South Wind

Labor’s Dean Winter has worked hard to build his brand as an alternative premier, positioning his party at a distance removed from the Rockliff Liberal government on matters of the moment. 

But on at least one issue he and Jeremy Rockliff are in lock step. As soon as anyone raises questions about the salmon farming industry, the two leaders respond with one voice. Any and all such criticism, they say, is a dagger in the heart of our state’s economy.

A couple of weeks ago Jeremy Rockliff said a negative federal verdict on the environmental impact of Macquarie Harbour salmon farming would have a ripple effect across the state and could be “catastrophic” for many small towns. Not to be outdone, on Friday the Labor leader declared that the industry “provides safe, secure, well-paid jobs, and underpins the success of many other industries too.”

Both leaders have repeated assertions by Salmon Tasmania that the industry is responsible for a total of over 5000 jobs – an amalgamation of claimed totals of 2100 directly-employed full-time equivalent positions and a further 3000 full-time indirectly-employed positions.

A November 2023 estimate by the Australia Institute, based on 2021 census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, indicates much more modest totals: direct employment of 1097 full time equivalent (FTE) positions and a “best case” 1722 FTE taking in support for indirectly-employed positions. 

The same analysis pared down the Salmon Tasmania claim of 17 per cent of West Coast employment, putting the number of West Coast salmon industry jobs at 54 FTE, or 2.5 per cent of the total West Coast workforce, with a best-case total including support for indirect employment of 76, or 3.6 per cent. 

All this has been sparked by fears for the Maugean skate, a fish species unique to Macquarie Harbour. Multi-year monitoring by marine scientists David Moreno and Jason Semmens, of Hobart’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS), found that numbers had halved over seven years and predicted the species’ effective demise by the early 2040s.

The same two experts found that the species’ plight was overwhelmingly due to declining levels of dissolved oxygen in the harbour caused by salmon pen pollution. That research underpinned official advice to Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek that salmon farming in the harbour should be “paused” pending further approvals.

Salmon Tasmania promptly engaged University of Tasmania ecologist Barry Brook to do a “scientific-based critique” of that advice. He determined that the chosen parameters for the Moreno-Semmens study skewed its findings, and that “the whole exercise should be redone from the ground up”.

Brook’s analysis and a contemporaneous IMAS finding that artificial oxygenation of harbour water was working were seized upon by Salmon Tasmania and its political cheer squad. Winter and Burnie mayor Shane Pitt attacked Canberra for its apparent antipathy toward the industry, and Environment minister Nick Duigan announced an “independent scientific” review of modelling used to establish the species’ viability.

In lashing out at Canberra, Martin, Pitt, Winter and Rockliff have all been hammering economic benefit for a local audience always focused on jobs, pointedly leaving out of their tirades the precarious state of the Maugean skate.

That may come back to bite them. Australia is a party to international legal agreements to protect endangered species like the Maugean skate. Principle 15 of the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development binds Australia to applying the precautionary approach where there are threats of “serious or irreversible damage” to natural systems and species.

That principle says in part that “lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.” Calls for the Moreno-Semmens modelling to be redone “from the ground up” ahead of any precautionary measures are out of step with that agreement.

SIX (Sustainable Investment Exchange), the activist share trading platform founded by Adam Verwey and Sophie Hall, announced last week that it was lodging resolutions on behalf of Woolworths and Coles shareholders to stop the supermarket chains from procuring salmon farmed in Macquarie Harbour. Salmon Tasmania CEO Luke Martin immediately launched into what he called “stunts” by “faceless mainland activists … putting pressure on our customers.”

Calling them faceless is more than a bit rich. Verwey and Hall are readily identifiable on SIX’s website, and while Martin is well known in Tasmania, his foreign paymasters, owners of the three non-Australian companies behind Salmon Tasmania, are not exactly household names here.

Last Saturday, National Threatened Species Day, Minister Duigan announced a $2.1 million fund supporting captive breeding of the Maugean skate. But the acid test is survival in the wild, and right now that looks like a big fat fail.

There’s a wild creature in all of us, occupying the right side of our brains and quietly communicating to every part of our bodies – but we have sorely neglected it and we’re paying a price. So says Steve Biddulph in his new book, Wild Creature Mind.

Steve Biddulph has been in or around my life since the 1980s, when I was one of thousands of Tasmanian participants in his workplace, community and adult education sessions exploring our various social and personal issues.

His big career change happened when he decided to put his ideas into writing about the interesting things that happen to us along life’s journey, including his own, starting with becoming a parent. Publicity for Wild Creature Mind describes him as “the world’s top-selling parenting writer”, and with sales of over six million books in many languages, who’s arguing?

Now living in the Tamar Valley, Biddulph is driven by many things, but acclaim is not one of them. As a psychologist he focused on building in individuals and communities the skills and self-awareness needed for robust mental health, and addressing anxiety and other chronic disorders among young people, which won him an Order of Australia in 2015.

Now 71, he is long retired from practising psychology, but his restless mind has continued to probe the endlessly fascinating human condition and to seek answers to big questions in psychology and neuroscience.

Wild Creature Mind begins with a series of questions. Do you have problems with anxiety, or trouble knowing your boundaries, or does life seem pointless and all too hard, or do you question your own worth, or do you have grave fears for the future of the human race? If the answer to any of these is yes, this book is for you.

Wild Creature Mind, says Biddulph, is based on a radical new understanding in neuroscience about our terrible state of mental health. Our brain evolved in two halves, the left-side thinking and talking part, and the right-side “animal part”, the part that helps us shake off anxiety and bad memories, assert ourselves (be “fiercely strong”) when necessary, and become a more open, balanced and loving person.

Before reading Biddulph’s book I knew very little about the developing knowledge he describes. From a chance radio interview I heard one night with the psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, and subsequently from reading his book The Body Keeps the Score, I learned of recent changes in the way trauma is viewed and treated. But Biddulph has taken my understanding to a whole new place.

I feel quite heavily invested in the idea of Wild Creature Mind. It fits perfectly with an experience I had a while ago while out on my daily phone-free walk – a practice highly recommended for all, alone or in company.

Charging along and thinking of life, as you do, I suddenly found myself turning around and heading home. Emerging out of nowhere, something insisted I had business to attend to. I didn’t know quite what I was going to do or how I was going to do it, just that it had to be done. I now know that was my right brain talking. I did what it told me to do, and it changed my life, for the better.

Wild Creature Mind won’t solve your life’s problems – only you can do that – but it will open some doors for you. It offers practical hints on accessing your animal mind, as well as introducing you in an easy, friendly way to the revolutionary thoughts of other notables about our mind’s inner workings. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Years ago I lost contact with Biddulph, but we rediscovered a mutual interest when I started to write about climate change in 2007. Rivalling human psychology among Biddulph’s passions is the natural environment, and especially the way humans are affecting the climate.

The connection between those rival interests is plain for all to see in Wild Creature Mind. Listed at the end of the book are some of the gains from “being more in your right hemisphere”, where status and possessions fade to irrelevance against benefits like love, happiness and being engaged in “purposes that are bigger than yourself”.

“A hundred years from now, a Wild Creature emerges from some leafy cover,” Biddulph concludes, “and some small creatures tumble into the light. If we are lucky, if we get it right, they are human beings. If we are really lucky, there will still be hospitals and music, aircraft and elephants. We’ll have made it through.”

My household doesn’t include an electric car because our Toyota still does the job and the capital cost is beyond us. I sympathise with the Mercury correspondent who took exception last week to “condescending remarks” about not going electric.

It would have been better for the planet had we all gone electric years ago, and driving an electric vehicle would make it easier for me to argue for an end to fossil fuel use.

But that’s life. For many reasons, mainly economic, EVs will take a while to become truly normal in Australia. In our bigger cities that may be just a year or two, which ought to concentrate the minds of authorities, because the implications are massive.

Appearing in my inbox each month, My Electric Car Newsletter features a rapidly rising array of new models, along with advances in the technology of batteries and chargers and all the other paraphernalia of this automotive revolution.

Take the July issue, full of strangely-named new cars that most of us have never seen. European-badged EVs are starting to appear in Australia to join Elon Musk’s Tesla, which had a big head start. Both are mainly Chinese-made – but the real news today is about China’s home-grown brands.

Their sudden appearance on our roads has a long backstory. Twenty years ago, when Musk and other tech-savvy Western entrepreneurs foresaw the end of the fossil fuel era and started investing in alternatives to internal combustion engines, China read the same tea leaves and put its substantial financial and intellectual muscle behind electric cars, buses and trucks, and the batteries that power them.

In 2024 the results are there for all to see. With about 60 per cent of world production, China dominates EV manufacturing globally. Legacy brands from Japan, Korea, Europe and North America already rely heavily on Chinese manufacturing, but home-grown makers with names like Chery, BYD, GWM, Xpeng and Zeekr are the real story. They’re dominant in China and it’s only a matter of time before it’s the same here.

Melbourne new-energy geek Sam Evans – “Electric Viking” on YouTube – spelled out the consequences in stark detail this month in a video about car sales in China. He predicts that after a tenfold growth in EV sales since 2020, by the end of this year the internal combustion engine will be “finished in China”. Where China leads the world will follow, and the revolution will happen faster than any of us are ready for.

We’re mistaken to assume that the relatively low price of Chinese electric cars indicates lower quality, says US automotive engineer Sandy Munro, an expert in all things EV. Their technology, design and finish are at least as good as that of the non-Chinese brands, and often better. They cost less because unlike legacy car brands, new Chinese players are prepared to sell at or below cost to build market share.

The market is responding. Evans cited reputable data showing a huge growth in Chinese sales of home-grown EV brands over the past four years while sales of all the famous non-Chinese brands – the likes of Toyota, Hyundai, Mercedes and Ford – showed a marked decline.

The Electric Viking reports that despite high European and US import tarrifs, 18 of the world’s 20 best-selling EV models are Chinese brands. The other two are Teslas. In Australia, where EV purchases are rapidly approaching 10 per cent of the new car market, top-dog Tesla is being challenged by those once-unknown Chinese models.

The past few years here have seen the odd blip in EV market share thanks in part to tax incentives for tradies to buy large, gas-guzzling utes, but the overall trend to EVs is inexorably upward. Electric utes include a handful of established names like Ford, Tesla and Toyota, but these are set to be swamped within a year by a dozen or more cheap, powerful Chinese models.

The momentum behind EV sales raises big long-term questions for regional Australia with its strong reliance on private cars for transport – and especially for the island state of Tasmania, at the end of long, vulnerable fuel supply lines from Asia. EV sales in Tasmania last year were less than 1 per cent of total sales, well below the national average, but the shift is happening here too.

As EVs penetrate and then dominate the car market, people not rolling in disposable income will be badly disadvantaged. This isn’t a personal complaint – my driving days are drawing to a close – although I do wonder what happened to egalitarian values, or why governments don’t plan ahead or prioritise essentials. But those are other subjects altogether.