Consultant Dan
09 June 2011
Anti-environmental extremism in the media
Today’s Age carries an article by Alan Oxley in which he makes an alarming case against the ban on exports of cattle to Indonesia.
Oxley makes the unsubstantiated claim that restrictions on cattle exports will cause human misery among the poor in Indonesia. This may be true, but I am yet to hear of this case being made by any reputable aid experts.
Oxley then goes on to make the case against Australian trade bans on timber that is illegally logged in Indonesia. Illegal logging in the region is not just an ecological and social disaster for the locals and contributor to global warming, it is a foundation for organized crime and corruption.
Illegal loggers enslave workers, run prostitution, guns and violent intimidation of traditional land owners.
So who is Oxley and why would he support illegal logging? The Age editors chose to byline him as “chairman of the Australian APEC Centre at RMIT University”, which lends him a high degree of credibility.
Oxley is actually a veteran anti-environmental extremist. The Washington Post called him “the loneliest man at the Cancun climate conference”, because he went there to lobby for deforestation! He is one of Clive Hamilton’s ‘dirty dozen’ climate skeptics.
In an article today in The Punch, Simon Banks from the Labor-aligned lobbying firm Hawker Britton, argues that the regulation of lobbyists should be strengthened to capture the activities of people like Oxley. I not that Mr Oxley and his firm do not appear to be properly listed on the Register of Lobbyists.
I wonder what the Age’s position is on editorial integrity, when it fails to note that Mr Oxley is an international lobbyist on behalf of logging companies mired in illegal logging allegations. I also wonder if the Age paid Mr Oxley, which is contrary to its stated policy of not paying lobbyists.
The big Fairfax papers, the Age, Sydney Morning Herald and Financial Review fail their readers by frequently publishing bad opinion pieces from anti-environmental extremists.
I am not in favor of censoring extremists, but if Oxley has something to say, he can get himself a blog. The Age should only run quality opinion pieces from people who have something constructive and sensible to contribute to these important debates.
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