A reported 84 per cent increase in confirmed child abuse cases in Australia is, apparently perversely, good news, in that this is being attributed to better reporting.
But then there’s this:
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were again overrepresented, with figures showing them to be five times as likely as other children to be the subject of a substantiated claim, more than six times as likely to be subject to care and protection orders, and more than seven times as likely to be in out-of-home care.
And reflecting Australia’s dismal record on the environment – even worse on carbon emissions than the US – a star Australian scientist has been poached by California – attracted he says by the chance to really make a difference, which seems impossible in Australia.
But there is some good news: Tim Flannery has been named Australian of the Year. He’s the author of the brilliant The Future Easters, which asserted that the aborigines and other Pacific humans had begun the apparently inexorable degradation of the fragile ecosystems of the region (a thesis backed by recent fossil discoveries).
I interviewed him many years ago and was immediately struck that he was one of those very few people with an absolutely original brain. His thesis then was that Australia as a continent had a sustainable carrying capacity of less than 4 million people. (The population is now 20 million.)
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