Steve Price: Caulfield billboard raises big questions about Voice to parliament
A billboard promoting an Indigenous carbon credit trading scheme has raised eyebrows – if this business already exists then why do we need another layer of unelected bureaucracy?
Opinion
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Near the corner of Hawthorn Rd and Glenhuntly Rd in Caulfield there is a 7-Eleven convenience store.
It’s across the street from the Red Cross blood bank where this week volunteers queued up to give blood.
Waiting for service at the 7-Eleven I spied a billboard on the wall adjacent to the car park out front. The billboard is pictured on this page.
As you can see it features a background of Indigenous black and orange artwork and makes the claim that you can help stop bushfires in Australia by investing in Cultural Fire Credits.
On the right hand side, with no explanation, is the word firesticks and then the logo of an outfit called The Aboriginal Carbon Foundation.
Given the national debate we are having about The Voice and how it will, according to the Yes campaign, provide a direct verbal link to executive Government I was intrigued.
What exactly could the Aboriginal Carbon Foundation be and what exactly is a cultural fire credit? On the surface it seems to be a carbon credit trading scheme designed for one group of Australians – Indigenous Australians.
Nothing wrong with that but you need to ask if businesses like this exist already then why do we need to form another layer of unelected bureaucracy to stimulate this sort of Indigenous entrepreneurship.
Maybe the system is working already.
This might though be a living example of why everyday Australians day by day and week by week are growing increasingly suspicious of where we are headed on this vote.
Headed for treaties, reparations and businesses and rental payments set up for one racial group excluding the rest.
Reading the AbCF (Aboriginal Carbon Foundation) website uncovers a bewildering ramble of a business model that seems to recruit corporate sponsorships to make those big corporations feel better about emitting greenhouse gases.
A Carbon Tax system selling to big business and operating like a share market type carbon trading outfit. This of course brings back bad memories of Julia Gillard’s Carbon Tax disaster.
The website of AbCF itself says the Aboriginal Carbon Foundation attracts investment in Aboriginal Carbon funding from Corporations, ethical investors, schools and others.
The fund – the website claims – gives upfront payments for carbon credits above Government rates and a payment based on profit share.
As far as I have been able to work out someone has been clever enough to link the traditional practice of Aboriginal burning of the bush in earlier times to thin out overgrowth to carbon credits.
The AbCF earns money training Indigenous rangers to light these fires, it seems. Here’s where the confusion starts for me.
I thought carbon credits included paying farmers to plant farming land with row after row of trees that we know capture carbon, meaning their investors off-set their own emissions.
This model seems a very roundabout way of achieving an outcome but people are making a fortune doing it.
However doesn’t setting fire to the bushland add its own emissions to the atmosphere with all the smoke generated? This group is suggesting their burn backs have an impact on bushfire control.
As far as I can work out the bulk of pre-summer burn backs in Victoria at least are conducted by the CFA.
AbCF might be an outstanding outfit but seems draped in political correctness dressed up as bushfire protection.
When you dig deeper you find statements like “there aren’t enough Indigenous fire practitioners across country (sic) who hold the depth of knowledge needed to practice traditional Indigenous Burning”. That’s their emphasis.
This is where alarm bells start going off. If you marry what’s a successful operation on the surface and the upcoming Voice vote it’s not hard to see how this might work.
It’s not a stretch to suggest the Indigenous community representatives appointed to The Voice would advise Government that all backburning be taken out of the hands
of private landowners – farmers – or even taken from the CFA in Victoria.
AbCF runs training programs to teach Indigenous rangers how these burn-offs should be done is one step away from putting such operations in their hands alone.
The Yes campaigners insist this referendum isn’t about parking tickets and January 26 which may be true but what is it about beyond Constitutional recognition.
That question is what Australians who are yet to make their minds up or are leaning toward ‘No’ want answered.
This weekend will see 25 national events called community events run by the Yes campaign. A well- funded pro Voice advertising campaign will follow as current polling shows the ‘No’ vote edging ahead.
Prominent No campaigner Warren Mundine told me on SkyNews this week that successful indigenous businesses were booming around the nation.
If that’s so this whole exercise is an expensive vanity folly from Labor PM Anthony Albanese that could be more simply solved with a simple inclusion in the Constitution of indigenous Australians.
One step for one nation.
To deny that is why thinking Australians ask what might be next!
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Originally published as Steve Price: Caulfield billboard raises big questions about Voice to parliament
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