Talisman Saber - whore games

Admiral Clemens failed to mention that while his boys were bombing the Philippines, flying and making noise, they killed a few locals. In court in response to evidence that Negrito people had been shot during strafing practice, the pilot in question said “I didn’t know they were people your Honour; I thought they were pigs or dogs”.

I was in Manila to witness the evidence of a man who couldn’t count legs, or couldn’t match patterns, but was given control of a multimillion dollar plane.

As I sat on the verandah of Yepoon’s 60’s style resort Rydges, in April this year, I imagined the famous Apocalypse scene of helicopters rising from the sea fog and dropping shells on the beach scattering honeymooners and golfers as they passed overhead. Later back in Brisbane I watched a video loop at the State Gallery that reminded me of a time when Australians and Americans were the terrorists, bombing and strafing Vietnamese civilians. Chickens coming home.

Further afield

While in June thousands of Australians will converge in Rockhampton for a weekend of protest, little public protest is likely to be heard at the small town of Timber Creek next to the Bradshaw Training Field 600km southwest of Darwin, and adjacent to the sublime Cambridge Gulf. I used to fly over this area of tertiary shield - among the oldest rocks in the world - when going home to Indonesia. And maybe that is the point. The bay adjoining this testing field looks directly at Timor and would be an ideal place to launch weapons at Asia in general, and Indonesia and China in particular.

Purchased from Indigenous peoples in 1996, it was littered with geologists and palaentologists searching for clues that could explain the earth’s origins. If they return, they may get the sneak preview of its end. Our tribute to the ancient landscape will be to build two airfields, one on the escarpment and one below. The construction work will be undertaken by the US Army and Engineers Research and Development Center of Missouri at a cost of about US$2.5 million.

That should put the wind up all the endangered birds that make the area famous in global birding circles. Bradshaw is a significantly fragile monsoonal habitat with a fantastic mangrove fringed bay, which provide tsunami storm surge mitigation as well as homes for the marine creatures we like to eat.

In your next life pray that you will come back as the Department of Defence’s Real Estate Agent. The ADD controls more land than any other government instrumentality, and within that portfolio, in excess of 200 places with recognised significant heritage value. It is estimated that they own or have control over 15 per cent of Australia’s land mass including Shoalwater Bay bordering the Great Barrier Reef.

Other holdings are in the World Heritage Wet Tropics. As principle government landholder, Defence appears to be taking the lead in recognising and responding to its heritage obligations under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC). But there is that little detail. Live fire tends to, ahem, kill things.

Under successive ministers, or maybe in spite of them, Defence are said to have a strong working relationship with the Federal Department of Environment. Regular meetings between heritage officials from both organisations manage the sites. Defence reported rescuing endangered eastern bristlebirds, and moving them to the feral free Defence holding in Beecroft where they are by all accounts breeding.

So, with all these assurances, one wonders why the Department of Defence has been made exempt from standard environmental impact processes. The New Zealand engineering company Maunsells compiled the ADF Public Environmental Report containing no Terms of Reference and excluding chemical/fuel and social/health issues.

The US military, like eager puppies, are keen to show that they understand “the Australian people’s attachment to their land” and natural environment. During a planning meeting for the 2005 exercises, ADF’s Colonel Mike Goodyer was reported as telling US troops that “If … the area is treated disrespectfully, the Australian people will take their fight to the gates of the military bases”. The American Forces Information Service bulletin also reported Leanne Sommers, a senior adviser to the Queensland Government, telling the US forces that Shoalwater is regarded as national treasure and that a new center specifically for environmental training will be completed prior to the 2007 exercises. One might ponder what would happen if the public wanted to also attend military training at the new training centre or volunteered to perform their own audits?

While most environmentalists are concerned about live fire; of broader concern is damage caused by fuels, wheels and metal treads killing fragile plants holding the very friable soils together which sustain coastal ecosystems. Despite their pious claims, the ADF was called into line in East Timor by the UN’s Environment Office for careless fuel and camp disposal. Out of public scrutiny, how will they perform?