Island's collapse and book launch dynamic similarities were unsettling

Similarities between the 17th century collapse of the Easter Island population and the social dynamics at the recent launch of a book acknowledging Shepparton’s 150th birthday have crowded my thinking.

Listening as the former Member for Murray, Mr Bruce Lloyd, launched the coffee table-like book – Water: The Vital Element, 150 Years of Shepparton’s Growth – I couldn’t avoid thinking about the demise of the small Pacific Ocean island’s population.
That, you could argue, may be a long bow to draw and although I might agree, the similarities were unsettling.
The people of Easter Island (above right) lived comparatively happily, but for reasons not fully understood they were addicted to building huge monuments to assuage their superstitions and used most all the island’s trees to enable their transport.
Here in Shepparton our superstitions might be different, but allegiance to them is as damaging as those at Easter Island for instead of our community blooming into beautiful fulfilment it limps ahead paying homage to values that trouble our planet.
Those at the book launch celebrated many things, and people, as they should, but in doing so helped perpetuate the many myths that negate the long-term unfolding welfare of Sheppartonians.
The idea that growth is good prevails and the subsequent contagion, although it has always been a human instinct, accelerated wildly with the impetus of the industrial revolution and so has been a part of Shepparton’s 150 years.
Growth has served the district well, but then in the 1970s scientists began to truly understand what impact humans were having on earth and so while our addictions were enriching they also had a dark side.
That dark side was only surreptitiously evident at the book launch in that our inherent drive for growth that is the energy of Shepparton’s history is also the essence of the paradigm now holding the world hostage.
Our insistence on the growth and success equation is now such that it is almost superstition and myth, but those beliefs bring difficulties similar to those of the Easter Islanders and to use the words of recent visitor to Shepparton and former Greenpeace CEO, Paul Gilding, threaten “the survival of human civilization”.

A challenging conversation that needs a truly visionary outcome

Those who attend today’s (Tuesday, October 12, 2010) consultation to consider proposals for the conservation and management of water in the Murray-Darling Basin face a significant challenge.

It seems they will need to look at the proposals in the here and now and then, importantly, consider them, in what is near a magical and seemingly impossible trick, through the prism of 1000 years hence.

According to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s “Guide to the Proposed Basin Plan”, the basin is a critical part of Australia’s economy and the nation’s food security. The basin, it says, contributes 39 per cent of national agricultural production and provides water for three million Australians.

Today’s conversation is about a finite resource and infinite aspirations.

What is advocated and how Australians respond to the proposals is obviously important to the here and now, but it is the “1000 years’ time” question that is truly and deeply important.

Most of us can comprehend what has happened (the past), but it is a rare soul who can project his or her thoughts to encompass the unfolding of events (the future) and so most live in a short-term world where 25 year view is considered visionary.
The Murray-Darling Basin has been, in one way or another, implicated in the Australian landscape for millennia and in just 200 years we have raped, exhausted and plundered its resource to sate our thirsts and grow rich and fat on the abundant food it allowed us to grow.
What has been proposed has been described as a “slap in the face for primary producers” by one commentator and as “un-Australian” by another.
Critically, and importantly, we need to rise above such views as they are founded on populism ignited by concerns for the here and now, but in what seems an odd contradiction we need to apply ourselves and act appropriately in this moment to ensure the basin continues to serve the nation’s water needs for 1000 years.
It is somewhat generous to imagine the authority was looking that far ahead, but at least it appears to go well beyond the here and now, something that deserves our applause.