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The Civics and Citizenship unit plan

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Greg Hunt: Reasons for exemption to federal and international law.

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The West Australian government is planning to deploy 72 baited drum lines each with a hook off Perth beaches and along the south-west coast.

Any great white, tiger or bull shark caught that is longer than three metres would then be shot and discarded in open water. Any shark less than three metres or from another species would be let go, but not if it is not considered to be in a condition to survive.

Great white sharks are listed as "vulnerable" under Australia's environment laws and are also protected under the international Convention for Migratory Species.

In his letter to the West Australian Premier, Mr Hunt said a desirable part of "Australian culture" is that people understand the risk of swimming and boating in open seas, and that the government could not take away that risk at the general level.

Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt has granted an exemption for the shark cull.
Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

"Individuals must take responsibility for their own water safety both as a matter of culture and practice. If we diminish that sense of self responsibility then we may create greater risk of misadventure, accident or tragedy," Mr Hunt writes.

But he said in this case it was clear that the public safety and and economic interests of the issue fell with in the "national interest" provisions to exempt an activity from the national environment laws.

"One does not have to agree with a policy to accept that a national interest exemption is warranted to protect against imminent threat to life, economic damage and public safety more generally," Mr Hunt writes.

In his formal reasons for exemption - dated January 10, but only made public on Tuesday - Mr Hunt points to research from the WA fisheries department that suggested shark strikes were rising in West Australian waters from one a year in the mid-1990s to two or three annually in period 2010-2013.

He also said economic damage from increased public concern about attending the beach was a nationally significant issue.

"Australia is an island country with a strong beach culture where water-based activities are carried out along most of its coastlines," the statement of reasons says.

"A loss of confidence in water-based activities impacts on tourism and other leisure-based businesses impacting on the Australian economy, making this impact a matter of national significant."

Humane Society International senior program manager, Alexia Wellbelove, said the exemption was "a complete disgrace".

"The proposed policy and consideration by the federal Environment Minister lacks any real scientific approach, and fails to sufficiently consider the wider marine implications of the program," she said.

Ms Wellbelove said the group was now exploring legal options to challenge the exemption decisions. She also said it was looking at how the government would have to address the protection for the great white shark under the migratory species convention.

Campaigner for the Australian Marine Conservation Society, Pam Allen, said there was no evidence drum line programs would reduce the instances of shark attacks.

"These are freak, random events that depend on so many factors. Just because you catch one shark at a drum line it doesn't mean another one won't come in," she said.

She also said the program had the potential to hurt other marine wildlife such as turtles and dolphins. She said better monitoring and notification of sharks, along with better public education, was a better option.

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Environment Minister allows Western Australia to kill sharks to protect swimmers

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The West Australian government is planning to deploy 72 baited drum lines each with a hook off Perth beaches and along the south-west coast. Any great white, tiger or bull shark caught that is longer than three metres would then be shot and discarded in open water.

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Reflection Questions

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Graphic Organiser / Questions:

Students are asked:

Who is Mr Oakeshott? What kind of a politician was he?

How do you think he would he have insight into the Australian political system?

What does he believe about democratic values and the current political system?

Do you think this is a trustworthy media source? Why/why not?

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Resources to be used in Activity 4

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'Sharks to begin Human Cull of the Western Australian coast' (The Skewer, 2014)

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Activity 8: Media watch graphic organiser

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Activity 8: Media watch graphic organiser

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This graphic organiser will help students analyse the resources on the top right corner of this page.

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First shark killed in Shark Cull as Richard Branson adds his condemnation' (Sky News, January 13, 2014)

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Video Of First Shark Killed In Australia Cull Emerges As Richard Branson Adds His Condemnation

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Sir Richard Branson has criticised Western Australia's shark cull on the same day as bait was being laid for the first time off Perth beaches. The businessman, who fights China's shark fin trade, said the move will discourage tourism in the region rather than boost it, adding that the policy is denting the area's reputation around the world.

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'The Great Shark Cull' (60 Minutes, Feburary 14, 2014)

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These are examples of some news stories from different news publishers that you might use to compare and evaluate for the different 'hubs'.

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Due to the integrated nature of many activities in this unit, this is a suggested running schedule.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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This is a link to the ABC's political compass survey

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This is the assignment sheet. It includes description of the assignment and the marking rubric.

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Kidblog. This is a link to the class 'kidblog' website. Students are required to post their project as it comes, and submit their finished product here.

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This is a powerpoint with a range of 'issues' and 'non-issues' for the class to categorise.

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This is a diagnostic quiz to help gauge the students' understanding of the key concepts learnt in the Year 9 civics unit.

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List of possible issues to choose from for students' Major Project.

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Tweets by year10civics

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Stakeholder Perspectives. These are the snippets of 'stakeholder perspectives' on the issue of WA Shark Culls.

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Shark Attack! Stakeholder Perspectives. 

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'Why we’re opposing Western Australia’s shark cull: scientists' (The Conversation, July 4, 2014)

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Western Australia's shark cull has gained international media coverage and is in the news again today - but why are hundreds of scientists worldwide so concerned that we're now speaking out?

301 marine and environmental scientists from Australia and overseas have signed a submission to the review of Western Australia's shark programme. In that submission - which both of us helped coordinate with others from around the world - we have pointed out there is no scientific evidence to support the culling of protected species such as white sharks.

After a 13-week trial over the 2013-2014 summer, the Western Australian government is proposing to run a three-year programme that would see the deployment of up to 72 lethal drum lines from 15 November to 30 April annually, catching about 25 white sharks and 900 tiger sharks over the period.

The state's Environmental Protection Agency now has the job of considering the submissions and making a recommendation to the WA Minister for the Environment on whether or not the programme should proceed. The proposal to kill white sharks, a nationally protected species in Australia, will also require the approval of federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt.

Public submissions on the review, conducted by the Western Australian Environment Protection Authority (EPA), close on Monday. The following draws on responses from signatories to the submission on the shark cull review.

Why does WA's shark cull matter overseas?

Dr. Elliott Norse, founder and chief scientist of the Marine Conservation Institute in the USA, says:

How can a country be a leader when it comes to saving whales in Antarctica, but kill threatened sharks in WA? It is a step backwards at a time when more countries are moving to protect larger areas of our oceans, in part to protect these mobile large predators, as has recently occurred in the US with President Obama's announcement of a greatly expanded Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument.

Here in Australia, the University of Sydney's Dr Christopher Neff is a recognised authority on policies around shark bites. He warns that the cull risks "establishing a new international norm that would allow the killing of protected white sharks."

Ocean safety

The group of experts also add weight to other facets of the shark cull. The program is based largely on claims by the WA government that the cull will a) increase ocean safety, b) not threaten shark populations, and c) not degrade marine ecosystems.

None of those claims check out.

Comparisons with Hawaii and Queensland shark programs suggest drum lines have not saved lives.

INTERACTIVE MAP: Drum lines and shark catches in Queensland

Click here to open in new window or republish.

INTERACTIVE MAP: Queensland shark fatalities at beaches with drum lines

Click here to open in new window or republish.

In fact, it could be making the oceans less safe. Dr Fred Whoriskey from Dalhousie University in Canada (also executive director of the global Ocean Tracking Network, which is attempting to track marine animals across oceans) writes:

The OTN has protested the cull because it makes the oceans less safe. The cull undermines white shark research programs that provide the fundamental understanding of the behaviour of these animals that is key to guiding ocean-safety strategies

If we kill sharks instead of tagging them, we no longer learn about their movements and behaviours, key information for understanding the risk they might represent.

Dodgy data

The WA government's proposal takes a superficial approach to assessing potential impacts on white and tiger sharks, which essentially ignored the uncertainty in population size estimates and the species' demography.

The government cherry-picked results from a two-year, peer-reviewed study. They accepted the findings that there is a unique population of animals in south-western Australia, but ignored the authors' finding that there could be only 700 mature white sharks in that population. Instead the government provided an estimate of 3400-5400 animals.

Jennifer Ovenden at the University of Queensland was one of the authors on the study and challenged the WA government's use of her study as "unprofessional because they are making inferences from inappropriate data sources."

700 white sharks is not many. Killing even small numbers of threatened sharks can rapidly increase extinction risk - sharks are already highly threatened worldwide.

Damage not limited to Perth

World Heritage sites also matter. At a time when such sites are under increasing pressure in Australia, both in Tasmania and the Great Barrier Reef, to disregard the potential impacts of removing top predators from World Heritage sites like Ningaloo Reef and Shark Bay, undermines the value that we place on these internationally essential bastions of the Earth's diversity and natural wonder.

Ocean predators such as sharks maintain healthy oceans by stopping smaller species getting out of control. Because sharks are highly migratory, what happens in the south around Perth's beaches can affect populations in the north.

Professor Mike Heithaus from Florida International University, who has worked on tiger sharks in Western Australia since 1997, said:

More than 15 years of research on the ecological importance of tiger sharks in Western Australia shows that these animals - especially the large individuals targeted by the cull - play a critical role in the major seagrass ecosystems that provide immense benefits to people in Western Australia. The loss of tiger sharks could destabilise the system and negatively impact ocean health and economic benefits. We also know that tiger sharks range up and down the WA coast, so effects of a culling program could be widespread.

Love our monsters

WA's shark cull resonates in part because worldwide we are struggling to protect threatened species, and we need to do better than just killing them when they scare us. The renowned Harvard socio-biologist, E.O. Wilson, classically encapsulated our innate fear of predators:

We're not just afraid of predators. We're transfixed by them, prone to weave stories and fables and chatter endlessly about them, because fascination creates preparedness, and preparedness, survival. In a deeply tribal sense, we love our monsters.

There is no scientific evidence to support the culling of protected shark species. We call on WA's Environmental Protection Agency and federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt to reject the extended cull.

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Why we're opposing Western Australia's shark cull: scientists

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Western Australia's shark cull has gained international media coverage and is in the news again today - but why are hundreds of scientists worldwide so concerned that we're now speaking out? 301 marine and environmental scientists from Australia and overseas have signed a submission to the review of Western Australia's shark programme.

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Graphic Organiser for Students 'Overview'

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Independent minister Rob Oakeshott describes how big business can and has hijacked Australian democracy. Students evaluate the extend to which democratic values are really reflected in contemporary Australian politics.

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The rules are simple: fight the bastards, bankroll the other side of politics, cause them damage until they learn to ignore treasury and finance advice and start listening instead to that grubby leveller in politics - money.

Whether it's tax or carbon or gaming, this is the policy inertia of Australia today. Money is beating our long-term standard of living to death. It has sent many necessary policy reforms to the doghouse, and it keeps many others on the short chain.

Our key decisions for the future of Australia are now being outsourced at a level never before seen. Parliamentary democracy is going through its own sort of privatisation. Bigger dollars come into the party coffers at exactly the same time as less and less of the necessary work gets done. We are trapping ourselves.

I lost in politics to money. I poked power in the eye and got an almighty punch on the nose in return. I didn't see the punch coming with the size and force it did. I didn't see it coming because sociology textbooks don't talk about conflict theory being used by the powerful to create dissent and division and uncertainty in a community. Conflict theory is supposed to be the tool of the marginalised and disadvantaged. It's the basis of the concept of unionism, and the concept of street protest.

But if this were all true, why was Australia's richest woman getting off a bus to protest in the streets as if she were the one who was marginalised?

Why were other high-profile mining magnates, and other top-end-of-towners, photographed weekly in their hi-vis safety wear, presenting themselves as workers in an effort to be considered power-poor?

Why did the late Paul Ramsay, the Coalition's biggest donor in 2010, instruct his well-paid workforce to manufacture a street protest outside my electorate office, to be captured as a lead story on Prime Television, which happened to be owned by the same late Paul Ramsay?

Why were there quite radical and repeatedly shrill calls for an "early election" in the Murdoch media, based on the completely false premise that an elected parliament that didn't suit its business interests was, of all things, undemocratic?

Oh, how poor and marginalised and disadvantaged this mob were, and are. But oh, how skilful they were, and are, in the use of conflict theory for their own return.

Throughout that period of 2010-13, I met and personally dealt with six of the top 10 richest people in Australia. I did not ask to meet any of them. They chased me. They all had plenty of access. And for what it is worth, they were all individually a pleasure to deal with. They were privately charming, and tremendous advocates for their particular interest. But as a collective noun of wealth in Australia today, a whale of money, or a pride of oligarchs, their behaviour throughout that period confirms for us all just how much they are intimately involved with, and crawling all over, our democracy.

Privately, they all had access. Yet, publicly, they behaved as if the sky were falling.

In truth, real democracy was the strongest it has been for a long time in that 43rd parliament, because no one, or nothing, owned it.

But business used a new corporate conflict theory to allow our parliament to be perceived as undemocratic. They did it successfully, and now we have the select few back in their happy place of command and control. The pussycat called Power is purring again.

The great failure of our time is that right when we had the chance to embed the original version of real democracy, we blinked, and have now stepped closer to a privatised model of democracy than ever before.

In policy, the example of this privatisation was climate change. In 2010, my thinking was simple and fairly brutal. I knew Peter Costello had tried and failed in 2001 to get an emissions trading scheme through cabinet. I knew former prime ministers John Howard and Kevin Rudd had both taken the advice of scientists and economists seriously and promoted an emissions trading scheme at the 2007 election. Famously, I knew the bipartisan deal was nearly done in 2009 between Rudd and then opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull.

My view at the time was that bipartisanship on evidence and commonsense wasn't really under threat, and that the 2010 election idea of Direct Action was just a cobbled together marketing tool intended by the Coalition to neutralise the electoral pain and stop the internal bleeding among its own ranks. I formed the view that the best thing to do was to help ram through an ETS, clean up the edges as we went, and then let the scientists and economists, as well as logic, commonsense and evidence, win the politics.

How wrong I was. I lived the birth of the false tax debate. I watched it grow, I watched it win. I watched an emissions trading scheme get reframed as a carbon tax and die as a consequence. I watched failure at the hand of a soldout democracy bent to the will of big business. I watched the public interest get pummelled by private interests.

It is my view that it is actually biodiversity loss that is Australia's greatest environmental challenge, yet trying to initiate any sort of discussion or programs in this regard has politicians now running that same country mile.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but if I were dropped back into 2010 and had the opportunity again, I would make biodiversity loss the top of the pyramid of what we were trying to address, instead of focusing on the science of an odourless and invisible gas. By doing so, community engagement on some simple facts, such as the high chance of the koala species collapse in our lifetime without behaviour change, would be an easier "pub" conversation than the more challenging discussion around gases and climate science.

More importantly, the broader suite of tools required would have also been part of an easier discussion: the need for a national bio-banking scheme; national biodiversity corridors of scale and significance; the use of biomass and the role that trees can play in energy security and emissions trading; a serious, as opposed to piecemeal, crack at invasive species; and, importantly, a discussion of how urban planning can better embrace biodiversity gains. All things that we can see and feel. All things that are hard to deny are real.

Doing some of this broader work could have lowered the temperature on carbon politics, and we would have had, and still could have, a much greater chance of getting a long-term ETS. It would have been a broader, more bipartisan conversation on a number of fronts, reducing the chance for all the concentrated hoopla of $100 lamb roasts and Whyalla wipeouts.

But we didn't have that. Short-term business interests won. The longer-term Australian interest lost.

It's not complicated, the way business operates in Canberra. Political donation laws in Australia are so loose, it's not rocket science to see what is happening. Ten thousand dollars can be donated before anyone even has to declare anything. With political parties structured around state branches, in real terms it is more than $100,000 before anyone has to start declaring.

In 2011, the year when real democracy was peaking, political donations surged up to about $110-$130 million for each of the two major parties. Power was threatened and it was responding how it knew best: donate to win back control. Sadly, political parties took the money and ran.

In their defence, they are in an "arms race" for money. They both benefit from the "political donation" silence at the heart of policy inertia in Australia today. Neither can be the first to move as it leaves them exposed. Advertising is a powerful tool at the ballot box.

Hats off to Packer, Forrest, Ramsay, Murdoch, Rinehart, et al. Their private charm offensive mixed with the public mischief of new corporate conflict theory - business-led street protest and the American campaign technique of "astroturfing" - was highly successful. The key to their success is the lax political donation laws at all levels in Australia, a system where decision-making is controlled completely by a select unelected few.

The mining tax ads that ran in high rotation were powerful influencers. It was a $20-odd million spend that kept a hundred times that in the pockets of a few. And it remains just one of many examples where Australians are screwing themselves, victims of a clever strategy that muddies the waters of policy reform.

So next time you vote, add political donation reform to the list of items you are voting on. And for the next few elections, please make it a priority. The commercial influence on public decision-making is more important than anything else right now. Australia is losing its future unless we change.
This column is based on a speech delivered for The Wheeler Centre.
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on Aug 9, 2014 as "Capitalist punishment". Subscribe here.

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Rob Oakeshott: How big business hijacked parliament

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TOC:ol In this story]The rules are simple: fight the bastards, bankroll the other side of politics, cause them damage until they learn to ignore treasury and finance advice and start listening instead to that grubby leveller in politics - money. Whether it's tax or carbon or gaming, this is the policy inertia of Australia today.

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'Shark Cull' (Nine News Perth, November 26, 2013)

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Thousands of people have rallied against WA's shark cull policy. In less than a week, the State Government will bait and kill sharks which come too close to our shores.

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'Shark cull won't bring down fatalities: marine ecologist' (ABC, February 2, 2014)

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A Southern Cross University shark expert says the Western Australian cull probably won't have long-term impacts on the number of fatal attacks.

The WA program sparked protests at beaches nationwide over the weekend, including Kingscliff on the New South Wales north coast.

Dr Daniel Bucher says killing sharks could have short-term effects in specific localities.

But he says there has only been about one fatal attack a year in Australia, in the past 50 years.

"In the last 20 years that actually hasn't changed, and in that time we've doubled the human population and therefore the number of beach visitations, and we've seen a decline in shark numbers," he said.

"So within certain parameters, you'd have to say that there's not a good relationship between the number of sharks in the ocean and the number of fatal attacks."

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Shark cull won't bring down fatalities: marine ecologist

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A Southern Cross University shark expert says the Western Australian cull probably won't have long-term impacts on the number of fatal attacks. The WA program sparked protests at beaches nationwide over the weekend, including Kingscliff on the New South Wales north coast. Dr Daniel Bucher says killing sharks could have short-term effects in specific localities.

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'Shark attack survivor slams 'stupid' shark cull' (The Age, January 16, 2014)

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Mr de Gelder, who has previously spoken up in defence of sharks, said that although his heart went out to the families and friends of shark attack victims, the government's plan was ecologically wasteful and dangerous.

"They're not our sharks to kill and they're definitely not [West Australian Premier] Colin Barnett's sharks to kill. It's a natural predator, an apex predator, it's essential to the ecosystem of the ocean," he said.

Premier Colin Barnett with one of the hooks used to catch sharks.
Photo: Aleisha Orr

"It's a wild animal and you want to kill it for doing what it does."

He wrote on his blog, Improvise, Adapt and Overcome, that the ecological damage that could be done by removing an important part of the ecosystem could not be calculated.

"Study and history has shown that removing an apex predator from an ecosystem will systematically affect the whole balance, perhaps creating an over or under abundance of other life lower down the food chain, further disrupting the food chains below them and guess where all this disrupting ripple effect leads to... us!" he wrote.

Mr de Gelder said shark attacks had not increased in number or frequency; it was just that the information was more available in the age of the internet.

As a shark attack victim, he knew how bad an attack could be, but he said that was part of the risk of heading into the Australian ocean.

He said you could not absolutely protect people.

"It's an absolute risk. That is the ocean, it is the wild. There's not always going to be 100 per cent chance that if you go in, you'll come out. And that's evident in all the drownings, why isn't more being done to stop drowning?" he said.

Mr de Gelder said Australians were banding together in opposition to the West Australian shark culls, including rallies in Western Australia and New South Wales.

"What Colin Barnett needs to do is that he needs to listen to his constituents, listen to scientists and listen to the world who are shaking their head in disgust that we would wipe out a protected animal for doing what it does in nature" he said.

"We don't want to be the generation who wipe them out so we have to take our kids to museums to see these amazing animals."

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Shark attack survivor slams 'stupid' shark cull

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Mr de Gelder, who has previously spoken up in defence of sharks, said that although his heart went out to the families and friends of shark attack victims, the government's plan was ecologically wasteful and dangerous. "They're not our sharks to kill and they're definitely not [West Australian Premier] Colin Barnett's sharks to kill.

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'Ex-EPA chief backs shark cull' (The West Australian, June 12, 2014)

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A former chairman of WA's environment watchdog has thrown his support behind the Barnett Government's contentious shark kill policy, saying it is a reasonable measure to safeguard human life.

Barry Carbon, who led the Environmental Protection Authority between 1985 and 1993, said although baited drum lines were not foolproof, they were a proved way of saving lives.

Mr Carbon said although the policy was unpopular with many people, the Government was right to prioritise the protection of human life.

He also dismissed suggestions the policy could endanger the populations of marine species, particularly the great white shark, saying if anything it was a reflection of the success of efforts to protect them.

The Government reopened divisions this week when it referred plans to roll it out for the next three years to State and Federal environmental regulators.

"If we are to have more big sharks, then we need to have responsible actions to protect people from those sharks," Mr Carbon said.

Citing the example of Queensland, Mr Carbon noted there had often been swimmer deaths because of shark attacks before drum lines and nets had been introduced in 1962. Conversely, he said there had been just one fatality - in 2006 - at beaches which had the devices since then.

He also claimed it was a fallacy to argue that WA's drum line program was pointless because tiger sharks were the predominant species captured.

Tiger sharks had been involved in many attacks on humans, including in WA, he said.

Shadow fisheries minister Dave Kelly rejected Mr Carbon's remarks, saying he was not convinced Queensland's beaches had been made safer by drum lines or nets. Mr Kelly argued the Government's policy made no sense, pointing out that it would kill hardly any white pointers even though they were responsible for almost all deadly shark attacks in WA.

He rejected the assertion that tiger sharks were a menace requiring drum lines to be managed and denounced the policy as a waste of money in a tight fiscal environment.

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A former chairman of WA's environment watchdog has thrown his support behind the Barnett Government's contentious shark kill policy, saying it is a reasonable measure to safeguard human life. Barry Carbon, who led the Environmental Protection Authority between 1985 and 1993, said although baited drum lines were not foolproof, they were a proved way of saving lives.

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Model 1: this models a response for students to frame their chosen issue for inquiry. We have used the example of the WA Shark Cull.

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Graphic Organiser (or, questions to structure their inquiry).

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Graphic Organiser 1- identify and structure issues.