The Courier mail and just about every other news medium carried stories yesterday on our Treasury Secretary, Dr Ken Henry taking five weeks leave with his wife Naomi to look after the colony of endangered northern hairy nosed wombats at Epping National Park in Central Queensland.
Brendan Nelson was a misery guts as usual and insisted that Henry should stay at work and look after his muddle headed boss, Wayne Swan. Actually I think Malcolm Turnbull thought up that phrase, Nelson just copied it.
Anyway Swannie called a press conference to defend Henry and get stuck into Nelson. Rudd followed suit and reckoned everyone needs a break. I think Nelson should give us all a break. He can certainly be spared.
There was support in the letters to the editor this morning along the lines of, this is ridiculous, everyone needs a break and now is obviously the best time. That’s if you’ve got half a brain and actually use it to think.
I think it’s just terrific that our chief money man has a passion for looking after native animals. I’m sure he’s set everyone enough work to keep them busy while he’s a way. I think it’s great too if Treasury doesn’t depend on one man, especially the boss, being there constantly.
And the hairy nosed wombat definitely needs help. Not so long ago only 25 breeding females remained. Since they have only one baby at a time and that baby stays in the pouch for up to nine months, the NHNW isn’t prolific enough to feed all the dingoes and have enough over to perpetuate itself.
A few years ago there was a comprehensive recovery plan done (pdf) which seems to be having some success. There are plans to set up a second colony near St George with a bit of help from XStrata.
You can help too by donating to the Wombat Foundation or buying wombat stuff, thanks to hannah’s dad for the link.
Re: the photo – which one is the wombat?
(Sorry…couldn’t resist)
*shuffles feet*
*stares shamefacedly at floor*
Please continue with some sensible remarks…
I had one of them once, those ultra cute grey furry fellas.
Mine was a cousin to the one Don has, his is the NHnW, mine was a Southern.
Softest fur you could imagine, really, much softer than any other animal fur I have ever stroked.
We found him in the pouch of his dead mother when he was able to fit into the palm of my hand with space left over.
He had to be fed on a special milk mixture every 4 hours, burped like a baby, which after all was what he was, and cuddled non-stop. As he got older I carried him around in a padded shoulder bag and every now and then he’d poke his head out and want to crawl up my jumper and into the warm smelliness of my armpit.
As he grew he would go to sleep on my belly and I would be stuck, forced to be motionless as he not so gently snored.
Then he got bigger.
By about a year he weighed close to 30 kg [too well fed] and started going through puberty.
He turned vicious.
He would go out of his way by a hundred metres or more to attack humans. We were living on our property at the time and he was firmly convinced that was his land and you human so and so’s could ….off.
Virtually nobody visited us, and the few that did cowered in fear of him inside the house too fearful to go out to the outside toilet.
I had to stand guard with the broom as people made mad dashes to the toilet and back in case he turned up from his rambles aroumd the block [he was living outside by this time].
One night he got my mother in law [no mother in law jokes please] bailed up outside as he had appeared out of nowhere and in the process of trying to hold him whilst she retreated to safety I had these stabbing pains in my chest.
After I got out of hospital we decided it was time he went.
I won’t go into details but suffice it to say that he is now safe and happy and so are we.
Would we do it again?
6 months to a year of being terrified of an animal that we had lovingly saved from death, unable to lead a proper existence of our own because of a bloody wombat.
Such is the weird fascination and attachment of these animals, ‘Aw he’s so cute and cuddly and soft”, we probably would if the circumstance arose again [we carry gloves, teat pipette in the car and have frozen wombat milk powder in the freezer just in case].
Southerns are famous for their aggression, so are Commons I believe, that cute little thingy in Don’s hands will probably turn into a brute with a pair of the most powerful jaws in the animal world and teeth like a chain saw.
But, to wax philosophical for just a moment, we have a responsibility to these critters if we want to live on their land. We have to accept them for what they are and not how we romantically would like them to be.
But the next one, IF there ever is a next one, is going to be treated smarter than the last fella.
hannah’s dad, clearly you deserve a medal. I believe Dr Henry already has one (Order of Australia) but whether it’s for looking after wombats or treasurers I’m not sure. It sounds as though looking after pollies would be a piece of cake by comparison.
Ken Hendry deserves applauding for doing this, not criticism. Would that more high profile people could carry out similar activities in their holidays as an encouragement and example to the rest of us.
hannah’s dad, you’re a champion.
The Libs are shameful for the way they’ve carried on like this. Scared it might make even more people aware of what we’ve done to our native fauna, are they? Maybe some of the RWDBs in the Coalition could go out and look after flying foxes during their annual leave.. At the very least, threy might get pissed on, or, with a bit of luck, even bitten.
“hannah’s dad, you’re a champion.”
I agree.
Nelson is indeed an opportunistic, miserable so & so. He should retire from politics & start up a “Dear misery guts” blog. I’m sure he’ll attract plenty of weeping crocodiles.
A worthwhile post Brian, good on ya! Thnx for the link.
An interesting paragraph in one of the above links:
Methane emissions are not the only externality associated with cattle farming in Australia…
The Libs are shameful for the way they’ve carried on like this.
Shameful and stupid. A man uses his holiday for purely altruistic reasons, and the Liberals try to attack him? We know the real target was Swan, but the way Nelson attacked him sounded like he was having a go at Dr Henry as well. Brendan Nelson is to political attacks what Dick Cheney is to shotguns – a demonstration of how not to aim.
The Liberals: the party for the nattering nabobs of negativism. (Like the Courier Mail regulars. What a sulky lot they are.)
Yes, it would probalby have been allright if Henry had gone off to some swish resort. Good on him and a pox on the Libs.
Peter W, good point.
Down and out, I’m sure you’re right about Swan. He seems to be enjoying himself recently and is giving as good as he gets. Even the MSM have noticed.
I think he didn’t really ‘own’ the budget. Me-too tax cuts would never have been an option he would have chosen. But now I think he’s settled on an economics narrative he’s happy with he dishes it out when they have a go.
I see Mark has already posted discussion of the Wellbeing framework Ken Henry worked on during the Howard years when the ears of government were not so receptive http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/01/29/treasury-unorthodoxy/
Now with the Social Inclusion agenda looking like there is some hope of Henry’s ideas getting come traction maybe he feels he can relax and give his other intersts some time.
>>HD (2) “…terrified of an animal that we had lovingly saved from death, unable to lead a proper existence of our own ..” A bit like electing a modern ALP government perhaps?
For more of Ken Henry, he gave a paper at the AIHW conference last year where he applied Amartya Sen’s concept of ‘disadvantage as capability deprivation’ to Indigenous disadvantage.
http://www.aihw.gov.au/eventsdiary/aw07/presentations.cfm
Remember that these marsupials are the mensas of their phylum, way ahead of kangas or the wallaby run. Perhaps the reason Norman Lindsay put them up there minding the ‘puds’ magic. And the NHNW is grid-locked in a hopeless habitat end game.
I was privy to some CSIRO researchers assessing numbers of the common wombat in an area of the Hunter Valley a few years ago. They were under threat from farmers and coal mine leases to the extent that they were being potentially isolated by development in much the same way as the NHNM years before.
It was not unusual for these researchers to crawl into wombat tunnels to asess their occupancy level. A single animal may maintain up to a dozen burrows. An innovative work-for-the-dole program at the time had participants counting burrow openings in several creek catchments. It was a lot of fun and I reckon Ken Henry would have approved the survey report that these so-called dole bludgers produced.
“Mine was a cousin to the one Don has’
Hannah’s dad, you are confusing Treasury head Ken Henry with the former head of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Don Henry.
However, I think they might be brothers.
I met Don Henry once in what I think was his first gig. He started up the Moreton Island Protection Society in the suburb next door. We’re still here but he’s moved on to bigger and brighter things.
Ahem, my workmates and I have raised over $2K for the northern hairy-nosed wombats by selling chocolates and ginger beer in the workplace over the last eighteen months. You should check out Epping Forest National Park on Google Earth – a few hundred hectares of forest surrounded by hundreds of km of cleared grazing properties. A single fire or flood will wipe them out, and this nearly happened earlier this year in the Emerald flood event. Without help, these extraordinary animals (world’s largest burrowing creature) will not survive. More power to you, Ken Henry.
Hal9000, that’s a mighty fine contribution.
I think this post and the comments show how the blogosphere can add value to an article in the MSM.