When a Tasmanian conservative politician dares criticise the darling of the local media-elite, the resultant indignant screeching on social media is as predictable as it is moronic. How dare a wicked conservative disagree with a green-left idol?
The only problem for the social media peanut gallery is that the big, bad conservative is almost completely right. The lefty luvvy might be regurgitating all the politically correct talking-points – but they’re almost all garbage.
Liberal senator Eric Abetz says award winning author Richard Flanagan is “denigrating” his country in an article on the bushfires in the New York Times.
When the Examiner (popularly known in Tasmania as the “Exaggerater”) calls the New York Times an “internationally acclaimed paper”, well, we just know what we’re going to be in for.
“Its glorious Great Barrier Reef is dying, its world-heritage rainforests are burning, its giant kelp forests have largely vanished, numerous towns have run out of water or are about to, and now the vast continent is burning on a scale never before seen” […]At the height of the fires, Mr Flanagan wrote that Prime Minister Scott Morrison “went on vacation to Hawaii” and Labor leader Anthony Albanese toured coal mining towns “expressing his unequivocal support for coal exports”.
Flanagan is dutifully parroting the talking-points straight from the Greta Thunberg hymn sheet, but he’s almost completely wrong. The current fires are of a scale seen several times in Australia’s history – and, in fact, exceeded. Claims that the Great Barrier Reef is “dying” are strongly challenged by the evidence. And neither Morrison nor Albanese did as Flanagan claims “at the height of the fires”. This is just so much nonsense, however much the social media peanut gallery might believe it.
On the other hand, Abetz is almost completely right – especially when criticising Flanagan’s studious ignorance of Australian history (which, holding a Master of Letters in History, he should know better). But, while Flanagan’s speciality might be writing fiction, that doesn’t justify passing off ahistorical fictions as “journalism”.
Senator Abetz said Mr Flanagan’s piece ignored history.
“He and his cohort love denigrating their country,” Senator Abetz said.
“What is missing from the piece is the history of Australia […]described by James Cook on his first visit as this land of smoke.
“Our very own Tasmania has its Bay of Fires so named because of what explorers saw.
Here’s where the social media morons really kicked into high gear. Screeching ninnies on Facebook shrieked that “the Bay of Fires was named because they saw cooking fires!” This is absolute rubbish. The journals of Tobias Furneaux, commander of the Adventure on Cook’s second voyage, who named the Bay of Fires, make clear that what they were seeing were no mere camp fires.
“The trees are mostly burnt or scorched, near the ground, occasioned by the natives setting fire to the under-wood,” wrote Furneaux. Although Furneaux’s expedition did not see any of the inhabitants, they did see “several smokes and large fires”. Describing the Bay of Fires, which they passed in the pre-dawn darkness, Furneaux wrote, “There was a continual fire along shore as we sailed”.
Furneaux’s astronomer, William Bayly, likewise reported: “The under wood is all burnt by the native…at the north side of this bay there was many large fires burning.”
“Continual fire along shore” and “many large fires” is not a “camp fire”. It’s bushfire.
“These events catastrophic as they are do need to be viewed in the context of history.
“Unnecessarily scaring and frightening people during a difficult time does no one any good.”
examiner.com.au/story/6567881/senator-and-author-clash-over-bushfires/
The green-left can loathe Abetz all they like, but in this case he is absolutely correct. It’s not Eric Abetz who needs to “read a history book”, it’s the uninformed idiots of the left who need to pick up the journals of the early explorers and understand that fire has been a constant presence in the Australian landscape for thousands of years.
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