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2012-09-13 Tony Burke scientific approach to Abel Tasman Margiris super-trawler debate

Tony Burke scientific approach

Tony Burke scientific approach

I’m a heretic on this. I’m sorry, I know cartoonists are meant to more soft-hearted. It’s true we need Marine Parks, less dredging/trawling for things on the bottom, strict quotas on overall catch and really strong regulation and limitation on long-line fishing and netting methods that get huge amounts of by-catch. Existing trawlers kill creatures we empathise with like seals and dolphins, but politicians have a knee-jerk reaction to the Margiris. It’s not true that a super-trawler is evil just because of its size. If anything it’s a better option than existing methods…..
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2012-09-12 Super trawler Margiris Abel Tasman super-trawler bycatch Burke Ludwig

super-trawler bycatch Burke Ludwig

Super-trawler debate Bycatch

The ALP and Greens are quite rightly science believers on Global Warming, but go soft and mushy when it comes to a scientific applications of fishing quotas. The Margiris or Abel Tasman super trawler seems to me to a safer option on bycatch than existing trawlers, it’s not a dredging trawler so it doesn’t hash up the bottom, and it’s easier to keep surveyance on it. The history of degradation of fish stocks is historically bound up with increased size and range of fishing boats, going back to the invention of steam trawlers, so we have a natural suspicion of a super-big boat. But let’s look at the science of it. But I personally think it’s a better option than existing fishing fleets. And it will provide cheaper better sardines to thousands of Africans ….. but they seem to have been left out of the equation. There you go – I’m a heretic.
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2012-09-08 Eddington suggests more road tolls to pay for infrastructure

Infrastructure tolls

Beeeep

Seems like a good way to raise money, to me. But painful for the motorist.
John Donne’s meditation on death became the title of Ernest Hemmingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” on the Spanish Civil War. Compulsory reading for people of my age when they were young, and incidentally the source of the expression “did the earth move for you?” which I once used in a cartoon in 1976 about Gough and Margaret Whitlam caught in an earthquake in China.
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