A still from the scary ‘rivers running dry’ campaign.
The busy beavers at the federal water minister’s office came up with a startling video, now playing on our TVs showing how the Murray-Darling Basin is headed for catastrophe unless it is saved by the Labor Government.
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They slapped in a few pics off the internet and hey presto: a devastated landscape with some nice landscape pics, a serious voice-over with some powerful predictions, and you’ve got a great scare campaign.
We like the line that says “the rivers may run dry”.
But the Coalition also has boffins. And they’ve been burning the midnight oil, tracking down the photos used in the scare campaign.
NSW Senator Perin Davey said some of the images have come from a Turkish citrus orchard, sheep in Gippsland and a canoe in Sydney.
Last time we checked, Turkey is not in the Murray-Darling Basin. Nor is Gippsland or Sydney.
Senator Davey said she’s been inundated by concerned residents across the basin who are offended by the misrepresentation of their rivers and region.
Meanwhile, NSW State Member for Murray Helen Dalton says one of the images used by Tanya Plibersek on her Facebook page about the same campaign is from the Elliott River between Mackay and Townsville in Queensland, not from the Murray-Darling Basin, and she accuses the water minister of treating country people like fools.
“We know what our rivers look like and she should, too.”
Back off, kangaroos
The RooBadge is designed to reduce collisions between vehicles and kangaroos.
A seemingly simple device that replaces a Volkswagen’s front badge could save countless kangaroos and hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage by emitting a warning signal of a vehicle’s approach.
Developed over three years by Volkswagen Australia and the DDB Group in consultation with the University of Melbourne and WIRES, it is hoped the ‘RooBadge’ will reduce collisions with kangaroos, which comprise 90 per cent of on-road wildlife accidents.
The ‘badge’ is a circular disc that replaces the current Volkswagen roundel/badge.
Connecting to an in-car app, RooBadge calibrates a vehicle's GPS coordinates with kangaroo distribution data.
This conveys a unique audio deterrent for the kangaroo species that inhabits the vehicle’s particular location.
A mixture of natural and artificial sounds is mixed in real time and projected in a high frequency audio signal.
Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles director Ryan Davies said: “Why is Volkswagen investing time and energy in this project? Because we can and it’s the right thing to do.”
Not so cute after all
The new campaign, ‘Your Pet, Our Pest’, focuses on in-demand exotic pets, such as the hedgehog, which are likely to be stolen from the wild or bred in captivity under cruel conditions before they are transported to countries such as Australia.
“They are not suitable pets. We need the community to care because those who traffic exotic animals do not care about the animals or the environment, they only care about their profits,” Crime Stoppers Victoria chief executive Stella Smith said.
Online marketplaces have made it easier for traffickers to illegally sell exotic pest animals, placing many Victorians at risk of unintentionally buying illegally sourced animals and ultimately committing an offence.
Penalties for importing, keeping, breeding and trading illegally sourced exotic pest animals like the African pygmy hedgehog — two of which were found earlier this year in Victoria — can result in up to $210,000 in fines or two years in prison.
Speaking on the seriousness of the recent hedgehog discovery, Agriculture Victoria’s Miranda Green said it was fortunate some fast-thinking officers from Victoria Police were able to identify the animals.
Reflecting on the disastrous spread of the European hedgehog in New Zealand, Ms Green said the African pygmy hedgehog could similarly harm Victoria’s ecosystem if given the chance.
“Classified as a Prohibited Pest Animal, it threatens native wildlife like frogs, lizards, insects, and bird eggs.”
