have provided the trigger for a ‘1-in-100 year flood’, the disaster that resulted was shaped by underlying conditions and processes which had existed for well over a century. These include the physiographic features that characterise much of East Gippsland, such as the harsh climatic conditions, steep terrain and poor soils, and characteristics of local economic and social activity, including limited access to transport, restricted access to markets, a small economic base, and depopulation. What a historical analysis reveals, however, is that at the core of flood disasters in the region, there has always been the coincidence of and interaction between drought, low commodity prices, and poor land management practices. This observation is articulated by A. M. Pearson in his book, Echoes from the Mountains, and has also been noted by local Landcare groups (Gippsland Community Reference Group, 1993, 20).

A historical analysis also revealed that while the biophysical, economic and social environment has always limited the ability of many of East Gippsland's residents to respond to further shocks, many of the conditions affecting vulnerability were heightened by changes occurring since the 1970s and accelerating during the 1990s. Factors that stood out included impact of economic liberalisation on farmers, the discovery of Ovine Johnes' Disease in the area, drought, and low commodity prices - the latter two of which contributed to overstocking, over-grazing, the growth of rabbit populations, and the difficult of feeding families let alone looking after fences and pastures. By the time rain fell in June 1998, a situation of extreme vulnerability had arisen.

Flood disasters are so often blamed on "chance" and "unusual weather events", yet the floods of 2007 have arisen as they did in 1998, 1990, and many times before that...a severe weather event with an intense low pressure system built across the east-coast of Victoria, moved back in on itself and dumped rain on areas suffering from drought. Snows have fallen in alpine areas, and the great rivers of East Gippsland have flooded. Residents of East Gippsland are familiar with flooding...in many areas, rivers flood every spring, and every 2-3 years, a particularly heavy fall of rain will cause flooding that results in erosion, and fence and pasture damage. The difference between a severe weather event and a "disaster" is the extent to which social, political, economic and pre-existing environmental pressures interact to structure and compound the impacts of the severe weather event.

The statistics this year indicate that this weather could surpass that of 1998. Some parts of East Gippsland are already experiencing more severe floods than they did in 1998. At present the damage appears to be far less severe than it was in 1998, and the floods are certainly not being called "a disaster", but it remains to be seen whether this will be the case, and if so, why. Many of the residents of East Gippsland have already experienced bushfires in 2003 and 2007, and damage caused by fire will, in some instances, have compounded the ongoing economic (and social) vulnerability arising from the ongoing drought, as well as pre-existing sources of vulnerability mentioned above. In addition, the effect of bushfire on the landscape exacerbates flooding in numerous complex ways (not least of which is obviously the denundation of land caused by fire).