Better ways to influence and fight back against poor and inadequate governance across rural and regional areas, communities, resource sectors and industries across Australia
John O’Donnell
It is the authors opinion that there is poor and inadequate governance at local, state and federal levels across rural and regional areas, communities, resource sectors and industries across Australia, including:
Vote pandering and activism:
- Vote pandering, in order to form governments, is resulting in many poor outcomes, decisions and division.
- Activism in many governments, agencies, universities and outside agencies is rampant. Many agencies and organisations are taking actions/ undertaking approaches not in the broad interests of regions, communities and sectors.
Poor productivity, trade and value adding outcomes:
- Australia is not adequately tackling key issues, including productivity, cost of living, disaster management and many other issues.
- Many decisions and approaches are resulting in loss of trade, increasing imports and increasing sovereign risks. Closing of the native timber industry is one example with large impacts on many regional communities.
- Australia has lost much and is losing much of the can do approach of the 1930’s to 1970’s, including building flood mitigation, bushfire mitigation etc.
- Endless money is going into non-necessary/ unproductive areas based on whims and green pushes.
- In many cases there is poor allocation of research funding and the need to be more industry involvement in research funding allocation.
Over regulation:
- Over regulatory approaches are occurring and this appears to be increasing.
- There is increasing red and green tape and lawfare is rampant
- At times, there is a government push through focus, including closure of the native timber industry and sheep trade are examples.
Inadequate listening:
- At times, state and federal governments have/ are not adequately listening to/ consulting regional communities, resource sectors, industries and industry groups and this can and has resulted in poor decisions, impacting heavily on regional areas in many cases.
- Inadequate consideration of all submissions (and all submission issues) provided to reviews, inquiries and other cases seeking regional input, with no provision of responses to individual submission issues, weakening the response process.
Poor disaster management and mitigation outcomes:
- Disaster management and mitigation efforts and funding is inadequate, massive bushfires and floods are and will continue to cause massive impacts. Piecemeal approaches will never adequately address disaster risks.
- There are rapidly increasing insurance costs, especially in a number of regional areas.
- Many inquiries have been failures and don’t get to the true contributory factors, including bushfires, including current inadequate mitigation in most states. There are huge barriers to undertaking required bushfire mitigation approaches, prescribed and cultural burning is one such area.
It is the authors opinion that consequent outcomes on regions, communities and sectors include:
- Closure of industrial and natural resource sectors or reduced yields/ resources.
- Region and community suffering in many areas.
- Declining/ low productivity levels.
- At times, poor solutions, economic approaches and outcomes.
- Increasing regulation and over regulation and duplication of regulatory resources e.g. federal and state EPAs.
- Policy failures.
- Increasing red and green tape.
- Slow actioning of required actioning and not undertaking a can do approach to government. (except in cases like the recent sheep export bill legislation, which will have a large impact on regional areas).
- Increasing costs of living.
- Inadequate disaster management, inadequate mitigation funding and mitigation efforts and consequent large disasters.
- Increasing insurance costs in regions and regional communities.
- Increasing imports/ declining exports.
- Loss of much of the can do approach of the 1930’s to 1970’s.
- Increasing forest decline and dense understories, decreasing forest health and increasing intense bushfire risks.
- In many cases, inadequate research outcomes.
- Loss of Australian cohesiveness.
Many of the issues, outcomes and consequences are cross sector issues, further highlighting the importance of better working together across sectors. Collectively, these governance failures and consequences are having major impactsacross rural and regional areas, communities, resource sectors and industries across Australia.
Costs of inadequate governance across rural and regional areas, communities, resource sectors and industries across Australia
Costs of inadequate governance across rural and regional areas, communities, resource sectors and industries across Australia to the economy include:
- Costs of large business and employment impacts to rural and regional industries and communities.
- Costs of low productivity growth, poor economic solutions and outcomes and missed opportunities for better approaches, employment and regional economies.
- Costs of duplication of regulatory resources e.g. federal and state EPAs and over regulation.
- Costs of environmental red and green tape.
- Costs of vote pandering to Australia’s prosperity, it is likely much greater than believed.
- Costs of large amounts of money going into non-needed areas based on whims and green pushes.
- Costs of increased disasters and costs due to government inaction, particularly inadequate action in relation to bushfire and flood mitigation, the Productivity Commission picked up on this. Natural disaster costs are very high and increasing, the 2019/ 20 bushfires burnt over 17 million hectares and they were also very costly, estimated by AccWeather to be $110 billion in terms of total damage and economic loss. https://www.accuweather.com/en/business/australia-wildfire-economic-damages-and-losses-to-reach-110-billion/657235 There are miniscule prescribed burning programs across Australian forests (around 1 % of forested areas per year and around 6 per cent in SW WA forests), resulting in massive bushfires.
- Costs of increased and rising insurance costs, across huge areas of rural and regional Australia.
- Costs of inadequate State/ Federal inquiries into land, flood and bushfires and other investigations, mostly failing in regards to mitigation needs.
- Costs of inadequate lock up and leave conservation management resulting in loss of biodiversity, massive intense bushfires and impacts on communities.
- Costs of loss of forestry/ adaptive management in native forests.
- Costs of increased imports and reduced exports/ value adding.
- Costs of poor returns on research funding in many cases and missed opportunities for better funding for areas that are performing.
- Costs of supporting ongoing litigation through environmental charities and government funding.
- Costs of project approvals, these are often large.
- Costs of inadequate consideration of all submissions (and all submission issues) to reviews, inquiries, submissions, there is rarely a process for this, except for project approvals.
Potential approaches and opportunities to better influence government and fight back
There are opportunities for natural resource, landholder, industry, manufacturing, regional, community, bush user and other sectors to better work cooperatively together across and within sectors, especially in relation to influencing government policies, directions, decisions, inadequate outcomes and opportunities. In some cases, alliances, campaigns and working groups could be formed on cross sector and within sector issues.
Sectors where improved cooperation and alliances could be adopted include agriculture, forestry, fisheries, mining, other natural resource sectors, fire organisations, landholder groups, manufacturing, industry/ sector groups, communities and bush users, to better hold governments to account, challenge vote pandering and better push back against inadequate government. This gives more strength in responding to issues and concerns.
Further detail on ideas and opportunities to better influence government and fight back against poor and inadequate governance and decisions are outlined below:
Improved collaboration across and within sectors, industries and other groups:
- Greater awareness and linkages/ alliances between and across resource groups and resource sectors, with improved collaboration across sectors (and within) and industries.
- Set up better integrated and targeted web platform/s.
- Set up better integrated and targeted social media.
- Use of newsletters.
- Use of cross and within sector working groups.
- Optimise media coverage into cities and regions using low cost techniques and independent fair balanced media.
- Call out misuse of community consultation groups and working groups with green selections and pre-ordained outcomes.
- Legal challenges to government and organisation decisions where required.
- Influence government bipartisan approaches.
Improved campaigns across and within sectors, industries and other groups:
- Use of targeted action campaigns.
- Development and implementation of fight back approaches.
- Utilisation of Keep the Sheep like approaches.
- Optimise use of petitions in relation to concerns with the government.
- Use of targeted open letters to government leaders in the media.
- Utilisation of targeted advertisements.
Improved documentation across and within sectors, industries and other groups:
- Implement fight back documentation approaches.
- Issue revised policies and motions for government/ small party review/ consideration, including key concern areas of regions and sectors.
- Clearly identify priority issues for government.
- Influence can do approaches to government.
- Reduce red and green tape.
Improved questioning across and within sectors, industries and other groups:
- Undertake cross sector targeted party questioning before and after elections, including in relation to policies, proposals and other concern areas.
- Continuously question political party links to green and activist groups and outline what these groups are up to.
- Coordinated questioning of poor/ inadequate government direction and policy.
- Greater use of media ombudsman and complaint authorities in relation to one sided media/ government reporting, especially ongoing cases.
Improved approaches to achievement awards:
- Set up an award system to recognise unrecognised regional, community, industry and sector achievers.
Conclusions
It is past time to adopt better ways to influence and fight back against poor and inadequate governance across rural and regional areas, communities, resource sectors and industries across Australia. The above points provide ideas and opportunity areas on how to better address this.
About John O’Donnell
John is a retired district forester and environmental manager for hydro-electric construction and major highway construction projects. His main interests are mild maintenance burning of forests, addressing the culture of massive fuel loads in our forests setting up large bushfires, forest health, establishing safe/ healthy and resilient landscapes, adaptive forest management, fire fighter safety, as well as town and city bushfire safety.