News from the Secretary April 2006

Appeal for Funds
Thank you to those who responded to our appeal to you at your postal address. If you attempted to make your donation by direct deposit to our bank account, you may have discovered the Bank BSB number in our letter to you was incomplete! We inadvertently left off the last digit of the six digit number. This means that your bank would know the correct BankSA account to credit, but not the branch- and this would be resolved by bank staff. We apologise for this error and hope that it has not deterred you from making a donation. If your donation by direct deposit is pending, please note the complete number for donating by direct deposit is. Account details: Name: “Doctors for the Environment, Australia” BSB 105108 Account 025060640

New South Wales Management Committee Members
In the previous newsletter I reported good news that we had welcomed two NSW members to be representatives on the Management Committee. Graeme Horton is in General Practice and has an appointment at Newcastle University. Michael Schien is in rural General Practice. Both are from Newcastle, a centre with considerable environmental credentials and academic input. Graeme and Michael will form the nucleus of a New South Wales Committee and we believe that this will offer considerable potential for increasing our membership and activities in the Newcastle region and to spread these to the whole of NSW.

Prescription for a Healthy Planet
The Prescription for a Healthy Planet posters and brochures were distributed rapidly and we are considering a further printing. This will cost money for our grant from DEH is now fully spent, and we may use some of the funds raised in the Appeal. We encourage those members who haven’t yet enrolled for posters to do so.

Policy paper “An Energy Policy for Australia”
This policy paper has been under preparation for some months and we expect a draft to be posted onto the web page www.dea.org.au during the next month. The paper tackles the contentious issue of nuclear power and attempts to put this in the context of all the measures necessary to address the climate change threat. We are very keen to have input and comment from members. The use of nuclear power in Australia is being discussed more and more and one suspects that there is movement for nuclear power stations in this country. Even if such facilities were constructed, it should be realised that their contribution to greenhouse mitigation would be decades into the future. Mitigation is becoming so urgent that it would be folly to rely on a technological fix when there are measures that society can adopt immediately.

A Sustainable Budget for Australia?
The “trickle-down economics” argument of Reagan and Thatcher was described by the late J Kenneth Galbraith as “feeding oats to the horses”. This compels the sparrows to follow behind to peck the occasional oat seed from the dung. Being a practical economist Galbraith said “Why not feed the sparrows?” The same arguments are often applied to the environment. How many times have we heard the governments of liberal democracies state that the way to a healthy environment is a healthy economy and a balanced budget? Then there will be money for the environment. Once more this is not supported by the latest distribution of largesse by the Australian Federal Treasurer. The additional funds for the River Murray are very welcome for the Murray is in great danger from climate change alone, but I have the suspicion that it was the driving personality of Malcolm Turnbull that captured the funds for his portfolio. The words ‘climate change’ were not mentioned in the Treasurer’s speech which delivered billions of dollars in tax cuts to our affluent society. Yet billions of dollars are needed for alternative fuels, technological development in solar, wind etc and for public involvement in energy saving; billions are not needed for personal tax cuts in this affluent country. The Leader of the Opposition did use the words ‘climate change’ but there were no specific commitments. Where was the new thinking after 10 years in opposition, the vision for the future, the funding for agriculture and industry to adapt to a fast changing climatic world and to provide infrastructure to enable water resources and urban society to remain viable?

It is clear that our message has not yet penetrated government thinking and an enormous opportunity has been lost in a time of plenty. We must redouble our efforts to explain the issues to both Government and Opposition.

Now I should say that these few words represent my response to the Federal budget and do not necessarily represent the views of DEA. I put them forward to stimulate you to provide your feed back on the aspects of the budget proposals relevant to our health/environment interests. Your views when sent to me will go onto the webpage where they will have quite a wide readership—as measurement of web page usage demonstrates.

For the record, the figures from the Minister of Environment indicate that the environment has an increase of $878m on 2005-2006 expenditure. Of this $500m is for the Murray Darling as indicated above. 11.5m is to encourage the use of bio-fuels. The statement says “the Government’s investment in tackling climate change is about $2 billion” (This is existing expenditure, technological research, clean coal, solar cities etc).

David Shearman,
Secretary