Corrupt Australia presents an alternative to the politically correct channels of debate to reveal and scrutinize the skewed structure/design of modern Australian society. We also seek to encourage autonomous Australian culture which is free from the standardizing and overly materialistic clutches of globalisation and which encourages citizens to go further than simply contributing to a quantity over quality mindset and the banal and unsustainable conditions under which we may increase our love for and attainment of material mass.

Port Phillip and Westernport Catchment Management Authority (PPWCMA): Environmental integrity of Melbourne is slipping


Massive vegetation loss is the cause of dangerously low levels of biological diversity and health that have been discovered in the natural environment of Melbourne and its surrounding areas, a report published by the PPWCMA has found. A whopping 70 per cent of the city and surrounding region's native plant life has been destroyed. "Numerous classes of vegetation are heavily depleted and various species of wildlife are therefore threatened because they have no habitat to live and breed" PPWCMA chief executive David Buntine said.

While climate change receives nearly all the environmental media attention in Australia at the moment, another and yet older and typically human environmental problem looms: the human destruction of plant and animal life. According the Australian Wilderness Society, more than 80 per cent of temperate woodlands in southern regions of the continent have been cleared (http://www.wilderness.org.au/campaigns/landclearing/woodlands_overview/). According to Greenpeace international the current extinction rate of plant and animal species worldwide is around 1,000 times faster than in pre-human times and scientists predict that the planet is entering its sixth major extinction event in history - where around 50 per cent of current living species perish (http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/forests/our-disappearing-forests). The difference with the extinction event that many scientists think we are currently entering, in contrast with previous major extinction events in the planet's history like the one that killed the dinosaurs for example, is that we humans and our increasing toll on the environmental are to blame.

Environmental advocate Rob Gell, who's thoughts were included in the aforementioned PPWCMA's report, states why this trend of vegetation and thus habitat loss may simply continue under our noses as has been the case for the last number of decades. "Today we face major global issues around energy consumption and conservation, our current economic models, population demographics, the condition of our environment and climate shift. The reality is that our western democracies are currently ill-equipped to deal with these issues".

Looking at the bigger picture, multitudes (millions and billions) of human beings require multitudes of space and resources on this earth, and a way of obtaining both this space and these resources is too often deforestation of natural forests and more general instances of land clearing. Basically our western democracies are ill-equipped to deal with issues such as widespread vegetation loss because western democracies (the masses) are not going to assess the hypothesis that there are simply too many of us on this plant wanting a resource-rich lifestyle for it to be the case that we live in harmony with the planet's flora or in other words in a manor that can realistically be said to continue for any significant time into the future.


Think of it all - of the life that is! Study your friends and foes!
Study the past! And answer this: "Are these times better than those?" The life-long quarrel, the paltry spite, the sting of your poisoned pride! No matter who fell it were better to fight as they did when the world was wide.

Boast as you will of your mateship now - crippled and mean and sly - The lines of suspicion on friendship's brow were traced since the days gone by.
There was room in the long, free lines of the van to fight for it side by side -
There was beating-room for the heart of a man in the days when the world was wide.

With its dull, brown days of a-shilling-an-hour the dreary year drags round: Is this the result of Old England's power? - the bourne of the Outward Bound?
Is this the sequel of Westward Ho! - of the days of Whate'er Betide? The heart of the rebel makes answer "No! We'll fight till the world grows wide!"

The world shall yet be a wider world - for the tokens are manifest; East and North shall the wrongs be hurled that followed us South and West. The march of Freedom is North by the Dawn! Follow, whate'er betide! Sons of the Exiles, march! March on! March till the world grows wide!

- Henry Lawson

(c)2008 Corrupt AU