New Aussie hero..............
The high cost of precaution
by Dr.Walter Starck PhD“
Australia rides on the sheep’s back.” sounds a bit quaint and outdated in today’s 21st century nation where 90% of the population rarely sees a sheep, cow or farm. Everyone knows high-tech manufacturing and services are the core of advanced economies and a pristine natural environment is surely more important than the profits of a few primary producers.
Although this seems to be the general view of much of the overwhelmingly urban majority of the population, the reality is quite different. Australian manufacturing is in decline. Two decades ago it comprised 18% of GDP. Now it is just 13%. In NZ it is 19%, the UK 17%, and in China it’s 39%. With the ongoing boom in manufacturing in Asia, the huge untapped labour reserve there and our much greater costs, taxes and regulatory burden it seems unlikely that this situation will reverse anytime soon.
In 2005 manufactures accounted for $32 billion of Australian exports while imports of manufactured goods were $126 billion. Primary products exports were $87 billion of which $60 billion were unprocessed raw materials. Imports of primary products were $26 billion. Service exports were $37 billion and imports were $38 billion. Total exports were $176 billion and total imports were $194 billion. The deficit of imports over exports was $17 billion for merchandise (primary and manufactured) plus $1.5 billion in services.
While “the clever country” and “the smart state” make catchy political slogans only the not-so-bright could actually believe in a future prosperity based on our outsmarting everyone else. With our small population and abundance of resources, primary production will clearly continue to play a dominant role in our economic well being for the foreseeable future.
Eco Burden
There is, however, a significant and growing impediment to any productive activity that involves natural resources or the environment. All across the nation farmers, graziers, fishermen, miners, developers, and just ordinary property owners are finding themselves thwarted by complex ill-conceived environmental regulations enforced by an aggressive uncooperative bureaucracy wielding broad and often arbitrary powers of discretion.
Paperwork, unanticipated requirements, restrictions, delays, uncertainties and costs are all growing. More and more activity is either blocked entirely, or worse yet manages to get started at great effort and cost but ends up so encumbered as to be rendered unprofitable. Even worse still, the costs and demands are becoming beyond the means of all but the wealthy. The tradition of a fair go should be listed as an endangered species This situation has steadily grown over the past several decades. Like a cancer, at first it wasn’t noticeable. Then it became an uncomfortable niggle which with increasing effort could still be tolerated. Now it is beginning to eat into the vital organs of the economy. Graziers are having their paddocks overtaken by woody scrub they are not permitted to clear. Rural home-owners are finding themselves unable to do anything about an accumulating tinderbox of combustible material just waiting for an inevitable fire to destroy their home. Our fishing industry, the most lightly harvested in the world], is in decline from ever increasing restrictions and demands.
Aquaculture, while enjoying a remarkable boom all around the world, is being strangled at birth by impossible demands here. Despite vast areas of undeveloped land almost any productive use confronts large costs, imposts, and restrictions if not prohibited entirely.
Much of this problem has been masked by the boom in commodities, a cultural trait of doggedly struggling on through times of adversity, and the common human tendency of denial in the face of looming unpleasantness. However, we have now reached a level where increasing amounts of productive activity is simply ending up in the too-hard category.
Commodity markets are by nature volatile. When the present boom subsides, as all booms do, the economic impact will be exacerbated by the self-inflicted abuse the nation has imposed across the rural sector. Severely handicapping one’s most important natural advantage is hardly “clever” or “smart”. To the contrary, it is downright stupid.
In discussing such issues publicly a question is often raised regarding the importance of an “unspoiled: natural environment. Ironically, this is almost always posed by an urban dweller who choses to live where the natural world has been virtually annihilated. It is never asked by a primary producer. Implicit in such questions is the assumption that a problem exists and more regulation is needed. More often than not, either the problem doesn’t actually exist at all or the proposed measure is an unnecessarily restrictive means of addressing it.
When not explicitly prohibitive, environmental regulations are becoming so insanely complex, mired in bureaucracy and costly that the effect is the same. Although aquaculture is the fastest growing food producing sector in the world and we have superb natural conditions for it, here in Queensland there have been no new development applications for it in the past three years.
Eco-ideology
Environmentalism has become a quasi-religious blend of new-age nature worship, junk science, left-wing political activism and anti-profit economics. Saving the environment supports a mini-industry of activists, bureaucrats and researchers all of whom have a vested interest in promoting the idea of threats, which, of course, require more campaigns, more bureaucracy and more research. Misinformed politicians thinking they are doing the right thing and perceiving popularity at little apparent cost have tended to give rubber stamp approval to the environmentalist agenda. A charade of democratic process is provided by public consultation with “stakeholders” which somehow is deemed to include activists whose only stake is as self-appointed saviours of the environment. Selected results are then bannered to the extent that they support the agenda and ignored or not revealed when they don’t. Lapdog “peak bodies” funded by government furnish a façade of industry consultation.
Environmental management is now dominated by ideology, theories, models and a proliferation of regulation with minimal assessment of actual conditions, the efficacy
of management measures, the environmental result or the socio-economic consequences. A particularly malignant adjunct of all this has been a general acceptance of the precautionary principle as a politically correct cannon of environmental management. This mandates that any imagined possibility of a problem must be addressed with full measures to prevent it. One simply can’t be too careful when dealing with anything so precious as the environment.
Unfortunately this principle makes no reference to assessment of probability, cost, or the possible consequences of risks and it provides a convenient cloak for sundry other agendas. Followed to its logical conclusion it would even preclude itself. Everything we do or don’t do, entails risk. This includes precautionary measures themselves. Amazingly, this vacuous and pernicious piece of nonsense has actually been written into various legislation such as the enabling act for the Australian Fisheries Management Authority and legislation protecting wetlands in Queensland. A Google search of the phrase “precautionary principle” restricted to Australia returned some 117,000 links. Nowhere else does precaution appear to have been so wholeheartedly embraced as here. The end result has been a proliferation of restrictions to address problems for which there is no evidence of their actual existence.
Eco-bureaucracy
A Google search of pages from Australia on the words - best managed coral reef - or - best managed fisheries – is also revealing. It turns up numerous links to government, research, and environmental organization websites. Often these self awarded accolades are modestly qualified by the additional phrase “in the world”. Reality presents a somewhat different picture. While it is true that we have some of the most pristine waters in the world with little incidence of overfishing, superior management has little to do with it. We also have one of the least productive, heavily regulated and expensively administered fishery sectors in the world and management has everything to do with this situation.
Fishery Management
Over recent decades the whole approach to fishery management has undergone a sea change. In the past maximum sustained yield was the ideal and monitoring of the fishery itself was the primary methodology. Now we have a new generation of fisheries biologists schooled in theories and enthralled by computer models. Although such models can be of value in gaining insights about the possible dynamics of a resource their output is fraught with many uncertainties. Typically they are based on simplistic assumptions and very uncertain estimates about complex and highly variable phenomena of which we genuinely understand very little. Usually they require generous adjustment to yield results that are within the bounds of the possible. In practice they tend to reflect more the assumptions and aims of the modeler than anything in reality.
Management of our fisheries has become divorced from the realities of the industry, the nature of the resource itself and our best information of its condition and dynamics. The result has been an imposition of hypothetical solutions to imaginary problems with increasing demands on fishermen that have become impossible for growing numbers of them to meet. Fishing is a demanding, uncertain, often even dangerous, business. The ability to bear added costs and restrictions is limited but in recent years these have been heaped on with minimal regard for the impact on the industry.
The natural communities upon which our fisheries are based are in reality not fragile and delicate but are in fact, decidedly robust and flexible ones that readily recover from frequent natural perturbations. There is little risk in monitoring fisheries and addressing problems if and when they become apparent, rather than trying to take elaborate pre-emptive action to avoid an endless array of imaginary possibilities. In view of our ignorance and the complexity of the matters involved, it would also be prudent to test measures before applying them on a broad scale as well as to carefully assess their results when implemented.
Although there are a few species (e.g. orange roughy and school shark) whose particular biology makes them especially vulnerable to overfishing, the broad picture of the Australian marine environment is that of a vast, very lightly fished and unpolluted region. There is no pressing urgency to impose a rapidly growing morass of restrictions but there is very real need to better understand and evaluate what we are doing.
In general a much more empirically based approach is needed. Management decisions need to be based on what is actually happening in a fishery, not theories and models. Regulation should be imposed only where a demonstrated need exists and results should be monitored and evaluated. Much stronger involvement of the industry in formulating management measures is essential to insure that the form of demands is appropriate to the realities of the fishery. Management by theory without broad and ongoing assessment of actual conditions and results is a prescription for mismanagement.
The whole endeavour has also taken on aspects of the sacred. This manifests itself in language where fragile and delicate have become almost mandatory adjectives in describing the natural world. It is further reflected in the heavy penalties and zealous enforcement of environmental regulations even when infractions are trivial and no actual damage has been done. Since expansion of the green zones on the Barrier Reef two years ago some 300 people have been charged with fishing in them. The conviction rate has been an unbelievable 99%. In addition to a hefty fine the law imposes a mandatory criminal record. Ninety-eight percent of those convicted have been otherwise law abiding citizens with no previous criminal record. They are now banned for life from many activities. Many, if not most, actually caught nothing but were guilty only of accidentally or ignorantly crossing an imaginary line in the ocean when trolling. They would have been much better off to be caught speeding through a school zone where the fine would be less and the infringement only a misdemeanor. It seems we value a child’s life less than that of a mackerel.
Eco-authoritaranism
It would be easy to dismiss all this as the grumblings of a grumpy old man but think again. The picture presented is certainly no less unbelievable than the apparent belief of politicians and bureaucrats that the private sector has a limitless capacity to comply with ever increasing demands. Every year thousands of pages of new laws are enacted and few are ever rescinded. Laws to “save” the environment are popular, usually entail little apparent budgetary cost and are unseemly to oppose. They also come highly recommended by the government’s own bureaucrats and researchers as well as publicity savvy environmental groups. Not surprisingly, they tend to be passed with minimal consideration or dissent. It all might be seen as just messy old democracy in action except for one very important omission. Those who will directly be affected usually have little say in the process. Typically they comprise only a scattered un-organized minority who are easily dismissed as ignorant complainers wanting to despoil our precious environment for their own selfish profit.
Desperate fishermen are being driven into bankruptcy where they know from direct personal experience the claimed problems do not really exist. When they try to express their concerns to the managers, researchers and environmentalist the only response they get is unsubstantiated claims of scientific validity accompanied by a semi-polite smile that could easily be seen as smug satisfaction. This is real . I’ve observed it and this is not just my own unique impression. A number of independent observers have noted and commented along similar lines not to mention numerous fishermen.
Australian fisheries are in decline, not from overfishing, there are plenty of fish out there, but from ill conceived regulation. Despite having the world’s third largest fishery zone the total Australian catch is similar to that of Finland, Germany, Poland and Portugal but well below that of New Zealand, France, Ireland and Italy. From 6% of the global EEZ we produce 0.2% of the world’s catch. In other words, our harvest rate on an area basis is about 1/30 that of the average. This magnitude of difference goes beyond just poor management. It requires some form of determined rejection of blatantly obvious reality to explain. It’s a bit like the decades-long determined insistence of the communist ideal when the reality was clearly an ongoing disaster. Not coincidentally that too was a consequence of management where ideology and bureaucracy had complete control.
Walter Starck:
Because we put so many restrictions in the way of our fishery that fishermen are finding it impossible to operate. On the Great Barrier Reef we've put aside a third of the entire reef where they can't go at all, and then in the area where they're still allowed to go they have a total quota, they have individual quotas, they have closed seasons, they have gear limits, they have size limits, they have species prohibitions, and an incredible amount of paperwork that has to document each and every fish you catch and where it comes from and when you caught it, and it has to be filed within five hours of returning to port.
Many fishermen are simply giving up.
