Repairing and preparing Australian landscapes for global change

In May 2013 Australia21 released a report entitled Repairing and preparing Australian landscapes for global change: Why we must do more. The report, written by Australia21 director Richard Eckersley, was based on the deliberations of an expert roundtable, held at Melbourne University on 21 February 2013, to consider the question:

What are the benefits of large scale reforestation and revegetation, and how can they best be achieved?

The starting point for this work was a paper written by Dr Eckersley and published by CSIRO in 1989, Regreening Australia: the environmental, economic and social benefits of reforestation. The report was a preliminary investigation into a large national program to ‘regreen Australia’ through massive reforestation and revegetation over a period of 10 to 20 years. The report attracted a great deal of public, political and professional interest, and had important influences on government policy at the time, but it was never implemented on the scale envisaged and necessary to realise the potential benefits.

In 2012, the Board of Australia21 agreed to re-examine the topic, using the 1989 report as a benchmark or reference point, given: almost 25 years had passed; greater recognition of the seriousness and urgency of climate change; and heightened global economic instability, making job generation potentially important to maintaining economic and social stability.

Participants

Participants in this re-examination were:

-  Mr Jason Alexandra, Consultant, former General Manager, Natural Resources Program, Murray Darling Basin Authority (1)

-  Professor Snow Barlow, Foundation Professor, Horticulture and Viticulture, University of Melbourne (1)

-  Mr Paul Barratt, Chair, Australia21 Ltd and former Secretary, Commonwealth Department of Primary Industries and Energy (1,2)

-  Prof Andrew Campbell, Director, Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University (1,2)

-  Mr Paul Dettmann, Managing Director, Cassinia Environmental

-  Mr Ron Dodds, General Manager, Victoria, Greening Australia

-  Dr Michael Dunlop, Senior Research Scientist, Ecosystem Sciences, CSIRO Australia

-  Mr Richard Eckersley, Director, Australia21 Ltd (Chair) (1)

-  Mr Geoff Gorrie , Director Australia21 Ltd and former Deputy Secretary, Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. (1)

-  Mr Kevin Goss, Senior Honorary Research Fellow, Future Farm Industries Co-operative Research Centre Ltd, University of Western Australia

-  Mr Simon Gould, Planning Coordinator, Soils for Life Program, Outcomes Australia

-  Prof Richard Harper, Alcoa Chair in Sustainable Water Management, Murdoch University

-  Dr Anthony Hooper, Chief Executive Officer, Natural Resources Conservation League of Victoria (1,2)

-  Prof Rod Keenan, Director, Victorian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Research and Head of Department of Resource Management and Geography, University of Melbourne

-  Mr Gerry Leach, Chair, Sustainability Committee, National Farmers Federation

-  Assoc Prof Clive McAlpine, ARC Future Fellow, School of Geography, Planning & Environmental Management, University of Queensland

-  Ms Winsome McCaughey, Senior Strategic Adviser, Research Partnerships, University of Melbourne

-  Dr Martin Moroni, Manager, Sustainability Branch, Forestry Tasmania

-  Mr Danny O’Neill, Executive Officer, National Natural Resource Management Regions’ Working Group

-  Ms Claire Parkes, Senior Policy Analyst, Carbon and Landscape Conservation, Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists

-  Dr Justin Ryan, Post-doctoral Research Fellow, School of Geography, Planning & Environmental Management, University of Queensland

-  Dr Carla Sgrò, ARC Future Fellow, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University

-  Mr Ian Smith, Victorian State Manager, Conservation Volunteers Australia

-  Mr Andrew Stewart, farmer, Member, Australian Landcare Council

-  Dr Hugh Stewart, Director, Natural Resources Conservation League of Victoria

-  Dr John White, Executive Director, Ignite Energy Resources Pty Ltd

-  Mr Mark Wootton, Principal/ Manager of Jigsaw Farms and Chair, The Climate Institute (2)

-  Mr Rob Youl, Consultant (1)

-  Dr Charlie Zammit, Consultant, former Assistant Secretary, Biodiversity Conservation Branch, Commonwealth Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities (1)

In attendance: Ms Lyn Stephens, CEO, Australia21 Ltd 1

(1) member of project steering committee

(2) unable to attend roundtable

Outcome

The roundtable concluded that Australia needs to look at its landscapes in new ways if it is to meet the 21st Century challenges of climate change and food, water and energy security. Without a new vision for creating healthy, resilient landscapes, we will experience continuing environmental decline and degradation. For all the policy developments and practical achievements of the past 20 to 30 years in managing our environments and ecosystems, we are not closing the gap between the magnitude of the challenge and the scale of our response.

The new vision would:

• Embrace all Australian landscapes and all Australians, rural and urban alike. Landscapes are a vital part of local, regional and national identity; all our futures depend on them.

• Acknowledge climate change as a ‘game changer’, in terms of both the role of landscapes in mitigation and adaptation, and the huge, varied, but still uncertain, impacts of climate change on landscapes.

• Move beyond a ‘regreening’ conservation ethic to embrace multiple functions and values to achieve the best combination of environmental, economic and social benefits.

• Build on the synergies and convergences between these functions, as well as acknowledging potential tensions and conflicts. Many industries, resources and communities would benefit from expanded landscape revegetation and regeneration.

Specific objectives include to:

• Stimulate the growth of a landscape regeneration and management industry to produce the capacity to use available funding and meet policy objectives.

• Generate more private-sector involvement, including investment in traditional products and new markets for carbon, water or biofuels, using instruments such as carbon credits and ‘patient’ investment by superannuation funds.

• While being national in scope and ambition, devolve governance and design to the local level, so that landscapes are managed by farmers and other landowners, and interventions meet the needs and harness the resources of local environments and communities.

• Encourage better integration of policy and science, including effective, early evaluation and long-term monitoring.

• Build on existing policy, such as the Biodiversity Fund and Carbon Farming Initiative, and present institutional structures such as Landcare groups and regional natural resource management bodies.

The benefits of large-scale landscape regeneration, reforestation and revegetation, include: preserving biodiversity; reducing soil and water loss and degradation; providing shelter, shade and fodder; a cooler regional climate; carbon sequestration; increasing soil fertility and productivity; more sustainable agriculture; more timber and other tree products; better pollination; production of biofuels; enhanced food, water and energy security; benefits to tourism; supporting rural communities; creating employment; bridging the cultural divide between city and country; promoting national reconciliation; improving people’s wellbeing; and higher civic morale.

Full report

A copy of the full report may be downloaded free of charge from the Australia21 website here.

Please remember that as a small non-profit research organisation Australia21 is dependent upon public donations to carry out its work. If you wish to make a contribution you may do so by clicking the Donate button on the webpage.

Discussion paper on inequality

Australia21 today released a discussion paper that has been prepared for a high level roundtable being held in late January on "What to do about Inequality in Australia? The paper was prepared for Australia21 by Professor Sharon Friel, Professor of Health Equity, National Centre for

Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University and Dr Richard Denniss, Executive Director of The Australia Institute. It is available for free download here.

Please remember that as a small non-profit research organisation Australia21 is dependent upon donations from the public to fund its work. If you would like to make a donation, you can do so by visiting our website at www.australia21.org.au. Donations of $2 and over are tax deductible.

Sir William Deane on asylum seekers

On 17 December 2013, in a Senate Committee Room in Parliament House, Canberra former Governor-General Sir William Deane AC launched a collection of essays entitled Refugees and asylum seekers: Finding a better way. This collection, edited by Bob Douglas and Jo Wodak, marked the completion of the first phase of an Australia21 project designed to contribute to the development of a process for dealing with asylum seekers which is fairer and more humane than the one we have been using in Australia in recent years.

Below is a transcript of Sir William’s remarks at the launch, which is published with his permission.

Begins

Paul Barratt’s acknowledgment of the traditional custodians, in which I respectfully join, serves to remind us that, apart from Indigenous Australians, we are all migrants or descended from migrants. And that many of us were asylum seekers or are descended from asylum seekers.

My own Great Grandfather came to Australia, with his wife and young family, including my Grandfather who was 7, from Tipperary in 1851 on a wooden sailing ship called the Harry Lorrequer. They sought asylum on this side of the world from the devastation of the Great Famine. After disembarking in Melbourne and time on the goldfields at Ballarat, my Great Grandfather took his family to Wahring near Nagambie in rural Victoria where he became the legal owner of land taken, without compensation, from the Taungurung people. That land provided the basis of his and his family’s subsequent well being.

The first point which I wish to make through that brief reference to a rather typical Australian family history is that we Australians should have understanding and compassion for the actions of those who subject themselves and their families to serious risk of disaster at sea to escape from violence or terror or unbearable hardship and seek asylum in a new country which they dream of making their homeland. We will never know precisely how many of the wooden sailing ships bearing asylum seekers from Europe to Australia in the Nineteenth Century didn’t make it or how many men, women and children died through the awful sicknesses and conditions on the way. The Harry Lorrequer did make it. But parts of the journey were so stormy that some were washed overboard on the way (see footnote (1)) and the youngest of my Great Grandfather’s children, Martin, died as a result of the sicknesses which threatened all on board. Perhaps some would criticise all those early Australians and present would-be Australians for subjecting themselves and their families to such awful risks. Most of us would, however, see them as bravely seeking a better life for themselves and their families in circumstances where they saw or see no really worthwhile alternative.

The other point is that, from the earliest days of European arrivals and constantly thereafter, our country and its people, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, have faced extraordinary and at times seemingly overwhelming challenges and problems. The challenge which we, as a nation, face in relation to refugees and other asylum seekers who arrive, or attempt to arrive, by boat is a very difficult one. But it is not the most difficult which has confronted our nation. And while it seems to me that there are no obvious complete answers or solutions, I believe that we are, as a nation, capable of dealing with it with both justice and decency. In that regard, it is well to remember that other countries are facing much greater challenges as regards refugees than we are. For example, as the violent crisis in Syria enters its third winter, Lebanon, with a considerably smaller population than ours, is currently engulfed by more than 800,000 refugees.

The book which we are gathered to launch - Refugees and Asylum Seekers: Finding a Better Way - demands the attention and careful consideration of any Australian who is concerned with that challenge. Its contents are of immeasurable national value and importance as a basis of understanding, of discussion, of planning and of hope. The authors of the essays are outstanding Australians with extraordinary expertise and profound practical and theoretical experience in the field. They identify what they see as current problems, difficulties and shortcomings. And suggest what they see as possible lines of investigation, discussion and solution. As the editors explain in their thoughtful Preface, the objective of Australia21 in initiating and publishing the book has been to provide the foundation for the convening of a roundtable of stakeholders and decision-makers next year to examine the feasibility of a fresh new bi-partisan approach.

It is only a couple of weeks since the world’s most respected authority on Refugees, the United Nations High Commission, delivered its assessments of our Detention Camps - officially called “Regional Processing Centres” – on Nauru and Manus Island. There is close correspondence between the published findings in relation to each place. As regards the Nauru Centre, which has been established or re-established for more than a year, the United Nations Refugee Agency found that “the current policies, conditions and operational approaches … do not comply with international standards”, “constitute arbitrary and mandatory detention under international law”, “do not provide a fair, efficient, and expeditious system for assessing refugee claims” and “do not provide safe and humane conditions of treatment in detention”. As regards the children who are in our nation’s care and detained on Nauru, the Agency found “the harsh and unsuitable environment ... is particularly inappropriate for the care and support of child asylum seekers” and that “children do not have access to adequate educational and recreational facilities”. Finally, and relevant to the description of the Nauru Detention Centre as a “Regional Processing Centre”, the Agency found that “only one claim for refugee status [had, at the time of inspection,] been finally determined and handed down in the 14-month period since the transfer of asylum seekers to Nauru commenced in September 2012”.

Hopefully, our government and other relevant authorities will, in due course, properly respond to the UN Refugee Agency’s criticisms. But, pending such a response, one cannot but fear that at least some of the findings, particularly those relating to children held in detention and unsatisfactory processing, are justified. If they are, the United Nations Reports diminish our country’s hard won and long justified international reputation as an upholder of human rights and dignity. More important, they give rise to questions relating to our decency and sense of fairness and justice as a community and as individuals which we cannot properly ignore.

In that context, the publication of this book and Australia21’s call for open discussion and dialogue and a search for national consensus about a new and better way come at a particularly apposite time. I sincerely hope that all concerned, particularly the legislators and the decision makers in government and the administrators in the field, will welcome that call and fully participate in any ensuing discussions and exchanges. And that at every stage of such discussions there will be a conscious awareness of the fact that the lives, the wellbeing and the futures of extraordinarily vulnerable human beings, including children, are involved.

Let me conclude by congratulating and thanking all who have contributed to the initiation, writing and publication of this book – authors, editors, publishers and the members of Australia21. I join you all in wishing it every success.

Refugees and Asylum Seekers: Finding a Better Way is formally launched.

(1) In my oral comments at the launch I said: “45 passengers and 7 sailors were washed overboard”. Those numbers were drawn from an unpublished family history. Since then, I have become aware that a contemporary source (The Melbourne Argus of 15 March 1851) states: “35 deaths occurred during the Passage” (WD).

Ends

For more information about this publication and how to obtain a copy see Refugees and asylum seekers: finding a better way.

Refugees and asylum seekers: finding a better way

On 17 December 2013, in a Senate Committee Room in Parliament House, Canberra former Governor-General Sir William Deane launched a collection of essays entitled Refugees and asylum seekers: Finding a better way. This collection, edited by Bob Douglas and Jo Wodak, marked the completion of the first phase of an Australia21 project designed to contribute to the development of a process for dealing with asylum seekers which is fairer and more humane than the one we have been using in Australia in recent years.

The essays in this volume are in response to an invitation by Australia21 to people who have been actively engaged in various aspects of asylum-seeker policy to take a fresh look at the current dilemma in its global, regional as well as national contexts, and suggest ways in which the Australian community might respond more humanely, more sustainably and more responsibly to it.

Contributions were sought from a wide range of Australians – legal experts, ex-public servants and advisers, international and local agency representatives, ethicists, church representatives, academics and researchers, concerned members of the public and refugees.

In soliciting these contributions Australia21 did not prescribe any particular opinion or critique. It is striking, however, that not one of the contributors expresses support for either the Labor or the Coalition Government’s position on and treatment of asylum seekers or their response to and representation of the problem of asylum-seeking boats arrivals. Instead, there is a striking uniformity of view that current policies are inhumane, uneconomic and unjustified in terms of international, national and social obligations, and that core values of fairness and compassion have been sacrificed for political expediency. In the process there has been a demonisation of asylum seekers arriving by boat as opportunistic queue jumpers.

Contributors to this volume are:

-    Ms Widyan Al Ubudy, Iraqi Australian Project Coordinator for the NSW Community Relations Commission, who was born in a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia

-    Professor Jane McAdam, Scientia Professor of Law and Foundation Director of the Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at the University of New South Wales

-    John Menadue AO, former Secretary, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs

-    ADM (Retd.) Chris Barrie AC, former Chief of the Defence Force

-    Trevor Boucher AO, former Commissioner of Taxation and Ambassador to the OECD

-    Paul Barratt AO, Chair of Australia21 and former Secretary, Department of Defence

-    Tony Kevin, former Ambassador to Poland and Cambodia, and author of two books addressing Australia’s asylum-seeker safety-of-life-at-sea record

-    Professor Emeritus Gillian Triggs, President of the Australian Human Rights Commission; former Dean of the Faculty of Law and Challis Professor of International Law at the University of Sydney

-    David Maxwell Gray, member of the Board of Social Justice of the Western Australian Uniting Church

-    Erika Feller, former Assistant High Commissioner for Protection with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees

-    Professor Louise Newman AM, Professor of Developmental Psychiatry and Director of the Monash University Centre for Developmental Psychiatry and Psychology

-    Dr Simon Longstaff AO, Executive Director, St James Ethics Centre

-    Julian Burnside AO QC, Melbourne barrister who has acted pro-bono in many human rights cases, in particular concerning the treatment of refugees

-    Mick Palmer AO APM, former career police officer and barrister at law, who served as Commissioner of Police with the Northern Territory Police and the Australian Federal Police

-    Anne Kilcullen, infant wartime evacuee from Cairns, who organised doorknock collectors in a Brisbane suburb for the first World Refugee Year in 1959/60

-    Paul Power, Chief Executive Officer of the Refugee Council of Australia since 2006

-    Frank Brennan AO, Jesuit priest, Professor of law at Australian Catholic University and Adjunct Professor at the Australian National University College of Law and National Centre for Indigenous Studies

-    Professor Desmond Manderson, Future Fellow in the ANU College of Law and the Research School of Humanities and the Arts, Australian National University

-    Arnold Zable, writer, novelist, educator and human rights advocate; author of Café Scheherazade, Scraps of Heaven and The Sea of Many Returns

-    Professor Kim Rubenstein, Director of the Centre for International and Public Law at the Australian National University, and Jacqueline Field, who has been working with Professor Rubinstein on the Australian Research Council project Small Mercies, Big Futures.

-    David Corlett, writer and researcher who has worked on refugee and asylum seeker issues for about two decades; host of SBS Television’s Go Back to Where You Came From

-    Arja Keski-Nummi PSM, Fellow with the Centre for Policy Development in Sydney; former Head of the Division of Refugee, International and Humanitarian Division, Department of Immigration and Citizenship

-    John Hewson AM, economist and company director and former federal leader of the Liberal Party of Australia

-    Besmellah Rezaee, solicitor with a strong background in humanitarian work; former refugee from Afghanistan.

The complete publication can be downloaded as a PDF file at no charge from the Australia21 website  here.

If you would like to buy a hard copy for $25 including postage you may do so from here.

Please remember that Australia21 is dependent upon public donations to continue its work. If you would like to make a donation you can do so by visiting the Australia21 website at www.australia21.org.au.

Ali's story of finding asylum

Note to Friends of Australia21 from asylum seeker project leader Bob Douglas

You are almost certainly familiar with our crowd funding website www.pozible.com/a21asylumseeker for the asylum seeker project. We are using it to raise funds for an initiative which is now well under way, to publish a series of essays from some of Australia's leading thinkers on the asylum seeker issue.

A small video of a successful asylum seeker has been today put onto the crowd funding website and we would firmly encourage you to examine it and consider boosting the funding amount pledged for this project. The video has been produced by one of Australia21’s Directors and a young Honorary Advisor both keenly aware of the lack of compassion in our current policies. They are passionate about adding the voices of asylum seekers to the public debate so that the community begins to demand more humane procedures for people driven to leaving their own country in search of safety.

Our crowd funding website target has already been reached but will be running for another six days and we are hoping to exceed it by at least $2500 which would help us to move on to stage 2 of the project; to bring together a roundtable of experts to discuss the ideas contained in the essays. Please let your friends know of the opportunity to be involved in a national conversation about finding solutions to our shameful treatment of asylum seekers.

There is a wide view in the community that we can manage this issue more effectively and more humanely than we are doing at present and we believe that what we are doing will help that process.

Bob Douglas

Project Leader

Tel 02 6253 3138