News

28 August 2007

The following is a transcript of a speech delivered by Tim Winton at the AMCS Charity Art Auction, QLD State Library, 24th August, 2007.
Copyright © Tim Winton 2007

Saving Moreton Bay
by Tim Winton
Australian author, AMCS Patron

Available here in printable form (1.3 Mb pdf)

What an ancient species. What a mysterious genius they have for navigation. What an anomaly they are. And what a tough old life they lead. Every time you see a turtle you should remind yourself of the odds against it being there. You’ll know this if you’ve ever seen them lay eggs and later seen them hatch. From the moment they hatch they’re up against it. Turtles are born into trouble. Born on the oceanic equivalent of a smorgasbord table at the RSL on pension day. A turtle hatch is a kind of happy-hour massacre. Only a minority will survive predation. No wonder they have a face like the guy from the final scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Or maybe ET. It’s a face in whose every leathery wrinkle you can read years, aeons, of hard going.

So on a good day things are tough enough for the turtle. Then introduce a species like us. Suddenly you’re soup. Even if you’re finally taken off the menu, you’re still up against it. Humans encroach on your habitat, your nesting sites. You end up in trawl nets, you get mown down by speeding boats. You go from being soup to being a speed bump. And that’s progress. Around concentrated human activity, your odds of survival just fall away massively. There comes a point in trying to imagine something of the turtle's lot, when you can no longer afford to think in terms of individual animals because the equation rapidly involves the survival of the entire species and you’re suddenly considering the very real prospect of extinction. This is a reality.

Worldwide there are human communities dealing with this scenario right now. Local extinctions of turtle species. There are citizens’ groups and agencies (and even governments) trying to prevent the demise of several turtle species. There are folks right here in Brisbane working their arses off to save turtles. Not in Indonesia, not in the Philippines. But here in your backyard. In Moreton Bay. Maybe this surprises you. In a wealthy, successful, enlightened state like ours? In Queensland? In Brisbane? Could turtles be in that sort of trouble locally? Well, the answer is yes.

Six years ago the Australian Government listed one species, the loggerhead turtle, as endangered. Over the past decade turtle numbers generally have declined eighty percent. Eighty percent. Think about a figure like that in terms of business, which is the way we seem to be encouraged to view all of existence these days. Think of it in terms of economics, the bottom line, the stockmarket. A loss of 80% in those terms constitutes a crash. If we’re talking about any other form of asset, that’s a massacre. That’s MBAs jumping out of skyscrapers. Imagine viewing the natural world, our natural heritage, our natural assets, through that lens. And just as in the financial ecosystem, everything is interdependent. Sub-prime mortagages in the US, as we've recently discovered, are linked to superfunds here in Brisbane. Similarly, massive turtle losses impact right through the marine ecosystem.

Moreton Bay is turtle territory. But it’s already lost 50% of its saltmarshes and 20% of its seagrasses that are prime habitat. 200 turtles are found sick, injured or dead in the bay every year. That’s a bit of a shock to discover. I can also tell you that it was a shock to find out that half of one percent of the bay is protected by sanctuary zones. Maybe I should repeat that astounding figure. Half of one percent. I mean, bloody hell, what’s the story? Here you are, you lucky dogs, with the most impressive marine environment available to any Australian city, a jewel on your doorstep, with mangroves, coral, dugongs, turtles, you name it, afforded less than one percent protection. Forgive me, but that does my head in! That’s like inheriting a Van Gogh, a Colin McCahon, a Whitely, a William Robinson, and leaving them in the back of the ute in the driveway. Not overnight, but permanently. I’m not accusing anybody in Queensland of being reckless, but I must say I am startled by such confidence. To someone like me, whose own metropolis is not quite as blessed as yours when it comes to marine richness, it’s sort of puzzling. Even Rottnest Island near Perth has ten or twelve percent protection.

But look, I’m just a visitor. I don’t have any right to come here wagging my finger. I’m from WA, for God’s sake, the nation’s quarry. I come from good redneck stock. Yes, I love the sea and I've spent some time defending it. But everything I’ve learnt about the marine environment I’ve learnt at the end of a spear, or a gaff or a hook. I might have killed more marine creatures than anyone else in this room. (Unless we have prawners in our midst, and if so, welcome and thanks for coming.) I am not on any fringe mission. I eat meat and fish. I would eat you if I needed to. Because of my background I love hunting and gathering; it’s in my blood. But I am not a mindless captive to those impulses. I can make rational and moral decisions. Like you I can see the logic in curbing my own appetites for the common good. I feel a responsibility to my children. And to those who will come after us. People I will never know. I don’t know what other special right I have to be addressing you. Certainly not as a novelist. Who cares what a novelist thinks?

It's just that I’ve spent a lot of my life in the water. Not enough to satisfy me, and certainly not nearly enough this past few months to even make life seem bearable, but enough to earn more than my share of skin cancers. I’ve got swimmer’s ear and pterygiums on the eyeballs. Reef scars, you name it. Family members tell me I’ve got the thousand yard stare – a surfer thing. I’m pleased to announce that I’m not currently suffering a case of what Bob McTavish likes to call Texan knacker rash, which is a boardshorts thing, relax. (Bit of tinaderm and you’re on your way.) I’ve been in the water long enough to see the consequences of my own and my culture’s seagoing behaviours. At first hand. I grew up in a whaling town. I have witnessed the massive decline of iconic fish species in my own backyard and I have to recognize my own part in that. We have bigger and better equipped boats every year for commercial fishing, but also for recreational fishing. The average tinny has better navigational and fishfinding equipment on it than previous generations of pro boats could dream of. I have witnessed a steady decline in marine habitat. Like many coastal dwellers I have felt places begin to slip through my fingers.

What’s so hard about getting a balance in marine protection is that it involves challenging old ways of thinking, going against an entire received culture of entitlement. A culture of captivity to exhausted ideas. Our old way of thinking assumes that we live without consequences, especially in terms of our impact on the natural world. In the old mindset the sea is mighty, invincible and its riches will last forever. We can do with it as we like, as we have always done. Now there are people in your community, folks in business and government who still unconsciously believe this. Sadly I think that quite a few of my fellow recreational fishers still think this way. But history, science and personal experience will quickly show you that this is a lie. Any fisher knows deep down that there are fewer resources being chased down and used by more and more users. But few will admit their part in it.

Our oceans are in strife. As much as ninety percent of the big predatory fish in our seas are gone. In our own lifetime several major commercial fisheries, the world’s most prolific and lucrative aggregations of fish, have collapsed. Industrial fleets are grinding away at others as we stand here. Many recreational fisheries are over-exploited. What you and I might call a good day on the water would dismay our forebears.

But the old sense of entitlement lives on. To my great shame, here in Australia this really is more a problem of recreational fishers than commercial operators. I know this because I’m not completely immune to it myself. There is this curious stiff-necked quality to the recreational angler. We still have this received belief that it is our God-given right to take fish from any bay, any reef, any river we find. We can be trained into reluctantly observing catch limits, even size limits. We’ll grumble about it and blame shiny-arsed bureaucrats and scientists and bloody greenies for overreacting and raining on our parade, as though fish losses have absolutely nothing to do with our own actions. But being told there are places that maybe you shouldn’t fish – are you kidding? That's a bridge too far. There’s this strange spirit of exceptionalism in anglers. Like modernist poets, they don’t really think they’re connected to ordinary folks, don’t share the same responsibilities. Somehow – and I’ve seen this happen too many times to relate -the prospect of surrendering a bit of territory for the common good, for the health of an ecosystem, for future generations, that causes a brain-snap. The discussion goes white-hot immediately. Rec-fishers are touchy, thin-skinned. They quickly feel besieged. What seems reasonable to the scientific community and to non-fishing 'stakeholders' is deeply threatening to organised fishers and their commercial interests. A modest proposal for reserving marine assets for the entire community is seen as an infringement of some mystical sacred liberty. And they sense a conspiracy in the wings. I've seen it happen time and again, and it's very painful for me because I'm often caught in the middle of it as a fisher and a conservation advocate.

But get this: no matter how mad, how belligerent, how unreasonable rec-fishers become in discussions about sanctuary zones, no member of parliament, no journalist, no environmental agency has the temerity to describe them as extremists. But that’s exactly what their viewpoint and their behaviour often amounts to during these discussions. At their worst theirs is a paranoid, fringe outlook. Their refusal to consider future needs becomes, in the end, anti-social. And the incredible thing is that governments and government agencies will let themselves be intimidated by them. Can you imagine any other group of hobbyists getting similar treatment? Hang-glider enthusiasts? Model train buffs? Joggers? Surfers? Not even golfers are as scary as some rec-fishers.

Now, let’s step back a few decades to the early introduction of terrestrial national parks. It was the same tune. Shooters just couldn’t believe that there could be places where shooting wildlife might be denied them. They were cranky. It went against every received notion they grew up with. And history has left them behind. As it will certainly leave radical and belligerent rec-fishers behind. With the safety of distance, the passing of the years, those ornery gun-toting citizens (yes, also relatives of mine) are now viewed as sad, old nutters, remnants of a lost age. Perhaps we all need the laundering passage of time to be able to call a spade a spade. Until then it seems that the only folks allowed to be labelled as extremists are the conservationists. It doesn't matter how much the science stacks up in their corner, how much the weight of history supports their actions. Their view will somehow be seen as unreasonable. This is how it has been, and how it might still be here in Queensland. As it usually is in WA.

Here's a case in point. In its coverage of the rezoning process for Moreton Bay, the Courier-Mail is still referring to prospective green zones or sanctuary zones as No Go Zones. The usual feeble excuse is that it sells papers, gets attention, but that's just a way of disguising partisan treatment. It makes sure there's no level playing field of ideas. It's either consciously or unconsciously reinforcing the old-guard view. For the record, let's get this straight. In marine parks, a green zone or a sanctuary zone is a place where you can’t extract anything or kill anything. You can go there in your boat, you can swim there, you can surf in it, pass through it, you can usually moor in it. You have complete freedom of access to it. As long as you don’t mine in it or take anything else from it. To call this a No Go Zone is not just inaccurate. It borders on being frankly dishonest. And I think for a newspaper to describe it this way, during a public process like this is irresponsible. Not that it surprises me for a moment. This is pretty much business as usual It’s a signal of a kind of cultural inertia, the captivity to old frontier ideas of the sort I was mentioning earlier. But this too shall pass.

As I said, we're dealing with cultural responses here that border on religious feeling. And these things are tough to go up against. But not impossible, by any means. On the specific subject of turtles I can give you a vivid example of change. I have a kind of surrogate family in Indonesia. They are ethnic Balinese, Hindus with the special cultural traditions of their tiny island. All their lives they've been sacrificing a turtle in the temple for the major religious ceremony of the year. This is a very big deal in their culture. But with the massive population of the archipelago and the pressures of fishing and habitat loss, turtles have, for years, been in real strife. By government decree turtles are now protected. For my friends and their fellow villagers the advent of this new law was really quite shocking. They had to come to terms with the fact that killing, offering and eating turtles was no longer possible. Can you imagine what it took for them, these humble villagers, to make this adjustment, to fit their religious practice into a sustainable framework? But they managed it. The sky didn't fall in. They found substitutes. They adjusted. They see that it was necessary. And now, when I'm with them out in their outrigger boats, and a turtle pops to the surface, they're thrilled and proud. And it makes me think of people at home, people with so much more money and technology and safety, who are much better educated and yet refuse to yield to reason on their own turf. Because of their hobby, which they elevate into religion.

Now, I don't want you to think that all rec-fishers are boofheads, because they're not. By and large they're pretty reasonable people. They don't always feel comfortable with the way some organizations speak on their behalf. They have a range of views that aren't always heard because of the rhetoric of some of their lobbyists. We need to encourage those folks to keep an open mind. Lots of them know that the marine environment is vulnerable. But they're a bit like blokes who know that they're sick and won't go to the doctor. They're avoiding it. They want their missus to make the appointment. Or better still, they hope that if they ignore the symptoms the problem will go away on its own. A lot of rec-fishers are blokes. I don't think that the parallel here is accidental, do you?

I want to encourage you to think about the treasure-trove you have here at your doorstep, to consider the odds already stacked against the turtle. To remember that the loggerhead is but a strand in the complex stock market that is the ecology. Believe in the difference you can make. Make sure the turtle gets some respite in the form of sanctuary zones. Because the turtles of Moreton Bay need a breather. So do the, fish, the corals, sharks, dugongs, seagrass, birds, mangroves. They're pressed up against so much human activity and development that they need every bit of help you can give them. Remember that a prudent person will always maintain savings. Only the reckless outspend their means. And only turds and fools consign their children to a legacy of debt and destitution. I'm sure many of you have lain awake worrying about your super, but there are other savings to consider. If you let the government cave in here to a scare campaign by rec-fishers and tackle suppliers, and all the other self-interests of the hobby-lobby, just consider the odds of your grandchildren ever getting the chance to show their kids a loggerhead or a dugong in Moreton Bay.

The whales sharks are still there. Business is booming. And some of those blokes probably feel a bit silly in retrospect. The rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef doesn’t seem to have caused the earth to fall off its axis. To the contrary, it’s a beacon. Green zones enhance local economies. No one has ever shown otherwise. And the reef has more than 30% protection. In the 1960’s when citizens fought to have any of it protected – and the AMCS was a part of that – the cultural inertia was the same. The scare campaigns were the same. Yet sense prevailed.

So take heart. Encourage your government to stiffen its resolve, to take its responsibility to the future seriously. Half of one percent might have been all that was imaginable when Queensland was still thinking like the Moonlight State. But the state has moved on. I can see it and feel it and it's great. A rezoning process like this is an opportunity for the Beattie government to demonstrate just how far it's moved on. But you have to support him in this. You have to give him and his cabinet and his agencies the information and the cultural space to do the right thing. Only the pressure of logic will win out against rank paranoia and ignorance.

Don't imagine that it'll be easy. You're up against a well-funded and well-connected scare campaign that's hardly begun. But just remember this: you are here for more than self interest. You are thinking of the future, of people unborn. And you are not some kind of fringe element of society. The proof of that is all around you. Look at yourselves. Here you are, surrounded by all kinds of ordinary-looking people. People from different walks of life, with different voting patterns, from different suburbs, of different ages. In the State Library of Queensland. You are not a pack of nutters or ratbags. You, my friends, are the mainstream. You’re considering a mainstream issue. The fate of the turtle. The future of the bay you inherited and which you’re lucky enough to share, as a common public asset. These matters are in your hands. You can alter the odds. You can change the balance of things. Remember that.

Thank you

Copyright © Tim Winton 2007

Leunig’s Dugong – sold on the night