PRA: Disadvantage and Discernment

Condensed from the Chairman’s report at Property Rights Australia conference August 2015

STAND YOUR GROUND!

This was the rally cry, the motto that former PRA chairman John Purcell came up with a number of years back. The times suited it as there was a wave after wave of the theft of property rights and you lived in expectation of the super wave at every election cycle. Possibly life for PRA was a little simpler back in the ALP Beattie government years leading into the handover to Peter Beattie’s deputy Anna Bligh. The enemy was environmentalists and appeasement to them by government for cheap political gain.

After lecturing landowners for many years about the precautionary principle the Bligh government vigorously told landowners that they had no choice but to accept another business called coal seam gas laid over their properties. This new business was allowed to operate under an adaptive management principle. A term the then PRA chairman Ron Bahnisch called, “oxymoronic.”

The precautionary principle over the years has suffered misuse by some (not all) in the opposition to any new development by taking too far an endless litany of “what ifs.”  Sustainability is a word that can be problematic due to it being used in contexts that are not measurable; definitions designed to suit an outcome and the goalposts are able to be shifted at whim.

Adaptive management was an absolute joke; the admission that we know that there will be problems, we don’t know the solutions but somehow we will work it out as we go along. It was the height of hypocrisy that same government that bashed landowners over the head for so long with a big environmental stick could turn around so quickly and direct departmental staff in the blinkered support of both mining, CSG and supporting infrastructure.

Former PRA Chair John Purcell receiving Life Membership from the then Chair, Joanne Rea at the 2012 PRA conference

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PRA is developing a policy document called the No Disadvantage Principle. The disregard of people, their ability to make an income from their property, amenity of life, impacts that cause diminution of value, future external liabilities left to the landowner and reduced future use of the land – all these issues have continued on many fronts.

PRA calls on government to apply a No Disadvantage Principle test to all new legislation and policies that impact Landowners, particularly in relation to resource and environment impacts. If a community, industry or even an individual is placed at a disadvantage the policy or legislation should be amended and if this is not possible those affected should be fully compensated. No one should be left as collateral damage to what is thought to be at the time, “the greater good.”

Such a clear and unequivocal legislated rule would still allow economic development including mining and petroleum projects to operate, to generate wealth and jobs for the State and allow Government to legislate on environmental concerns for the public good but there would no longer be financially crippled victims sacrificed to achieve the desired goals.

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The polarising of the public debate in the area of mining and coal seam gas has proved very frustrating in recent years. It has suited the big players to throw insults at radical environmentalists on the one hand with a return taunt of “greedy multinational miners” which is played out in the metropolitan media. The debate may be city based but the physical location of projects is forgotten, on or near to rural property owners who on the most part are agricultural producers.

Let’s be clear PRA is no way anti mining. Resources are an important part of the economy. It has provided our society with the means to enjoy the standard of living we do today. Likely to be replaced as we advance into the future but we are dependent on mining for energy needs. What is often overlooked is the high end uses of oil & even coal for products that will ultimately prove far more valuable to us than burning up in an internal combustion engine. 

But make no mistake PRA will speak out against resource company’s actions and also against environmental organisations when the property owner’s rights are not respected.

Recent years has seen former adversaries saying very similar things about the coal seam gas invasion onto our properties. We may not be on the same path but we often find ourselves running a parallel path. This is occurring at the same time of increasing polarisation of the public debate.

In this new atmosphere PRA has to be very discerning. It is our role to stand up for the rights of landowners, not to make government happy, no matter its colour. PRA is by constitution apolitical. If there is an abuse of landowner rights we must speak up. We have witnessed CSG & some (not all) coal companies throw their weight around in callous disregard to the landowner and we have seen government make legislative changes that shifted unbalance in favour of resources blatantly further to their favour.

A steady hand & a discerning mind is needed. I see others in frustration shift to the thinking of the means justifies the end; it never does. One needs to be discerning about environmental groups who appear (& largely are) on the same page about CSG, but inevitably other agendas are crept in and promoted. There is also the increasing tiresome chatter of the eco-pessimist that from all developments the worst calamity is automatic.

Then we have another phenomenon to resist from those without direct connection to CSG localities where they assume because those “dam greenies” are saying something that it is automatically wrong and the CSG industry therefore are virtuous.

While it is certainly easy to find many examples of the extreme end of the environmental movement in their ‘the end justifies the means’ approach using alarmism, misinformation and even sabotage, it is simplistic to assume that everyone interested in environmental issues are deluded.

Those of us who are interested into the enquiry into the truth of a situation should resist the weakness that requires one to retreat to known absolutes and not allow new events to challenge one’s thinking. Sometime there are circumstances where you end up on a parallel course to others that are normally in opposition; it appears that some are so insecure in their own convictions that they create an artificial world of “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet”. “

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In conclusion, the call for discernment is for us, Property Rights Australia, its members and the board to make evidence based decisions and not be afraid to give voice to them no matter the company.

The call of recognising disadvantage is to government that by adopting the No Disadvantage Principle that no one is left as road kill on the highway of the common good.

NO DISADVANTAGE!

 

 

Previous published related article

Strength in Diversity

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Alternative to The Precautionary Principle?

by Don Aitkin

 

First published at Online Opinion, cross post via  license under a Creative Commons License

 

 



I've written about the Precautionary Principle before. With that title it was adopted at the 1992 Rio conference on climate, and it has been used a great deal by proponents of the need to 'combat climate change' internationally. Built into it is Pascal's Wager about the correctness of believing in God, and it has analogies in the medical precept 'first do no harm'. I didn't like it when I first came across it, partly because it was dressed up as a 'principle' and partly because of the capital letters, which suggested importance and longevity.

Image sourced [here]


I've come across a most interesting paper by Max More, an English philosopher and futurist, which offers instead a 'proactionary principle'. There's a lot in it, and it's well worth reading. I'll discuss his alternative in a later post, but use this one to show his demolition of the precautionary principle. It is clear and accessible.

'The precautionary principle has at least six major weak spots. It serves us badly by:

assuming worst-case scenarios

distracting attention from established threats to health, especially natural risks

assuming that the effects of regulation and restriction are all positive or neutral, never negative

ignoring potential benefits of technology and inherently favouring nature over humanity

illegitimately shifting the burden of proof and unfavourably positioning the proponent of the activity

conflicting with more balanced, common-law approaches to risk and harm.

First, the precautionary principle always assumes worst-case scenarios. Any release of chemicals into the environment might initiate a chain of events leading to a disaster. Genetically modified organisms might cause unanticipated, serious, and irreversible problems. By imagining the proposed technology or project primarily in a worst-case scenario, while assuming that refraining from action will have no disastrous consequences, the adherents of the principle immediately tilt the playing field in their favour.

Second, the precautionary principle ignores background risk, distracting our attention from established dangers to health. Nature itself brings with it a risk of harms such as infection, hunger, famine, and environmental disruption. We should apply our limited resources first to major risks that we know are real, not merely hypothetical. The more we attend to merely hypothetical threats to health and environment, the less money, time, and effort will remain to deal with substantial health problems that are highly probable or thoroughly established. The principle errs in focusing on future technological harms that might occur, while ignoring natural risks that are actually occurring.

Third, adherents of the precautionary principle assume that proposed regulations and restrictions will cause no harm to health. Yet the very application of the principle itself can endanger our health. Consider, for instance, the consistent correlation between the health of a nation's citizens and their standard of living. Widespread application of the precautionary principle, by hampering economic activity, will tend to reduce living standards and thereby worsen health. In addition, major efforts to eliminate small, speculative risks can unleash far greater and more likely harms.

Fourth, the precautionary principle fails to treat natural and human threats on the same basis. Users of the principle routinely ignore the potential benefits of technology, in effect favouring nature over humanity. The principle does not account for the fact that the risks created by technological stagnation are at least as real as those of technological advancement. As biochemist Bruce Ames of UCLA has demonstrated, almost all of our exposure to dangerous chemicals comes in the form of natural chemicals. Yet fear and attention are primarily directed toward synthetic chemicals. A particular chemical has the same effects regardless of whether its source is natural or synthetic. Despite this, scientifically unsound activists treat human-derived chemicals as guilty until proven innocent, and naturally occurring chemicals as innocent or insignificant.


Fifth, the precautionary principle illegitimately shifts the burden of proof by positioning advocates of proposed activities or new technologies as reckless, in contrast with the 'responsible' advocates of 'precaution'. The content - even the very name - of the precautionary principle positions environmental activists and Luddites as friends and protectors of the common person. The innovators are made to prove safety, having already been portrayed as indifferent to the common good and interested only in profiting.

Image sourced [here]

Having illegitimately shifted the burden of proof, activists can impose their values without troubling themselves with evidence and without taking responsibility for the results of overly-precautious policies. For example, the Environmental Working Group opposed the use of pesticides, speculating about possible carcinogenic effects of trace amounts of their residues. They do not seem to have taken into account the probability that restricting pesticides would increase cancer rates.
Activists get away with the burden of proof trick by managing perceptions of risk instead of examining the real risks. This move is particularly dangerous because we have limited resources to address a multitude of risks. We cannot afford to make decisions driven by manipulated perceptions. It's crucial that we rely on a comprehensive, scientifically grounded perspective when choosing which risks have the strongest claim on our attention.

Sixth, and finally, the precautionary principle conflicts with the more balanced approach to risk and harm derived from common law. Common law holds us liable for injuries we cause, our liability being proportionate with the degree of foreseeable risk. By contrast, the precautionary principle dismisses liability and acts like a preliminary injunction, but without the involvement of a court, without the burden of proof, and without taking responsibility for harm caused by the injunction.'
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