John Linton
....but Peter Garrett (the posturing clown with zero knowledge or qualifications who's "celebrity status" as an uneducated, superannuated pop singer is Labor's idea of a Federal Minister For Conservation, Environment and Arts) doesn't give a damn, and the Australian people generally never go out of their way to inform themselves of the critical problems affecting Australia's natural heritage.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=last-chance-to-save-the-christmas-i-2009-09-08
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/christmas-island-bat-months-from-extinction-1677667.html
It is a national disgrace that Garrett is so totally inept that the pipistrelle bat is likely to become the first Australian mammal to become extinct in 53 years and so typical of the lack of care by the Federal Government's of the past twenty years of completely bizarre and uncaring attitudes to the Australian environment - none more so than the current poltroon appointed to the top position in Australia whose record to date is the environmental equivalent of inviting Attila the Hun and a few of his generals in to your house to inspect your fine art collection....the result is totally predictable.
If you care at all, in any way, about the future of Australia's flora, fauna and avia please make your total disgust at this situation known directly to Garrett (the Butcher Of Kingsford) by contacting him via the appropriate channels which can be found here:
http://www.aph.gov.au/house/members/memfeedback.asp?id=HV4
and remind that jerk that he, and only he, is being paid to keep Australia's natural heritage alive not simply ponce around at fancy dinners and conferences saying how important the environment is while his every action since being appointed makes a Gold Coast developer look like the favoured candidate for conservationist of the century.
Why don't more Australians care about the environment? It has puzzled me almost from the first year I came to this country that apart from the occasional 'conscience donation' to an environmental protection organisation very, very few people who live in this country ever lift a finger to understand the severe problems that exist let alone lift a finger to do anything about anything at all. Of all the countries on the planet Australia has more endangered species than any other yet Federal and State governments do practically nothing, the bare minimum that they can get away with, and the people who elect those governments appear to care even less.
The ONLY answer to the current dreadful scenario is for more people to insist that more is done and that no species in Australia should be allowed to drift to extinction by people like Garrett's total indifference to his responsibilities. I know that any single individual can do practically nothing on their own - the problems affecting Australia have been brought into existence by thousands of years of ignorance and more lately just plain untrammeled greed, bribery and neglect. However there are many small organisations that do have devoted individuals that do make a difference in almost every community around Australia that need hands on and financial support and every Australian could make a difference by supporting such organisations.
Unfortunately I don't pay as much attention to these key issues as I should - with the vast majority of my waking hours being taken up by trying to keep a small commercial company alive and with an ongoing future. I, personally, simply don't have the money needed to make more than an infinitisimal 'dent' in the huge task of restoring Australia's environment to where it needs to be. Exetel is able, via its customers donations to provide some $A500,000 a year to a few community based conservation projects and that helps a little but is a 'drop in the bucket' to what is needed.
Exetel can probably do more by being more 'creative'. One of the ideas we have been considering is getting our suppliers to involve themselves in 'a voluntary contribution' to projects dedicated to preventing specific Australian species becoming extinct by supporting those organisations via charging them a 1% 'tax' on the value of any purchases we make from them which would be done by deducting that amount of money from any bill we pay - our purchases are around $A50,000,000 a year so that would double the contribution that Exetel could make in this financial year had such a program been in place at the start of the year.
So, with not very much effort, a small company like Exetel could donate $A1 million a year to conservation projects. If ten percent of all Australian commercial enterprises took the same/similar/other initiatives then Australia would have no environmental problems and we could stop wasting tax payer money providing troughs of tax payer dollars for people like Garrett to suck dry.
For any impossibly difficult problem to be solved only takes the desire of enough people to solve it - there are far more than enough people in Australia to ensure that no Australian species ever becomes extinct, or even threatened by extinction - if only enough Australians make a minimal effort to bring that about.