5 senior politicians in 5 days make a show of flying over the ship stuck on the reef

Politicians show they’re worried about oil on the Great Barrier Reef by burning oil above it: A PROCESSION of senior politicians has flown over the stricken Shen Neng 1, with five in five days “examining” the wreck, despite no change to the situation. And who are these media tarts and poseurs, keen to pretend they’re Doing Something about the Shen Neng’s tiny oil slick? The political tour of the region began on Monday with Greens leader Bob Brown flying over the zone in a fixed-wing aircraft, at a cost charter companies estimate to be about $2500. [Queensland Premier Anna] Bligh was the latest to soar over the southern Great Barrier Reef early yesterday morning in a helicopter at a cost of $4000 an hour. Also throughout the week, [Transport Minister Rachel] Nolan took a helicopter, while [Prime Minister Kevin] Rudd and Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett took separate flights in the Australian Maritime Safety Authority Dornier, each estimated by charter companies to cost $2500 an hour. I’m not sure what’s worse - that we’re led by such pretenders, or that such pretences actually work. Andrew Bolt I'd have to say that the same thing worries me. That people are gullible enough to be suckered by these meaningless gestures by politicians which achieve nothing except the illusion that something is being done. Oh, and to get their faces on the TV news and thus 'manage' the 24 hour news cycle. People keep saying that the public is waking up to this manipulation of the media, (and if there is a bigger media tart than Kevin Rudd, then it's Bob Brown), but I don't know. Are we still being fooled by the manufactured images of pollies in fluro-vests and hard hats? I see that Queensland premier Anna Bligh now has a lovely white hard hat with her name on it. But let's put this into context. The absolute worst case scenario here was that the ship broke up and released just under a thousand tonnes of fuel oil and its cargo of coal. Sounds bad, and it would have been if it had happened. But the reality is that that amount of oil would only do limited damage to the small section of the reef and some coastline, while the coal would float away. Nature would begin repairing whatever damage had been done. We always seem to forget that nature has faced cataclysms and catastrophes almost beyond our imagining, and survived and healed. This wouldn't even rate as an itch for the Earth.

Posted via email from Garth's posterous