Wilful Blindness

Does it matter whether we get involved with the big issues or just get on with earning our living, having fun, and let the other guys make all the tough decisions?

Does it matter if the farmers are struggling? If our local farmers aren’t able to just switch to another city, another continent, to follow the money, play the global markets game, is it because they are stupid?

Farmers are grounded, they cannot escape without giving up on everything they have been working for, and their father and grand-fathers before them.

The shire executives and councillors know that what they are developing is an unsustainable economy based on property development and tourism, they are selling out our farmers in favour of the corporations. There is no justification for this. They claim to see no problems with the policies they endorse, they claim not to see that approving the building of houses where there is no employment will result in holiday homes. They will not consider the alternative development model suggested by the local people, the people who will have to live alongside any development. An alternative that would allow housing development to create financial gains for the residents of this shire, and economic development for the Leeuwin Ward, with less infrastructure maintenance for the ratepayer in future years.

Their policies and plans are destroying the culture of this community, the social fabric and the economy, purely for the financial benefit of corporate investors, based in Sydney and Perth.

Last week the Weekend Australian carried an article about a local farmer;

Ross Woodhouse

But is that the whole story?

If the only way for small farmers in the SW to survive is to sell out to China then have they really survived?

Those of you who know me will know that one of my close relatives hails from China, my niece was adopted, there are no xenophobic overtones or undercurrents in the comments I’m making. I am not suffering from any fear or moral panic at the thought of the Asian hoards descending on Karridale when I tell you what my observations are. I would feel exactly the same if the solution was a buy out by a Sydney based corporation.

I’m not involved except by way of proximity, these are an outsider’s opinions, but they are honest and come with good intent.

Ross’ father, Bert Woodhouse, was born in the city of Birmingham in the UK Midlands, it is a city I know well. I moved there immediately after qualifying as an accountant and spent many years enjoying life in the Cadbury-Schweppes corporate environment. Life was not so good for Bert’s family as when his father returned from fighting in the trenches of Europe it was not to a hero’s welcome but to a depressed Birmingham that could offer him nothing in return for the years of service, except the promise of a land of Milk and Honey in the far SW of WA. Bert Woodhouse

And so the Woodhouse family made their way by boat under the Group Settlement Scheme. This was a fraud perpetrated on a huge scale against the exhausted and broken men who had endured so many years of unimaginable hardship and terror. A fraud plotted and planned by city based men advising two governments, under the leadership of Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, and Sir James Mitchell, Premier of WA.

The Group Settlement Scheme imposed enormous hardship on families, but some survived the harsh and inhospitable landscape and conditions. Bert survived. By the end of the 1930s the Leeuwin Ward was sparsely populated with many partially cleared land holdings left abandoned. In order to survive at all, in what was always a highly volatile area prone to bushfires, those resident farmers who remained had to burn off fuel loads around their properties every year just to stay safe. They also crash grazed the forests to reduce the fuel load further.

As a young man Bert enlisted and served the nation in WWII, wounded but surviving he returned to Warner Glen where some changes were afoot. The Leeuwin Ward welcomed many returning service men under the Soldier Settlement Scheme, a scheme that enabled them to take over abandoned Group Settlement properties and attempt to make them viable. Eventually the area thrived. Bert played his part in building the community through the Progress Association and other volunteer groups, and he continued to burn off the road verges around his farm.

Under the stewardship of the farmers like Bert and his parents the area developed into something accessible and beautiful. This was not natural, they had shaped it. Nature created impenetrable forests and bush but under the care of these farming families, dedicated to the land, a productive sustainable community developed.

In 1961 bushfires rages across the Leeuwin Ward but these canny farming folk had prepared for such eventualities and they fought the 60 foot flames with nothing more sophisticated than cream cans and knapsack sprayers. They suffered no loss of life and only a few minor injuries. We know that men who were out of the district when they heard of the fire raced back to defend what they had worked so hard for. There was no “Go early” concept for them, this was where they had their life, their livestock, their family home.

Only one family home was lost, and the community quickly sorted that problem by physically shifting a small house onto the property and donating every spare item they had to the Smith family to help them rebuild.

When the fires were raging there was a government film crew in Karridale, serendipity one might say. They filmed the event, and interviewed Joy McDonald, but when they returned to Perth the government decided that because they wanted to attract tourism to the region the fire footage should be destroyed. Not a good look faces blackened by bushfire, might frighten the visitors. An early precursor to our current obsession with form over substance, with concern about aesthetics taking priority over function.

In the 1970s electricity came to Leeuwin, and tarmac on the roads, and not long after this city based development corporations began to take notice. Just maybe they could take some profit here, this could be a good place for a playground.

Lots of people loved Leeuwin, they flocked here in droves. Many of them were converts to the green movement and despised the ways of the resident farmers, heaping scorn upon their sustainable living notions. Soon Bert was in trouble for doing what he had always done to make his land safe for living. Professionals were hired to organise the burning off, grazing to reduce fuel loads was frowned upon.

Then the land started to have value, and so the government placed restrictions on who could develop. Not the farmers, only the development corporations.

Very soon the infrastructure to support farming was dismantled, abattoirs in the SW were closed, sale yards were closed. Restrictions on who could sell milk and meat, and in what form this trade could occur were imposed, but no infrastructure was provided to support these new rules.

Do any of us really think it is more sustainable to ship milk by road to Harvey and then return it in plastic bottles to Augusta?

Are we so lacking in imagination that we can’t see what a great product local milk in returnable, recyclable bottles would be? If the bottles were attractive they would probably be taken away by tourists, but that wouldn’t be a problem, less rubbish and the deposit covers the cost.

Why do we have beef farmers trucking their livestock hundreds of kilometres to an abattoir when other remote locations use mobile abattoirs? Why did the inaugural lunch for the slow food movement Margaret River have to ship beef from Bindoon when we have beef producers here in this shire?

Look to see how many of our local restaurants have local butter on the table. None.

There is no money for the development corporations in any of these ideas; they would merely have created a thriving added-value food industry that would have made farming viable. Depressed and struggling economies can have the “growth” solution peddled to them much more easily. Even when the evidence that growth has not brought the shire prosperity still we are pursuing growth, without ever defining what growth we are seeking. More roads to maintain, more empty houses?

Ross Woodhouse is trying to live in a world where government gives the trump hand to those who can lobby hardest, and who can play hardball with the pollies and negotiate themselves a deal. All levels of government in WA are leaving the small independent farmer to fail, for no obvious reason, but peel back the layers and you will see the corporations are behind this travesty and deception.

Ross is just one man, just one failure. He has been duped by government and tied up in the bondage of bureaucracy as tightly as any slave was ever shackled. Just as his grandfather and his father before him he is being attacked by regulation and strategic plans imposed by others. Yes, he can sell to the Chinese, and no doubt once he has sold the rules and plans will change to favour whatever the Chinese corporation are interested in doing with that land.

Does any of this sentimental waffle really matter? Am I too focused on the past and unwilling to accept that life is hard and then you die?
Maybe life is like that, but if it feels that way to you, then ask, “Why?”
But maybe my reality is a place where we actually invoke the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a tenet for our daily life.

Maybe I'm asking how can we stand at an ANZAC Day service, and claim to be proud of the sacrifices made on our behalf, when we know that the corporations are destroying the decent farming families in this district. Are we being honest when we claim to remember those sacrifices?
The Community Plan that was presented to Council by the people of Karridale would keep profits from land sales in this shire. We could use some of those profits to create infrastructure we need here. 

The councillors did not think that local families taking profit from the effort and sacrifice made by the forefathers was acceptable. They favoured the remote city based corporations. Our local economy is being destroyed by empty investment/holiday homes. We can all see that.

Ask why?

Just shrugging and saying that’s the way “it” is just won’t do. As individuals we live in a democracy where we are allowed to ask questions, and to continue to ask questions until we get a clear and unequivocal answer. We live in a democracy because the ANZACS were willing to fight for something they believed in. We owe it to those ANZACS and their families to get a real answer, and to keep on asking “Why?” until we do.

Are you comfortable doing anything less?  Willful Blindness